| Societal pressure and expectations cut both ways, and I think are starting to harm young men more than young women, and is somewhat explanatory of recent machismo populist political turn in youth voting. The stats are saying - women enroll and graduate college at higher rates than men, graduate with lower unemployment, and society has spent the last ~60 years correcting a lot of the wrongs that harmed women's choices & freedoms (notwithstanding some recent SCOTUS decisions). A young woman in 2025 has been brought up in a society that tells them they can do anything, be anything, want anything, etc. For young men, I firmly believe society expectations haven't really changed at all actually. They are still expected to be providers, and to make educational/career choices & sacrifices to facilitate that. Very few men are stay at home parents, or make less than their wives. Those that do are not accepted by society the same way as when the roles are reversed. As expectations haven't changed but women have gained economically in relation to men, this sets up a very potent mix of resentment and mismatched singles (high end loser women & low end loser men). A pattern amongst my richer/older friends I've noticed is that their sons are encouraged to go get STEM degrees to support themselves, while their daughters are encouraged to follow their passions, go work at an NGO, oh and here's a condo in Manhattan we bought for you. I sat on the board of a condo in yuppie Brooklyn a few years, and despite the stereotypes, the majority of trust fund buyers were women now. |
That’s because male-coded fields are still seen and treated as more prestigious. Men aren’t encouraged to go into different fields because that would mean encouraging them to go into historically female-coded fields.
Women being told they can do anything and be anything (which overall is good) is a push to get them into previously male-coded occupations, and not a change in how we look down on women-coded work.
Men who are being failed by culture are being failed because as you say they are being pushed further to the machismo extreme.