«IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE»

What’s happening in this recession is unprecedented,” said Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan. “It’s structurally different because the job losses are so concentrated among men.”Blue-collar jobs in manufacturing and construction are haemorrhaging while white-collar work in increasingly female-dominated, often publicly funded fields, such as education and health, are holding steady or growing.The vulnerability of men in the workplace has been compounded by a revolution in education, with women gaining 60% of all college degrees. According to Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys, women are forging ahead in the knowledge-based economy, turning feminist theories of female victimisation on their head. There is a “myth of the fragile girl”, she wrote in 2000, but “boys are more likely to cheat on tests, wind up in detention or drop out of school”. Nearly a decade later, those boys have grown up and are floundering in the job market.

Times
June 7 2009