Pity the poor male springbok. As soon as he reaches sexual maturity, he is pushed out of the herd by the dominant male. Alone on the plains, he is easy picking for lions, leopards and cheetahs.
The best survival strategy is to team up with other young males and form a bachelor herd. It's safer, but still lonely. Hence a bachelor springbok will repeatedly challenge the dominant male, risking injury and death.
It's not easy being the dominant male, either. Dominant male springbok are so busy mating with females, stopping members of their harem from wandering off, and fending off challengers that they have no time to eat. After a short period of dominance, they are so weakened by their efforts that they, too, become easy pickings for predators.
From time to time one reads an article claiming that men are "tomorrow's second sex" or worrying about the disappearance of manhood. Men are failing at school, these articles claim. Women dominate employment in the sectors that are growing in modern economies, while traditionally male jobs are in decline. Men won't take traditionally female jobs, hence are stuck in joblessness. Men without work don't get married, don't form families, aren't socialized to behave in a responsible fashion, and are a generally a social problem.
Yet a brief tour of the natural world suggests that, far from being exceptional, social exclusion of males – and accompanying social problems – is perfectly normal. Young male lions, just kicked out of the pride, are the ones who wander into villages, attack farm animals, and cause many lion-human conflicts. Young male baboons are the adventurous ones breaking into houses and stealing food from kitchens. Lone bull elephants are dangerous and potentially deadly.
Biology is not destiny, and humans are much smarter and more flexible than lions and springboks. Still, observing other species is a way of opening our minds, and re-thinking what we "know" about ourselves. Take, for example, the claim made by Hanna Rossin – famous for her book "The End of Men and the Rise of Women" – that "Man has been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind." If our earliest ancestors were anything like other large African mammals, they might have lived in communities where a few men were dominant, and a lot of men were marginalized and socially excluded.
Observing other species calls into question the idea that the failure of some men to succeed is the fault of feminism, or those who would "civilize boys by diminishing their masculinity. Christina Hoff Sommers – author of "The War Against Boys" – argues that boys are falling behind in school because peope are following "Gloria Steinem's advice" to "Raise boys like we raise girls".
In the wild, it's the dominant males who push out the "teenage" males. In business? Which story do you think is more plausible: (a) senior (mostly male) executives choose to hire women because they work hard, don't demand such high salaries, are well-trained, don't make trouble, and aren't a threat (b) senior (mostly male) executives choose to hire women in response to pressure from feminist groups. I'm going with (a) – as one entrepreneur told me recently (in a moment of truth) "I don't hire men; they drink too much and they're not reliable."
Considering other species makes one realize the crucial importance of productive and reproductive technologies. A single male springbok can mate with many females and have many offspring because, basically, the male springbok contributes nothing but sperm to the process of reproduction. Hornbills have to be monogamous because both males and females play crucial nuturing roles. The female hornbill and the couples' eggs are enclosed in a nest that is almost completely sealed off. The female relies upon her partner to bring her food. Without him, she would starve.
Humans are endlessly adaptable. Washing machines and microwaves, food processors and vaccuum cleaners are engines of liberation. It's technology, not ideology, that has freed women from the life of hornbills, sequestered in the nest, completely reliant on their partner for sustenance. Technology also means that men don't have to be like hornbills, either, desperately trying to find enough food for themselves and their partners and the chicks. Men just need to find food for one person – themselves – and then they can bog off down to the pub.
It's telling, I think, that so many of the people who write about the decline of men – Christina Hoff Sommers, Hanna Rossin – are women. It's partly, I suspect, that some are mothers, and deeply concerned about their sons. It's partly that women are more comfortable criticizing feminists, and more likely to think feminism is important and worth criticizing, than men are.
But I'm also wondering if the male of the species, stepping back and looking at things from a rational, self-interested, economic perspective, has decided that a carefree life in the bachelor herd is better than fighting a battle he knows he can't win.
[this post has been edited in response to comments below].
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Chris – polyandry – Nepal.
My understanding of that Nepalese marriage practice is that it’s more like men (usually brothers) sharing a wife – not the stuff of female fantasies!
I’d never heard of Henry VIII and sweating sickness – fascinating.
Thanks for digging my comment out. Re. Nepal: I’ve been present when the three wives in a household formally approached their husband and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he needed to go out and find a nice young girl to marry because there was too much work for just the three of them. The situation in Ghana is patriarchal, no question; men are heads of household and control most explicit politics. But in a given household, it’s much more like women sharing a husband than it is like the ‘harems’ we think of attached to that word. As I understood it in the current context it’s an zoological term of art for any unidirectional polysexual behaviour which forms units stable over time, isn’t it? 🙂 Not really the stuff of anyone’s dreams.
It is also worth noting, I think, that one thing which made marital customs among the Mamprusi a little less prone to typical patriarchal issues than most tribes was serial monogamy among women. The children of a given wife are her children, not his; and many (not most, but many) women will have more than one husband during the time they’re bringing up their children. If a woman could pitch the case to the elders that the man she was married to was inadequately providing for her and her children, she could walk with no attached social stigma (quite the reverse) and no legal recourse for the man thereafter. Acted as a useful check & balance in the system and did tend to keep the men working very hard in their fields. Moving five or six kids from one household to another represents a very significant economic asset in a muscle-powered subsistence-agriculture context.
I found Chris Naden’s comments fascinating and informative. One minor point – when I (not Frances) said harem formation was rare, I was referring to hunter-gatherers. There are some (the Tiwi of northern Australia are an interesting example), but the effort of controlling both the young men AND the women seems too much for most in societies that are nomadic and mostly live in smallish groups. You do get what look like harems, but on inspection they resolve into something more like general polyamory (the older men often have more than one wife, but the wives go through several husbands).
Among some Sahara groups, men have to go out on caravans to accumulate enough wealth to marry. They may have to wait till they are about 45 and then they marry 4 women at once, aged 15, 25,35 and 45. Meanwhile, the women stay at base camp and marry four times: at 15, 25,35,45 changing husbands as they die.
Each man is polygamous for a short time, with a couple of trophy wife to have children with and two more mature to take care of the household ( their own sons are already off to the caravans). While each women have one husband serialy ( for the women it is not that different from the modern west among the wealthy class…)
An incident recounted in Robert Lacey’s “The kingdom: inside the house of Saud”
Some sons of Ibn Saud were curious about their father. They gathered the courage to ask their mothers how such a fierce warrior behaved in his private quarters. They laughed and replied: “Here he his softer than a lamb. We do with him as we please!”
In both cases, I quote from memory, original documents being in my archives ( boxes in the basement…)
Yessiree… reeeeal nice Canadian economics blog you usta have there.
PeterT @ 07.07:
Ah, I follow. I parsed it as a reference to sexual patterns among great apes in general, as well as humans 🙂
Jacques Rene @ 07.14:
Nomads are complicated, but the Saharans (I presume here that you are referring to Berbers, Touareg and Moors, by that?) are a case unto themselves for two reasons; firstly, their culture has been routinely built on slavery and raiding wars since time immemorial (which in Tamanrasset feels like forever, tbh, but in practice is about 7.6k years). In that they’re quite similar to the Silk Road raider cultures (Uzbek, Kazakh, etc.); but those tribes only took the practice up once the Silk Road got going properly, and are therefore some 4-5 thousand years less practiced at it. Such cultures evolve multi-tier marital structures in part to reflect the very strange population movements you get from raiding & slaving being your entire GDP.
The pre-Talmudic tribes who conquered Canaan (the Biblical ‘Jews’ prior to the Maccabean hegemony, which drew those tribes together to form what we know as Judaism) were operating the same kind of economy, and you’ll see all kinds of similar situational injunctions and anecdotes coded into their society via Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
Secondly, the House of Saud have nothing at all to do with anything happening in the Sahara and have only been politically or culturally relevant for a very short time, a few hundred years. I doubt they have personally had much to do with any cultural mores. What you quote there is part of a standard storyline from Islamic lore, with the same moral intent as most such stories in the Western canon; to ensure that sons don’t rebel against fathers and that women don’t rebel against anyone. I’ve seen it attached to names ranging from Alexander the Great to the Prophet (may he live forever) to the first Aga Khan, and Sekundar Burnes in Afghanistan as well. Again, similar moral messages can be found in the Torah; the tale of Noah’s drunken nudity is of the same ilk.
Chris : I don’t like to pretend to more culture that I have so I stayed general but it was a Touareg group.
As for the Saudi reference, it was more related to how poligyny may not be all about bloody alpha brutally dominating their female. We all know it’s more complicated. That it is codified in lore show what’s acceptable and accepted. And what’s acceptable is usually what’s most people do, including the leaders.
Humans have rather consistent in what they approve and disapprove. There are difference at the margins on how we define murder, rape or theft. These small differences are what makes sociology ( the study of pale-skinned rich people) and anthropology ( the study of poor dark-skinned one)interesting.
(Economics is about when rich people of whatever color graduate from theft to TBTF.)
One of the author’s core premises is utterly wrong, that men hire women because women are more reliable workers.
I’ve worked my entire career in finance, and even then, in the more macho parts of finance. The cultural pressure to hire more women is a significant driver of why they hire women, except for the ones who are designated sex objects.
There is a lot of research that shows:
1. Men prefer to work in all male groups. Women don’t care about gender mix of their work groups
2. Any sort of work attributed to a man is scored better than when attributed to a woman. All sorts of blind tests confirm this, resumes, writing samples, etc. This means (like it or not) a man will be more successful in a sales or similar position (where people will associate the person with the work product) unless the woman is a TON better than the man.
Yves “One of the author’s core premises is utterly wrong, that men hire women because women are more reliable workers”
Do you take issue with the stylized fact that female employment has been steadily rising while increasing numbers of men are becoming economically and socially marginalized? If so, then this post is not for you.
If you agree that female employment has been rising while men are struggling in the labour market, then one needs to come up with an explanation. One can explain it with feminism/women’s liberation, or one can explain it with changing technology/employer preferences. My view is that the latter is much more plausible than the former.
Jacques:
Re. Touareg: yeah, that makes sense. The ones I knew when traveling in Algeria and Mali would reflect that, at least the more traditional families. Equally, many individual Targi are practically indistinguishable from the social norms of the societies they travel in.
As for the Saudi reference, it was more related to how poligyny may not be all about bloody alpha brutally dominating their female.
Oh, hell yeah, completely agreed. The whole issue is complicated by the fact that very real, systemic, and brutal abuses were carried out against women by a very large number of men over the centuries, but this is balanced against the fact that many other women and men developed healthy and useful, stable relationships within those systems. This is kind of like the US and guns.
Stand your Ground laws are a social signaling device, like religious injunctions of masculine dominance and violence. ALEC designed these laws to tell society that a white guy is perfectly entitled to shoot the shit out of a car full of unarmed black teenagers, because people of colour (and particularly young male POC) are intrinsically a threat. ALEC and the GOP/NRA/South shall Rise Again crowd are signaling that any attempt to shoot young black men is an act of self-defense and therefore permissible, and indeed (if you listen to Limbaugh and Beck) positively encouraged.
Some few assholes choose to exercise that right, and many higher-profile assholes then defend them. But the vast majority of white US gunowners never actually shoot anyone, let alone indulging in the kind of antics that made the name Trayvon Martin famous.
The situation with patriarchy and violence against women is much worse: a much higher percentage of men abused those religious rights than the percentage of gun-owners who abuse ALEC-derived vigilante laws. But in the analogy above, ALEC stands in for the Puritans of Britain in the 17th century, Limbaugh and Beck for the firebrand preachers who toured the country with women in tow who were publicly birched before sermons to demonstrate the proper submissive role of women in society; the men who took these injunctions to heart and became brutal are Michael Dunn, and the vast majority of English Christians who thought the Puritans were fundamentalist terrorists that needed deporting to the colonies post-haste are the responsible gun-owners. I’m sure you can find ways to fit that analogy into the modern US situation with regard to the war on women, too.
Frances:
One can explain it with feminism/women’s liberation, or one can explain it with changing technology/employer preferences. My view is that the latter is much more plausible than the former.
Why pick one? I would argue that both factors are necessary, and neither sufficient, to explain the facts.
Chris – “Why pick one?”
Because I’m having an argument with Nick Rowe about it – but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) he didn’t choose to duke it out with me on-line.
Robin Hanson attempted to summarize the literature on sex ratios & violence:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/01/sex-ratio-violence.html
There wasn’t a clear takeaway.
With the greatest of deference to Yves Smith, I don’t believe that she is entitled to generalize from the field of finance to all fields of employment. I can say from my long experience in the software industry, that there is some truth in Frances’ assertion that women are often preferred for the qualities she enumerates. However, I would qualify that by saying that the situation for the top positions in tech is a lot more complicated–e.g. you need more troublemakers, and the complications that come with childbearing and so forth definitely tilt the game towards the men–witness all of the discussion about Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, and Sheryl Sandberg’s often derided campaign.
Chris is right that the two factors are not mutually exclusive. However, Nick was wise not to fight this one–any victory would be Pyrrhic!
But doesn’t our superior intelligence also give us better social technologies, eg. marriage, to preserve monogamy? What does this mean for your argument? And how does your (a) follow from your zoological analogies?