Men are the new weaker sex!

By Ranjan Yumnam *

If you look at the job market, if you look at the cultural shifts, if you look at the social media, if you look at the exam results of universities, if you look at the power dynamics in the households, you will notice an unmistakable trend: the unstoppable rise of women and the fall of men from the high pedestal of the human civilization.

Think Lady Gaga. Think Sonia Gandhi. Think Indra Nooyi. The reasons are not far to seek. Since the prehistoric times, men have dominated as the stronger of the two genders because of two mere factors that gave men an undue advantage-macho power and a biological accident: men do not have ovary. Now that is set to change.

But why did men, historically, have the upper hand and were always on top of women? I can only imagine how men would have been venerated as the second Gods by the women when people used to live by hunting. Hunting required sheer raw power and since women did not have it, they were at the mercy of men who provided food and security for them and children. Procreation responsibility must also have kept the women chained to their hut and hearth.

After the hunting era, when people settled down, the second class status of the women didn't change either. Agriculture favoured men because it was a labour intensive activity. Then cut to the industrial revolution, we had men again presiding over what was predominantly a manufacturing and construction economy, with women still cooking meals and washing the dirty linen at home. Men produced goods at the factories; women were the factories of babies.

Now, after millenniums of men's superiority in the pecking order of the society, women are now at the cusp of a radical revolution and are equalling men, if not surpassing them, in many areas. And the good news is that, this gender volte-face has not happened due to the feminism movement alone.

It has happened due to the changing nature of economy-from the manufacturing to the tertiary (service, IT, communication, etc) where brawn is not as important as brain. Indeed, women's innate traits such as verbal aptitude, soft skills, ability to sit and focus are becoming prized attributes of a worker at the modern workplace.

What's more: some of the jobs that women used to do for free such as cooking, nursing, hospitality, etc. at home are transforming into career options in the new economy. As service sector has expanded and replacing the old brick and mortar industry, men have lost much of their sheen and are in danger of facing obsolescence.

This is real. Women are dumping their embroidery machines; they are better educated, disciplined and do well at whatever work is assigned to them. Unlike men who abuse alcohol and turned up smelly with a bad attitude at the workplace, women bring with them fragrance and poise. And with the same poise and elan, without threatening anyone, they are slowly but surely entering the workforce in hordes. So much so that it has come to this: After pen, lipstick has become the most commonly available object in a modern office!

What tilts the balance in favour of women is their love for stability-in relationships, in career, in love, in almost everything. When companies and employers the world over are grappling with the problem of attrition, female employees with talent are trusted and seen as real assets of the organisation.

In the family too, preference for girls is on the rise. I don't have empirical evidence for Manipur but in the United States, the so called universal first-child-boy preference has been toppled. According to a survey, 75% of parents who come to fertility clinics in the United States are requesting for girls as their first child. This is big.

In the media landscape, women are the torchbearers. Old media is dying and social media is the new media platform of choice and addiction for millions of people. In an interesting presentation made by Ms. Johanna Blakley for TED (a website that hosts the videos of presentations of ground-breaking ideas by their pioneers), she points out that "in every single age category, women actually outnumber men in their use of social networking technologies…If the case is that social media is dominating old media and women are dominating social media, then does that mean that women are going to take over global media?" Are we going to be bombarded by chick flicks and ads for lingerie day-in and day-out? No bitching, that day is not far away…shhhh.

In a reflection of the changing gender power dynamics, it was reported that Angelina Jolie refused to be the female showpiece in a James Bond film because she wanted to be the James Bond herself. (That's why we have the Jolie-starrer, Salt). Likewise in the corporate sector, women are in commanding positions and often earning incomes higher than their husbands. They are dating younger men (think cougar), marrying late and focusing on career.

The empowerment of women is to be commended and not to be resented because societies that give respect to women tend to be progressive. The other side of the coin is that this has a social cost. The social cost of women's empowerment in a small society like Manipur is that our uber-qualified women are migrating and marrying non-Manipuris for want of worthy Manipuri suitors. I would call it the Third Wave of Manipur, the first and second wave being the exodus of Manipuri students to educational destinations outside the state and the trend of Manipuris settling in greener pastures in India and abroad respectively.

The Third Wave is a highly disruptive trend, not least because Manipuri men are deprived of potential quality partners, but it puts a dagger right into the heart of the society by making a hole in its talent pool. The inter-racial marriage historically is a mixed bag of surprises and difficult adjustments. It would be interesting to see how the Manipuri women who are married to aliens would end up in the years to come.

Will they be able to cope with the demands and conform to the standards of a different culture? Will they have the social support system to bank on in the unfortunate, but in the totally possible, events of divorces/separations in an unfamiliar legal and social environment? In a decade or so, the effects of the Third Wave would be known; much more interesting will be to see how this will have an impact on the sense of identity of the Manipuri women and the offsprings born out of such wedlocks. I would love to hear the stories of such women and their joys and travails so that these can be shared for the benefit of all Manipuri women.

On the other hand, men are falling behind because the age of macho has come to an end as the intellectual power clearly trumps the muscular strength in the post-Neanderthals world. Because you don't need to flex your muscles to use your grey cells, women are equally as good a contender as men for opportunities in a world which is flat.

Yet, women have a long way to go before it declares victory in restructuring the gender order and get their Aha! moment. Data tells a gloomy picture of women's representation at the highest echelons of decision making structures. Of the 190 heads of state, only nine are women while in the parliaments, only a dismal 13 percent of the members are women. The situation for women does not improve either at the corporate board rooms: women make up for just about 15 per cent of the corporate honchos. And it is likely that those boardrooms do not have a separate washroom for women.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, notes that women have only themselves to blame for their slow assault to penetrate the top levels which are still dominated by the ageing men. She gives three messages for women who want to live their dreams to high table: do not underestimate your abilities, choose a caring husband and overcome the disadvantage of pregnancy break in the career growth.

Coming as it does from the COO of Facebook, the best thing ever invented for women after birth control pill, these messages need to be taken seriously. However the third message is easier said than done. Pregnancy has affected the career of women and will continue to affect it in a negative way. In the cutthroat world, where business is transacted in cycles of seconds, the pregnancy leave is a yawning gap in the career of a woman, which is exploited by the alpha men among us.

Which brings me to a funny idea: isn't childbirth the last hurdle-the Holy grail-in the glorious path to ultimate empowerment of women? If that is so, even remotely, I foresee the next big thing would be the emergence of a thriving surrogacy industry to give a choice to ambitious women to avoid long pregnancy. Here, women need to kick some ass, especially the taboos associated with surrogacy.

All said and done, as women are outwitting us in almost everything we, the poor blokes, do, let us pray that we are not relegated to the dustbin of history as the dispensable diapers. We can at least prove ourselves useful by changing the baby's diapers at home. Learn cooking, do the dishes...anything, to stay relevant in a new world order which will be soon dominated by women.

So my dear friends, welcome to a brave new feminine world. We really are Homo Sapiens now!

(Views expressed are personal and do not represent official position)

Ranjan Yumnam

* Ranjan Yumnam, presently an MCS probationer, is a frequent contributor to e-pao.net. He can be contacted at ranjanyumnam(at)gmail(dot)com. This article was posted on February 21, 2011.