October 23, 2009Women set a new leadership style. Men are disoriented by it.

Filed under: This Week in the World by merylrunion |

I’ve been thinking a lot about gender communication. I’ll be speaking about it in a teleseminar on Monday. You are welcome to join in.

I read a fascinating article by First Governor Dan Mulhern about how it’s a tough time for men. Here’s a snippet.

Men have been equipped to work, to lift and toil, to exert, to direct and manage, and if necessary even to fight. We are programmed, deep in our minds and cells, to protect and to provide. And now many men are adrift in a massive sea change. Women already outnumber men in supervisory positions. Soon they will outnumber men in the workforce altogether. And “women’s characteristics” are increasingly valued in the workplace: cooperation, collaboration, relationship, listening, tolerance, diversity are surpassing assertion, competition, and command – let alone aggression. These changes challenge men in the white collar world.

The blue collar world is even more treacherous for men. Automation and low wage global competition continue to suck men’s jobs from Michigan and America. And so men wonder: How do I provide? How do I protect? Where is my place? How do I adapt to a world, where I can’t find a “real job” and where (hopefully) my wife is able to step in and lead?

When I first became aware of the woman’s movement, I concluded women were fighting for the right to be like men in the world. In some ways, the trend discredited characteristically feminine traits as named above. While I’ve been delighted to be able to compete in the world, it is a world that favors patriarchal values, and that takes its toll on the feminine side of men and women.

But the tables are turning as they do when diversity happens. We’re all learning how to live the new rules.

For more, join us on the Genderly Speaking teleseminar. And read The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything