gender

Late last week, the Financial Times (UK) ran a story about how men are more ‘prone to credit crunch blues’ than women in the same situation. The story is focused on men who think they might lose their jobs, who become more depressed and anxious than women. This assessment comes out of a study from Cambridge University sociologist Brendan Burchell. 

The Financial Times reports, 

This anxiety reflected males’ “macho” belief about “men being the breadwinner”, said Brendan Burchell, the Cambridge sociologist who carried out the research. “Men, unlike women, have few positive ways of defining themselves outside of the workplace between when they leave school and when they retire,” he said.

More from Burchell:

The stress and anxiety of people who had become unemployed “bottomed out” after about six months as they adapted to their new circumstances. By contrast, people who had not lost their jobs but thought they might be fired showed steadily worsening mental health for one to two years.

Mr Burchell said: “Given that most economic forecasts predict that the recession will be long with a slow recovery, the results mean that many people – and men in particular – could be entering into a period of prolonged and growing misery.”

Commenting on possible solutions, Mr Burchell stressed the need “to restabilise the City” – adding a mental health angle to the well-rehearsed economic arguments for shoring up the banking system.

Read on…

The Christian Science Monitor reported on a new trend in Iowa where women are poised to ‘lead a farming revolution.’ Reports indicate that as wives inherit their husbands’ farmland, they emphasize conservation above maximizing yield and profits. Today in Iowa women own nearly half of the state’s farmland, but suffer from recurring problems when, “The men they hire to farm their land often don’t treat it with the tender care they expect – and often won’t listen when they complain about it.”

The Christian Science monitor provides a sociological perspective on the issue:

Jean Eells, a sociologist who focuses on environmental education, has studied how Iowa’s large share of older women who own farmland are faring in getting their land-conservation views heard.

“As a whole,” says Ms. Eells, “these women have a strong view of land as community – as a source of food and water for animals, birds, as well as people – rather than just producing a commodity. But while that conservation ethic makes them natural allies for agricultural conservation programs, women often feel their views are out of sync [with state or federal programs].”

Partly it’s because women don’t know or use standard terminology to talk about land conservation, Eells says. Partly it’s that agricultural system representatives tend to think and talk production – even when discussing conservation, she adds.

“If a woman brings up something about farming, and a man blusters authoritatively about it, women are socialized to just clam up,” Eells says. “So to the extent that a woman landowner starts discussing conservation, there are a lot of reasons why this might not go well.”

Read more.

Yesterday the Minneapolis Star-Tribune ran a story on the state of teenage girls in the United States. The article featured the work of sociologist Mike Males, who is fighting the myth that these young women are floundering. Instead, he argues, they are doing better than ever.

Mike Males believes it, and he’s preaching that message to anybody willing to listen. All he needs now is a strong set of fins to propel him upstream. That’s because Males, a sociologist, author and senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, says popular culture prefers to keep tweener and teen girls in familiar boxes labeled vulnerable, shallow, mean, violent and depressed.

“Girls are doing spectacularly well,” said Males, who spoke to a packed house this month at a lecture sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Konopka Institute for Best Practices in Adolescent Health.

But Males is quick to acknowledge that there are still many challenges facing teen girls in the US.

He doesn’t dismiss the challenges, whether eating disorders, substance abuse, bullying or pornography. “But these problems exist throughout adult society, as well,” he said. “To generalize these problems to all girls is simply wrong.”

Columnist Gail Roseblum asks, “Why such a discrepancy between belief and reality?”

Males says it could be because of racial stereotyping, (these shifts are occurring amid unprecedented racial diversity in this country); or sexism (we seem more comfortable with the idea of girls being “innately vulnerable”), or simple data manipulation. A new book, “The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today’s Pressures,” for example, correctly reports that suicide rates among girls ages 10 to 14 increased 76 percent between 2003 and 2004. In real numbers, though, the jump was from 56 to 98 deaths, among nearly 10 million girls of that age group. While not dismissing the profound grief experienced by those families, Males said that “a high-schooler is three times more likely to suffer a parent’s suicide than the other way around.”

The biggest sin in his mind? Omission. We know the ugliest demon our girls face, Males said. We just don’t want to talk about it.

“Violence in the home is the Number 1 cause of injury to females,” Males said. “This issue is too important to trivialize, but the media gloss right over it.”

Read more.

Chicago-Tribune reporter Rick Morrissey presented a theory about Michael Phelps’ documented experimentation with marijuana – he did it because he actually wanted to get caught…

In order to see whether or not this theory had any validity, he consulted a sociologist, and writes,

I brought [my theory] to sociologist Jay Coakley, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs who has spent much of his career studying the sociology of sport. He agreed Phelps could be trying to escape something but wouldn’t go so far as to say the swimming star might have been making a conscious or subconscious effort to get caught partaking of the pot.

“I would say there was a desperate desire on his part to get out of this tunnel in which he has been living,” he said.

That tunnel is chlorinated. Phelps spends a good number of his waking hours underwater, and he has been doing it for a long, long time. Swimming is not generally a social sport. It’s hard to grow as a person when you’re basically in an isolation tank.

“After living in this training tunnel for eight to 10 years, he would have to at least fantasize about being outside of it,” Coakley said. “I don’t know whether this is a cry for help, ‘Please stop this train, get me out of this tunnel, I never want to go back,’ or whether it’s, ‘Hey, I’ve got to get out of this tunnel for my own sanity for at least awhile before I go back in.’ ”

But you can understand why Phelps might crave some modicum of normalcy. Most 23-year-olds don’t spend a large part of their free time in watery solitude. So as stunning as that photo of Phelps in a British tabloid was, maybe the idea of him partying hearty at the University of South Carolina isn’t.

“You really don’t have time to be normal with the kind of training he did,” Coakley said. “In terms of development, I’d say he’s probably developmentally delayed. He hasn’t had a chance to have the kinds of experiences that lead to normal adulthood.

“We just assume that, if you win a medal for some reason, it builds your character. That’s a crock. So he actually is facing this as a 23-year-old who is probably less mature than any average 23-year-old on the street.”

Read more.

The New York Times recently ran a piece entitled “Why the Sting of Layoffs Can Be Sharper for Men,” in which they look into how job loss may affect men differently – with a greater negative impact – than women.

Psychiatrists and family therapists establish the claim that men are more adversely affected by job loss…

Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of “The Female Brain” and a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, says that women who lose their jobs “aren’t going to take as much of a self-esteem hit” as men. That is because the most potent form of positive social feedback for many men comes from within the hierarchy of the workplace. By contrast, she said, women may have “many sources of self-esteem — such as their relationships with other people — that are not exclusively embedded within their jobs.”

She said that over the past six months, her clinic has had an increase in the number of men seeking help for difficulties related to job loss.

Terrence Real, a family therapist and the founder of Real Relational Solutions in Arlington, Mass., said the difference in reactions could be explained by the idea of performance esteem.

“Everyone who has written about male psychology has acknowledged that men base their sense of self on the maxim that ‘I have worth because of what I do,’ ” Mr. Real said. The feeling is that “you are only as good as your last game or your last job,” he said.

But research by two sociologists suggests an interesting nuance in this observed trend…

YET while men may appear to reel more socially and psychologically from job loss, they fare far better when it comes to re-employment.

In a 2002 study, two sociology professors at Wichita State University, Charles S. Koeber and David W. Wright, found that women who were laid off and went on to look for another job were re-employed less often than men in the same position. This was especially the case if the women were married, had previously held a part-time job or had worked in something other than a highly skilled, white-collar job.

The implication, Professor Koeber says, is that women have more of a burden than men to show their commitment to a job after a layoff.

“It looks like employers systematically apply some criteria to women that they don’t to men who are looking for jobs after being laid off,” Professor Koeber said.

Read more.

The idea that virginity has a high value harkens back to the days of early humans — if a man has sex with a virgin woman, he knows for sure that her children will be his, anthropologists reason. In early civilizations, women were also considered the property of men, said Laura Carpenter, assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Through the 1950s in America, women were expected to remain virgins until marriage, Carpenter said. But with the availability of the pill and the IUD in the 1960s, combined with youth counterculture and gay rights movements, it became more common for women to engage in premarital sex, she said.

Attitudes shifted toward the conservative side in the 1980s with the worldwide HIV/AIDS pandemic, which made the stakes much higher for choosing a sex partner, especially for men. Abstinence-based education programs also took off around that time, with government support, she said.

Today, about 95 percent of Americans have sex before they’re 25, Carpenter said. But worldwide, virgin prostitutes can claim larger fees, certain cultures still attach larger dowries to virgin brides, and some women undergo reconstructive surgery to restore their hymens.

In looking at Dylan’s auction, “To some extent it’s not new. The new part is the Internet,” Carpenter said.

And Dylan’s take?

Some men may seek virgins because they want them as trophies, or desire purity. But as to why men would bid so much money on virginity, she said she has no answer.

“I honestly don’t know what they see in it,” she said.

If you think Dylan’s auction amounts to prostitution, she completely agrees. She also said she’s not breaking any laws — after all, prostitution in Nevada is legal.

“I feel people should be pro-choice with their body, and I’m not hurting anyone,” she said. “It really comes down to a moral and religious argument, and this doesn’t go against my religion or my morals. There’s no right or wrong to this.”

Read more.

The Boston Globe reports, “Husbands do it by gassing up their spouse’s car. Wives do it by having a heart-to-heart confessional. Each is expressing intimacy, but in a stereotypical Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus fashion. As Framingham State College sociologist Virginia Rutter notes, “Both men and women value a feeling of closeness with their partner, but they get to that feeling by somewhat different routes.” And they often think their partner is taking the wrong route.”

Stephanie Cootz (for the Globe) writes:

Over the past 30 years, however, husbands and wives have become much less likely to specialize exclusively in either breadwinning or nurturing. As men and women try to mix and match the traits that were once parceled out between them, the 19th-century gender differences in emotional orientation hamper a couple’s ability to sustain relationships that are now based on equality and friendship. A growing body of research confirms that men and women who hold traditional gender attitudes have lower-quality relationships than couples with more gender-neutral values.

Rutter’s response…

Rutter argues that we can “learn to draw from both the masculine and the feminine tool kits.” She points to studies showing that children who combine what are usually thought of as masculine and feminine coping skills have higher academic and social skills than more “traditional” boys and girls. Such flexibility also translates into higher marital quality later in life. This may be why University of Washington researcher John Gottman finds that same-sex couples, who tend to combine “male” and “female” emotional styles, remain calmer and more positive with each other during disagreements than do heterosexual couples.

Take home message?

So where men need to learn how to connect with painful feelings, women need to learn when to step back from such feelings to engage in activities that calm both partners down. And sometimes, when deciding whether to use the “female” or the “male” way of making up after an argument, couples might be better off splitting the difference. Instead of talking it out before sex or having sex before talking it out, why not head off to a movie and hold hands in the dark?

Read on…

An article in the Boston Globe yesterday suggests that men may have a lot to learn from women when it comes to health. New research indicates that the ‘tough guy’ attitude is a key factor in gendered health disparities. 

“In American society, what does a real man do? A real man doesn’t show weakness,” said David R. Williams, a medical sociologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It leads a lot of men to not take preventive action for their health, to deny pain and seek medical attention only when the problem is much more severe.”

A richly detailed portrait of Bay Staters’ health, released earlier this month, proves the point – and provides stark evidence of a persistent divide between the genders. In category after category, women do a better job of taking care of their health. They smoke less and drink less, and they’re less likely to be overweight. They eat more fruits and vegetables. They have their cholesterol tested more regularly.

One especially telling finding: While men more frequently reported being diagnosed with high blood pressure, they were actually less likely than women to take drugs to tame it.

But what can men learn from women?

“Men can learn a lot from women,” said Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We know that some of our health awareness campaigns about the risk of smoking and the risk of binge drinking have to do a better job of being gender-specific.”

That could translate into initiatives centered in the workplace that, perhaps, promise lower insurance premiums for men – and women – who adopt healthy behaviors. And, at home, families could be encouraged to exercise together and share healthier meals.

There is hope that as traditional gender roles continue to shift – as more men, for example, assume family responsibilities historically associated with women – the gender divide will narrow.

Read more.

This morning MSNBC ran a story on new research from San Francisco State sociologists, which suggests that when women receive a breast cancer diagnosis, they often assume a caretaking role in their own treatment and recovery. 

MSNBC reports:

 After conducting a series of interviews with 164 breast cancer survivors over two years, researchers from San Francisco State University found that women with cancer not only shoulder the emotional burden of disclosing their diagnosis to loved ones, they often end up being supportive of others at a time when they actually need support themselves.

“There’s been a lot of research on how women are emotional managers, how they take care of others,” says medical sociologist and lead researcher Dr. Grace Yoo, who recently presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. “And when they’re diagnosed with breast cancer they’re still doing that. They’re worried about how others might react.”

Read the full story. 

This morning USA Today covered a new study by the Pew Research Center that surveyed 1,260 individuals about decision-making in the ‘typical American home.’ The study found that women had the final say in decisions at home in 43% of the couples.

USA Today called in a sociologist…

Sociologist and gender studies expert Michael Kimmel of Stony Brook University-New York says the responses suggest the path for couples is “far grayer” these days as couples weave in more equality.

“There’s far more fluidity in family decision-making around these topics than ever before, and that’s the real news,” he says. “Sometimes she makes the plans, sometimes he does. It’s who has the spare time.”

Kimmel offers three ways to interpret the findings: “One is ‘Only 43% of women make most of the decisions.’ Another way is ‘Couples are in their homes navigating and negotiating equality far more than ever before.’ A third way to read it is ‘In both very traditional couples and in very egalitarian couples, women’s sphere of influence has always been the family purse. She pays the bills, decides which dinner parties they go to. He goes along with family projects.’ “

Read the full story.