The question is this: Why would men continue to be dominant in a post-industrial economy? What economic worth do they have? In the past, they were required to lift big iron girders and drill ore and do lots of macho stuff that required superior physical strength. Patriarchy also took the form of the state militarist order, with national armies of men needed to defend the nation state. Throughout much of Europe, military conscription was compulsory. This marked an initiation into adulthood and the world of work, in which the man stayed for the rest of his life. For women, it was marriage. Now, in a globalised world, state armies are not required. In their place either small, all but privatised militias, or technological/cyber warfare. Neither is the family required. Women are more profitable out of the home, and a new job market in childcare fills the gap.
So the patriarchal militarist/industrial order is over. Where does this leave men?
As the article makes clear, what are (rightly or wrongly) understood to be female attributes (and often feminist values) are more highly valued by postmodern capitalism: communicability, fluidity, emotional intelligence - all very much in line with the tenets of open market economics and the 'sharing economy'.
I don't know if you've noticed this recent spate of films like the '40 Year Old Virgin' and all those Judd Apatow movies that typically feature guys trapped in a kind of perpetual adolescence? These men are not dominant figures, but total clowns. They sit around smoking weed, playing video games, making crude jokes, messing about and are total losers who work at Walmart or somewhere; and then some woman usually comes along, takes them in hand and sorts them out. Typically, she's everything they're not: sensible, industrious, with a good career etc.
Well I think those films are quite telling. It reminds me of a book by the philosopher Alain Badiou who writes about the different ways in which late capitalism impacts on the sexes. He says that once women were subjugated with dualistic hegemons into divided entities.They were either mothers or whores etc etc While the man represented what Badiou calls 'the One' - the hierarchical, symbolic order surmounted by the ultimate oneness of God. Women were kept hidden, Badiou contends, because they (and I love this observation) were proof that God does not exist and the hierarchical order was counterfeit. Why do you need a transcendent creator when you have a terrestrial one?
One of Badiou's sons got mixed up in some minor trouble, and it resulted with him surrounded by all these administrators, social workers and therapists who were predominantly women, kind of taking him in hand maternally, but also coming across as very hard and officious. Badiou argues that this new female administrator could be a new 'One'. In other words, rather than gender equality, what could transpire is a new bourgeois female domination, with a world of predominantly female managers and administrators and legions of hopeless, economically obsolete men. Thus, late capitalism is more congenial to women than men in some ways. Men are perpetual adolescents, while from a young age girls are precociously driven to achieve.
He entreats women to resist this form of corrupted empowerment in favour of a truly transformative feminism (which I have to say is very poorly defined).
Anyway, I see this happening. I've worked in education a bit and the difference between the sexes in terms of achievement and drive is striking. At my local cafe frequented by students, I see endless girls who all look like Saffron from Absolutely Fabulous, all hammering away on Apple Macs, a pile of books by their side, with total, uninterrupted focus. By the time they’re 24 they’ve got doctorates in environmental science or something.