Last year I complained about a periodical incursion–how magazines for men were increasingly being annexed by magazines targeted at a female audience. I was down at Pharmasave today, and snapped this photo of this ongoing trend (click for a bigger version):
I couldn’t get the whole newsstand in, but this is certainly representative. You can find a smattering of men’s interest magazines on the top shelf, but that’s really it. And most are buried in the third or fourth row, the way girlie magazines used to be.
I’m not actually lobbying that men deserve more shelf space. It’s pure economics. Consider this table from the Magazine Publishers of America. Of the top 50 magazines sold in 2007, only three could be considered primarily of interest to men (by my count, two others might qualify as appealing equally to both genders). The top male interest magazine, Men’s Health, is in the 17th spot, with a single copy circulation of 544,054. Cosompolitan, the top magazine, has a circulation of 1,882,061.
Men just aren’t buying magazines. Or, more accurately, women are buying a lot more magazines than men.
Victorians love their lawns and gardens. I mean, there’s even an annual flower count. Are all the local retirees so footloose and fancy-free that they’re resigned to counting the begonias in their front yard? I note that the count has come down in recent years, to a mere 2.4 billion.
As a result of this passion for all things flora, my neighbourhood seems overrun by landscapers. Not a day goes by that I pass at least one stenciled van or pickup truck (’Lawneratti’, ‘Aboreal Morals’…ah, I’m making those up) parked outside a house, with somebody wailing away with a weed whacker in the front yard.
In my youth, it seems to me that all gardeners, lawn mowers and landscapers were men. It was a common summer job among my male peers in high school and university. These days, however, it seems like at least half of these employees are women. That’s a significant shift. Has anybody else observed this trend?
On a vaguely related note, a friend and I were talking over the weekend about how much less dog poo one sees when out and about. Hearkening again back to my childhood, I remember how the boulevard in front of my friend’s house was off limits because it was notoriously rife with doggy landmines. I guess the social pressure on dog owners has increased over the past two decades?
New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott narrates a nice five-minute video exploring the excellence and universal appeal of Pixar’s films. His thesis, in summary, is that they often feature an identity crisis–the hero feels he doesn’t belong. Humans of all stripes respond to such notions. Plus, of course, they’re usually exceptionally executed.
On a related note, I was recently listening in to a conversation among five 30-something, university-educated women. They were talking about movies. Despite being aware of the glowingreviews for Pixar’s Wall-E, they were unanimous in their lack of interest in seeing the movie.
I don’t want to inspire a lot of female commenters to contradict me, but I have a sense that women are generally less interested in animated films than men. This seems entirely understandable, given that most of the animated work they’ve seen has been a) made primarily for boys, featuring male protagonists and b) bad. Still, I think it’s unfortunate, because some of the most remarkable and effective movies of the last decade have been animated. I’m thinking here of Persepolis, Ratatouille and The Incredibles. The former of these movies obviously bucks this trend, but it didn’t necessarily have the broad appeal of the Pixar movies.
Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women - highly qualified for the work - stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.
I’ve always felt that a goal of 50-50 splits in all workplaces seemed a little artificial. Men and women are different, and so each profession probably has a natural ratio of men to women. Some are going to be 75-25 in favour of women, and others are going to be 60-40 in favour of men.
Of course, we need to design a working world where women don’t face discrimination or inequity, regardless of what job they want. That’s tricky, and it’ll only get trickier if we start making assumptions about what women want.
There was another interesting point in the article, discussing how men and women tend to differ in achievement:
Women who are mathematically gifted are more likely than men to have strong verbal abilities as well; men who excel in math, by contrast, don’t do nearly as well in verbal skills. As a result, the career choices for math-precocious women are wider than for their male counterparts.
This is pretty anecdotal, but that was definitely true for my high school class. The smart boys were good at Math and the sciences, but usually not top of the class in English or Literature. The top-performing girls, conversely, seemed to be good at everything.
Please answer the following question concerning your GP or ‘family doctor’:
I’ll be needing a new doctor in Victoria sooner or later, and paused to consider whether I’d, uh, consider a female doctor. I’ve always been to male doctors, but that’s kind of been by default. I’m curious to see how common the practice is. Gillian’s post in which she sees her male doctor reminded me about this.
RSS subscribers, this blog post contains a poll. Please consider visiting my site to participate. Or just carry on. Whichever.
Julie and I were remarking on this fact the other day while shopping in Gozo’s only mall. I’m not talking about sportswear here–just standard, average clothes for day to day ‘business casual’ or weekend wear. I’m also not referring to people who voluntarily wear big brands across their chest. This is more insidious.
The branding tends to be small but present on men’s clothes. It’s a visible tag along a shirt’s side seam, or a stitched logo on a the sleeve or pocket of a dress shirt. Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about. The branding is often in a similar colour to the garment itself. It doesn’t stand out, but it’s certainly there.
A few years ago I bought a grey hoodie from FCUK with a grey logo high on the shoulder–I didn’t notice it until I brought it home. Being averse to visible brands, I was displeased.
This occurs much less frequently with women’s clothing. Why?
Here’s a mini link round-up concerning gender-related stories:
Via the new Digg + wiki site Thoof (how’s that pronounced? ‘thuf?’), I discovered the blog (and associated site) Expecting Executive. The company provides services for the pregnant businesswoman. That’s a clever and growing niche. There’s an idiosyncrasy in their blog URL–it’s http://blogspot.expectingexecutive.com/. You might need to look twice at that URL to spot the weirdness.
A bunch of illuminating statistics about about sundry cultural and educational divides between boys and girls. The numbers on suicide and correctional facilities are particularly surprising.
My friend Eric is training (hard) to become a firefighter. He’s written a thoughtful post about Richmond’s peculiar affirmative action in the firefighting department:
Unfortunately, in their attempt to correct past issues, the local City of Richmond has been a blatant example of sexist/racist discrimination. They recently announced that they would only hire white males for their fire department if they could not fill all of their vacancies with women or minorities. At they most recent firefighting test that I was at, I did not see one candidate that wasn’t a white male. Not one. Of the six hundred or so candidates that routinely apply to local departments, I would venture to guess that there are less than 50 that aren’t white males. In response to this, Richmond stated that they would be willing to pay for the training of non-white male candidates if need be.
This seems pretty absurd (and potentially unsafe) to me. You’re not going to manufacture demand where none exists. You’ve got to do it through education, teaching girls and new Canadians that they can, if they want, become firefighters. Of course then there’s the vexing problem of the difficulty of the standardized tests for women, but that’s a different issue.
Here’s an article discussing Richmond’s announcement, which indicates that “there are only two women and fewer than 10 visible minorities among the 206 firefighters in the Vancouver suburban community.”
Of course, some of this is politics, in response to allegations of sexual harassment by former female firefighters. Eric finishes well:
Fire doesn’t care if you are black or white or how many testicles you have. When something goes wrong at a fire, being strong and fit, intelligent and skilled are all that matter. Its somehow a little bit ironic that my first personal exposure to institutionalized racism comes from the city of Richmond.
