Man, I feel like a woman!

The gender inequality could hardly be starker:
- they are more educated than we are
- they are better travelled than we are
- they earn more than we do
- they own property, when we don’t
- they are, almost exclusively, following professional careers
- they out-number us
- and they will probably, despite being slightly older, outlive us



They are the women whom my closest male friends and I have befriended, or paired up with. This female dominance may come as a surprise in an age when national and commercial comparative averages still show women are, on average are paid less, under-represented, and generally, worse off than their male counterparts. But these simple aggregates hide the fact that the emerging generation is absolutely dominated by women.

I’m a 25 year old male currently working voluntarily for a non-profit so salary comparisons with my own situation would be misleading. However, my closest male friends are, by almost any comparison, successful: they are university educated and in well paying corporate jobs, and obviously, in some way, able to hold the attention of their superiors, the women.

These ladies are not only better educated (most having a post-graduate professional qualification) they are more experienced (having lived and worked in a wider range of places) and as a result, are better paid. This, you might say has to do with their slight age advantage: almost all of them are older by a couple of years than my male friends. But given that professions out earn the rest of us by an increasing margin over a career, and that none of my male friends are pursuing professional qualifications, indicates that this trend of female domination is likely to continue.

How did we go from being a “traditional” patriarchal society to this über post-post-feminist dystopia in one generation?

Education and gender roles
Women already earn half or more of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorial degrees in the United States. It is estimated that by 2017, three women will graduate for every two men. At first glance this appears to be an unconditional boon for women: with a superior education in an increasingly merit based society, who can stop them? But who will all these women marry? There are far too few male graduates to go around. It’s no wonder my highly qualified, older female friends have to put up with me for company, I’m a scarce resource!

University performance has its roots in earlier education: boys are more likely to drop out of high school than girls, and more likely to be consigned to special education classes. Girls, on average traditionally worse than boys at maths, are now drawing level in numeracy whilst continuing to outperform in literacy. Soon they’ll even be competent to drive (delay your disgust until you’ve read the next story):

Although she’s a tri-lingual, expatriate lawyer, a lady in this female dominated friendship group had to recently admit to one of her few shortcomings. One afternoon at work, back at her desk after hastily running an errand during lunch, she was disturbed by her boss who came running in after her, obviously in some sort of panic. She followed him outside to witness a rather curious scene: three of her (male) colleagues were braced between a wall and her car which had rolled from where she had parked it, seemingly of its own volition. Embarrassed, and in an attempt to re-establish her feminine poise as she unlocked the vehicle to apply the hand-break, she exclaimed, “Ja, don’t worry, zies happens all ze time!”

There are other worrying social disadvantages to being male, least of which are the perils of chivalry just described: we men are more likely to be prescribed mood-managing drugs, to commit crimes, end up in prison, kill ourselves or be murdered.

And our sexual competitive advantage or killer app - that we men, produce sperm – is also not to be taken for granted: our sperm count has taken a dive. At least that isn’t an indicator of comparative performance: women, by and large, still cannot produce their own swimmers.

Career
Quotas that reserve for women a significant share of the seats on a board or in parliament are catching on, even in the most surprising places.

Around 110 countries have rules helping women to get elected, including unexpectedly pro-feminine places such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. Angola had its first election last year with a new quota in place to ensure 30% of candidates were women.

And there’s good reason for this: a recent study by MIT academic Esther Duflo, says that women lawmakers focus more on public goods and take fewer bribes, good for both their male and female constituents. Another study, in India, showed that female politicians promoted public-works projects that mattered particularly to women, such as well-construction.

Anecdotal evidence from my group of friends is that regardless of who is charge or the supply of beverage, the women drink as least as much as the men, if not more.



Health and longevity
And finally, the kicker: women live longer, fact. In comfortable resource rich societies, the difference is five or six extra years, long enough to mean that this group of women who are (slightly) older than me , should all have an opportunity to dance on my grave. Why? Evolutionary biology has two basic explanations: women who lived longer helped to rear their grandchild and promote their genes, whilst men’s genetic interests were best served by them chasing skirt, which we all know, leads to a perilous death sooner or later.

Whichever way I look at it, these women have the upper hand. The emerging matriarchy may still be hidden, statistically, by older generations still dominated by men. But in my generation, the alpha male is a dying breed: undereducated, poorer, but still necessary, for now.

Acknowledgements
- The Economist

- Jef Aerosol (first picture)