all at once. Still, the entire women’s movement was premised on the idea that men in our society have a lot more of “it” than women do; that they havefar greater opportunities to flourish both as professionals and in their family roles as sons, brothers, husbands, uncles, and fathers. Indeed, in many societies around the world women still struggle for their basic human rights: to be free from violence, fear, and want; to control their bodies; and to have equal legal status to travel, learn, and pursue their dreams.
Even in a developed, reasonably progressive country like the United States, most women still don’t have what most men have. Lilly Ledbetter began work in a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama in 1979 and discovered twenty years later that she had been paid substantially less than her fellow male managers. “I’d known from the get-go that I’d have to work longer and smarter than the men in order to prove myself. But how in the world could I have been paid less all these years?” Looking at a slip of paper that an anonymous co-worker left in her mailbox listing her salary next to those of her male colleagues, she reflected: “I’d wanted so badly to win approval, and I had done so in the eyes of most of my co-workers, who valued my hard work and loyalty—and who gave it back to me. But how dumb I’d been to think that this would counter the hostility surrounding me….Those numbers said loud and clear that it didn’t matter how hard I’d worked, how much I’d wanted to succeed and do the right thing: I’d been born the wrong sex, and that was that.”That was 1999; as of 2013, over a decade later, American women still earned only 82 percent of what men do for equal work.
So is the claim that “men can’t have it all either” just a self-serving fiction? I continue to think that in many societies, including the United States, women are perfectly justified in wanting more of what many men do in fact have. Still, as I listened to men with an open mind, I began to understand the ways in which this view also expresses an important truth—but only a half-truth.
Men Who Try to Have It All May Have a Harder Time than Women
M ANY MILLENNIAL MEN ARGUE THAT men and women increasingly want the same thing. A former State Department colleague whom I’ll call Steve put it this way: many men in the workplace are “struggling with the work-life balance issue and are reluctant to speak up/rebel against the conventions regarding sacrifice and long hours.” His experience has taught him that when men do speak up, they are penalized not only because of a perceived lack of commitment to their careers, but because “they are somehow not ‘macho’ enough and it works against them when it comes to promotions and career advancement.”
This issue seems as stuck as the numbers of women at the top. Consider the experience of an employee at a public utility company who took three weeks off when his second child was born back in 1996. “Comments were made and my work wasn’t being covered….It made me feel like I wasn’t a ‘man’ if I choose to stay home and take care of the kids. This same attitude manifests when I ask to take time off so I can take the kids to the doctor.”Seventeen years later, in 2013, law professor Joan Williams wrote a piece entitled “The Daddy Dilemma” in which she summarized the conclusions of a host of academic studies: “Men face as many struggles when it comes to using flexible work policies—if not more—because child care, fairly or unfairly, is still seen as being a feminine role.”
One of those studies found thatmen who requested a twelve-week leave to care for a child or elder were more likely to be demoted or downsized because they were seen as more feminine than other men. Another concluded thatcaregiving fathers had the highest rate of social mistreatment at work among men, chiefly because they suffered the highest rates of “masculinity harassment.”Yet a third
Even in a developed, reasonably progressive country like the United States, most women still don’t have what most men have. Lilly Ledbetter began work in a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama in 1979 and discovered twenty years later that she had been paid substantially less than her fellow male managers. “I’d known from the get-go that I’d have to work longer and smarter than the men in order to prove myself. But how in the world could I have been paid less all these years?” Looking at a slip of paper that an anonymous co-worker left in her mailbox listing her salary next to those of her male colleagues, she reflected: “I’d wanted so badly to win approval, and I had done so in the eyes of most of my co-workers, who valued my hard work and loyalty—and who gave it back to me. But how dumb I’d been to think that this would counter the hostility surrounding me….Those numbers said loud and clear that it didn’t matter how hard I’d worked, how much I’d wanted to succeed and do the right thing: I’d been born the wrong sex, and that was that.”That was 1999; as of 2013, over a decade later, American women still earned only 82 percent of what men do for equal work.
So is the claim that “men can’t have it all either” just a self-serving fiction? I continue to think that in many societies, including the United States, women are perfectly justified in wanting more of what many men do in fact have. Still, as I listened to men with an open mind, I began to understand the ways in which this view also expresses an important truth—but only a half-truth.
Men Who Try to Have It All May Have a Harder Time than Women
M ANY MILLENNIAL MEN ARGUE THAT men and women increasingly want the same thing. A former State Department colleague whom I’ll call Steve put it this way: many men in the workplace are “struggling with the work-life balance issue and are reluctant to speak up/rebel against the conventions regarding sacrifice and long hours.” His experience has taught him that when men do speak up, they are penalized not only because of a perceived lack of commitment to their careers, but because “they are somehow not ‘macho’ enough and it works against them when it comes to promotions and career advancement.”
This issue seems as stuck as the numbers of women at the top. Consider the experience of an employee at a public utility company who took three weeks off when his second child was born back in 1996. “Comments were made and my work wasn’t being covered….It made me feel like I wasn’t a ‘man’ if I choose to stay home and take care of the kids. This same attitude manifests when I ask to take time off so I can take the kids to the doctor.”Seventeen years later, in 2013, law professor Joan Williams wrote a piece entitled “The Daddy Dilemma” in which she summarized the conclusions of a host of academic studies: “Men face as many struggles when it comes to using flexible work policies—if not more—because child care, fairly or unfairly, is still seen as being a feminine role.”
One of those studies found thatmen who requested a twelve-week leave to care for a child or elder were more likely to be demoted or downsized because they were seen as more feminine than other men. Another concluded thatcaregiving fathers had the highest rate of social mistreatment at work among men, chiefly because they suffered the highest rates of “masculinity harassment.”Yet a third
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