The End of Men: And the Rise of Women [Hardcover]

Hanna Rosin (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 11, 2012

A landmark portrait of women, men, and power in a transformed world.

Men have been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. But Hanna Rosin was the first to notice that this long-held truth is, astonishingly, no longer true. At this unprecedented moment, by almost every measure, women are no longer gaining on men: They have pulled decisively ahead. And “the end of men”—the title of Rosin’s Atlantic cover story on the subject—has entered the lexicon as dramatically as Betty Friedan’s “feminine mystique,” Simone de Beauvoir’s “second sex,” Susan Faludi’s “backlash,” and Naomi Wolf’s “beauty myth” once did. 

In this landmark book, Rosin reveals how this new state of affairs is radically shifting the power dynamics between men and women at every level of society, with profound implications for marriage, sex, children, work, and more. With wide-ranging curiosity and insight unhampered by assumptions or ideology, Rosin shows how the radically different ways men and women today earn, learn, spend, couple up—even kill—has turned the big picture upside down. And in The End of Men she helps us see how, regardless of gender, we can adapt to the new reality and channel it for a better future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2012

"Rosin is a gifted storyteller with a talent for ferreting out volumes of illustrative data, and she paints a compelling picture of the ways women are ascendant." –Time

"A fascinating new book." –David Brooks, The New York Times

"Pinpoints the precise trajectory and velocity of the culture... Rosin’s book, anchored by data and aromatized by anecdotes, concludes that women are gaining the upper hand." –The Washington Post

"A persuasive, research-grounded argument... The most interesting sections in The End of Men show that in the portions of the country where, through culture and money, something like equality between the sexes is being achieved, the differences between them collapse." –Esquire

"Heralds the ways current economic and societal power shifts are bringing 'the age of testosterone' to a close and the consequences." –Vanity Fair

"Refreshing... Rosin's book may be the most insightful and readable cultural analysis of the year, bringing together findings from different fields to show that economic shifts and cultural pressures mean that in many ways, men are being left behind... The End of Men is buttressed by numbers, but it's a fascinating read because it transcends them... Rosin's genius was to connect these dots in ways no one else has for an unexpected portrait of our moment. The End of Men is not really about a crisis for men; it's a crisis of American opportunity." –The Los Angeles Times

"Especially timely... Rosin has her finger squarely on the pulse of contemporary culture... fresh and compelling." –USA Today

"[Rosin's] thorough research and engaging writing style form a solid foundation for a thoughtful dialogue that has only just begun... It's not the final word on gender roles in the 21st century, but it's a notable starting point for a fascinating conversation." –The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Ambitious and surprising... [The End of Men is] solidly researched and should interest readers who care about feminist history and how gender issues play out in the culture... A nuanced, sensitively reported account of how cultural and economic forces are challenging traditional gender norms and behavior." –The Boston Globe

"Backed by workforce stats, [Rosin's] stories forge a convincing case that modern female aptitudes give women the advantage." –Mother Jones

"Makes us see the larger picture... this provocative book is not so much about the end of men but the end of male supremacy... The great strength of Ms. Rosin's argument is that she shows how these changes in sex, love, ambition and work have little or nothing to do with hard-wired brain differences or supposed evolutionary destiny. They occur as a result of economic patterns, the unavailability of marriageable men, and a global transformation in the nature of work." –The Wall Street Journal

"In this bold and inspired dispatch, Rosin upends the common platitudes of contemporary sexual politics with a deeply reported meditation from the unexpected frontiers of our rapidly changing culture." –Katie Roiphe, author of The Morning After and Uncommon Arrangements

"The End of Men describes a new paradigm that can, finally, take us beyond ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in an endless ‘gender war.’ What a relief! Ultimately, Rosin's vision is both hope-filled and creative, allowing both sexes to become far more authentic: as workers, partners, parents... and people.” –Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter and Schoolgirls

PRAISE FOR HANNA ROSIN'S GOD HARVARD

"God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America, is a rare accomplishment for many reasons - perhaps most of all because Rosin is a journalist who not only reports but also observes deeply." –San Francisco Chronicle 

"A superb work of extended reportage." –Chicago Sun-Times 

"Nuanced and highly readable." –The Washington Post 

“[Rosin] covers an impressive amount of ground about women… A great starting point for readers interested in exploring the intersecting issues of gender, family and employment.” –Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Hanna Rosin is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a founder of DoubleX, Slate’s women’s section. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, The New Republic, and The Washington Post, and is the recipient of a 2010 National Magazine Award. Rosin lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and three children.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; 1 edition (September 11, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594488045
• ISBN-13: 978-1594488047
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (118 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies > Feminist Theory

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

124 of 136 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating points often overwhelmed by sample bias September 9, 2012

By D. Parvin VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Hanna Rosin's "The End of Men" is an interesting but not fully satisfying look at the economic progress of women, the relative economic decline of men, and the societal effects of both. While the book treats the first two subjects quite thoughtfully, Rosin doesn't do as well when she explores the broader implications of this shift. A troubling and repeated tendency towards sample bias weakens many of her arguments, and even the author admits that her initial thesis probably isn't correct. Still, it's an interesting read, but not nearly the landmark work that has been suggested in some quarters. 3 stars.

Despite the claims of the well-oiled marketing push behind the book, many of the topics here aren't novel. Goldberg's The Hazards of Being Male was among the first to notice a relative decline for men back in the 1970s, Faludi's Stiffed was referenced by Rosin as motivation for her Atlantic article of the same title (although oddly, that controversial reference nearly disappears in the book), and Save the Males and Manning Up have been more recent, albeit openly polemic, entries. On the economic rise of women, the far-less hyped The Richer Sex is a recent general release covering much the same territory, and there is a wealth of academic material on many of the subjects....

The originality of "The End of Men" is in how it combines the overt economic and social gains made by women with the contrast of the relative economic decline of men. Summarizing much of her book in a sentence, women are at parity in many professions, have moved ahead in education, and the younger generation of men are falling further and further behind. Rosin's work on this is insightful, and had she stayed on this topic this would have been a much shorter, 5 star review.

Unfortunately, the author goes off track during her projection of societal changes caused by this economic shift. Many of her guesses appear reasonable, but in the course of trying to make her points the author repeatedly cherry picks data. The result is a far weaker book.

One instance where this makes a chapter miss badly is on how economic parity has affected mate selection and sexual choices. Much as Stepp does in Unhooked and Bogle does in Hooking Up, Rosin notes that many young women play the hookup culture just as viciously as their male counterparts. Building off Baumeister and Vohs' theory of "sexual economics", Rosin then adds a reasonable and interesting twist to the debate: perhaps women's new found academic and economic equality may have a role in their sexual behavior.

However, as she attempts to advance "may have" to "does", Rosin loses the objective reader as she ignores arguments that might not fit her point. For instance, there is nary a mention of what both epidemiologists and economists believe is a major factor in the rise of casual sex: the perception of lower consequences for acquiring STIs versus a generation ago. A pithy but accurate cultural snapshot of this view are Nirvana's "I'm so horny, but that's ok, my will is good" versus Girls' "All adventurous women (have a couple different strains of HPV)".

In a strange turn, although Rosin has hired controversial sociologist Mark Regnerus to write several Slate articles on the subject, she doesn't address one of his main conclusions in what is the most robust work on the sex lives of young Americans, Premarital Sex in America. To Regnerus, the data suggest that the "hookup culture" is less prevalent in overall society and more a function of limited time and potential mates at elite schools rather than a massive societal change. As it turns out, the most egregious practitioners of this culture are neither elite nor particularly concerned with education and economic equality. Instead, they're young Americans who aren't college educated, and he pointedly warns about Stepp's results being biased by her selection of elite university students.

Despite this, Rosin is undeterred and proceeds directly to Yale for interviews. Her focus group for the dating behavior of "hard hearted" professional women becomes Wall Street traders, a curious choice as even their colleagues in finance consider that group as rather spectacular (to put it mildly) outliers of social behavior regardless of their gender. The dating behavior of men is largely ignored save for their desire for sex. As such, they are summarily divided into "player" and "loser" classes, which allows Rosin to conclude that the "free agents" of the player class are uninterested in relationships. To the author, the combination of their interests combined with women "dominating campuses" clearly result in the "Girls Gone Wild culture". This disappoints on both the practical level - an exploration of her later observation that women have continued to use traditional criteria like income and career prospects for selecting their partners and have firmly resisted "marrying down" would have been far more relevant to the overall picture she's painting - and is disturbingly poor scholarship.

As she continues exploring the new cultural landscape, the problematic trend of selection bias continues and becomes especially troubling during her discussion of dysfunctional men and their even more dysfunctional relationships in Alexander City, a former mill town that has seen better days. Troy spends his days sitting around in a trailer with a child while his stripper girlfriend Shannon pays the bills and complains she has "two babies at home", Charles files his unemployment claim with two of his former subordinates while his executive wife complains about his "brooding" and tells him to "get over it", and in a broad swath of stereotyping seemingly all Japanese men are more enamored with virtual girls than real ones.

It's easy to believe that social structures in places like Alexander City have been upended in the debris trail of economic displacement, and that it's entirely possible more women than men have adapted to the new reality of what jobs are actually available locally (as the author notably doesn't explore the lives of the ex-Russell employees nicknamed "transients" who commute to jobs elsewhere.) However, Rosin's repeated selection of interview subjects that seem to be bottom-of-the-barrel brings up the suspicion that perhaps one reason they were chosen was because a more representative sample wouldn't have produced quite the results she wants.

One of the most egregious examples of this arises in her chapter on the "balanced" see-saw marriage of the educated class. Steven, the male half of the example, is still trying to figure out how to complete law school in his late 30s and is a stay-at-home-dad - and his interpretation of the latter role seems to include letting his child smear feces on the wall until his wife comes home to clean it up. There are tens of millions of alternating dual-career couples who have been a lot more successful in balancing things out, millions of stay at home dads who raise children more conventionally, and a decent amount of academic work on how they do so; surely one or two of them could have been found to be brought into her narrative. Rosin's choices repeatedly smack of selection bias for even those otherwise sympathetic to her overall point, and it's a real disappointment.

This is probably linked with the book's final problem. As Rosin admits in the introduction, she began her work with the belief that "womanly" traits were becoming more important in this new era than "manly" ones, but found this answer wasn't supported by what she'd researched. Despite this, the author clearly struggles with the temptation to try to push her original thesis. Many problems arise as a result; the weak chapter on the rise of female violence and the odd claim that changes in a factory she visits are from the adoption of non-patriarchal values rather than 30 years of refining industrial management are but two of several examples where the book gets sidetracked. Rosin is certainly within her rights to choose how to raise her children as she sees fit - she concludes the real problem here is that males aren't "flexible" enough and that she should be raising her sons with the "womanly" trait of "bending" - but as a writer she would have been far better off if she'd employed a little flexibility of her own in giving more leeway to an editor to clean this up.

All this is a shame, because even some of Rosin's more controversial points are worth considering. 3 stars. Worth a read, but not nearly worth the hype. Read more ›

220 of 248 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars The End of Journalism September 21, 2012

By Tyro

Format:Hardcover

The theme of male obsolescence is tiresome, to say the least. It also has a curious quality of seeming fresh no matter how many times, and in how many ways, it is repeated. I remember back in 1999 seeing a "forum" in Harpers called "Who Needs Men?" At the time I thought, Wow - they're still recycling that same article? Almost 15 years later, the same idea is repeated with each month's salvo of junk-nonfiction - and no sign of slowing down.

Some reviewers will no doubt complain that you can't talk this way about women. They're right, but no one cares about the double standard. Similarly, a few will be offended by her snide tone on the subject of men. What, were they born yesterday - it's just the normal tone everyone takes. It's not "misandry" that makes this book bad. It's not the perky, informal writing style. I wasn't expecting her to write like Orwell or Roth. It's bad because the writer doesn't know much about this or any other subject.

To be fair, or fairer, I did learn two things from this book. Firstly, readers love to hear their group praised and never tire of such praise. Secondly, when women are perceived to be failing, people blame it on environmental factors or prejudice. When men come up short, it is blamed on men's inherent shortcomings. Why are there so few female chess grandmasters? Well, little girls aren't encouraged to play chess. Why are there so few men in PR? Well, women have better communication skills. See? It makes perfect sense.

But I can't say the same about this book. Rosin bases most of her theory on the recession. It is a "man-cession" due to men's inherent inability to adapt. (By the way, the story of the human race is one of adaptation, is it not? Economic and otherwise. Men played a small but significant role in this history....) "Cognitive research" shows this (cognitive research about sex differences shows some of the darndest things - see reviews of Louann Brizendine and other junk-science-on-gender authors: also Leonard Sax). But never mind that.

1. "Women in poor parts of India are learning English faster than men." Good God, no. As an Indian I know that knowledge of English is a matter of formal education, pure and simple. But India, according to the government census, has one of the lowest rates of female literacy in the developing world. While the gender gap is decreasing, according the US Department of Commerce, "there continues to be a large gap" in literacy rates favoring men. This is worst among the poor: "in poorer states, the rate of literacy gap has been growing." (You can easily find this on the US census site.)

2. "In the past, men derived their advantage largely from their size and strength..." Seriously? This weary cliche sounds convincing to people who've never thought about the subject. Newton, Mozart, Fischer, and Einstein were not big, strong men.

3. "Women own more than 40 percent of private businesses in China.." I don't know if Rosin reads Foreign Affairs (seems doubtful), but she should know this is ridiculous. Who cares when you don't cite your sources? The sky's the limit! Anyway, China has a woman shortage, so such economic strides on the part of women would be quite remarkable were they true. As it is, Chinese women are doing better than average, with ownership of 8.7% of private businesses. You can find this statistic almost anywhere (try BBC sites or, really, anywhere).

4. The ever-flexible Ms. Rosin, who must do Pilates at Lucille Roberts, makes much of the journalist's favorite statistic: "young women in urban areas - 22-30 year olds - are doing better than young men." Let's do what journalists (used to) do, and look closer. According to US Department of Labor statistics, women's median full-time earnings as a percentage of men's in the first quarter of 2012 for the ages of 20-24 are 88%; for the next age group, 25-34, 91%. Pretty good, right? This means younger women earn about 88% of men's median earnings (MEDIAN earnings: this doesn't mean they're paid less for the same job.)

5. This is where the admirably adaptable Rosin misstates one of the most common factoids around. It's not "young women" who are doing better than their male counterparts - it's "full-time, non-working, childfree women in urban areas." This shouldn't be generalized to "young women," as Rosin does. She extols the virtues of young women like an apparatchik writing a HUD-funded "Girl Power" pamphlet. So, what of these young marvels, so well-adapted to "hook up culture" (with which the anecdote-happy Rosin seems weirdly obsessed)? Most of the difference between the never-married, urban denizens is among Hispanics. 23.7% of this group (urban, unmarried, etc.) are Hispanic men; 15.9% are Latinas, wise or otherwise. And within this group, the median earnings for men (2010 ACS statistics) are $24,000; for women, $25,000. The net advantage among young unmarried female city folk is $1,000, accounted for by the higher incomes of Hispanic women. (Among blacks, men have a slight advantage; among non-Hispanic whites, the sexes are more or less equal.) We should be talking about why Latins earn so little, male or female, but that doesn't sell books or provide fodder for David Brooks editorials.

6. Liza Mundy, Rosin's partner in puerility, makes much of the "women wear the pants" idea so common in our times. But in US marriages only 28% of women earn more than their husbands (US Census). For working women, it's more like 38%. This is misleading, though, because male-centered industries (like construction) are often seasonal (more profitable at certain times of year), and are more subject to ups and downs than female-centered industries like education or health care.

7. These female-centered industries are often subsidized by the government. I come from Washington DC, and I can tell you there is no "he-cession" or "she-cession" there. Why? Because they're papering the walls of the Kennedy Center with all that currency they keep printing or borrowing from the Chinese Politburo. The stimulus may have been a rip-roaring success that prevented a depression, as the president says, but it didn't do much for old school manufacturing jobs. Despite what you've heard, these industries (you know, the ones that make cement or ball bearings) are still a big part of the US economy. Originally Mr. Obama was going to toss a lot of money their way, but lobby groups (such as NOW) complained, calling it a "burly man" bailout. (You can find this in Christina Sommers' essay "No Country for Burly Men.") So - here's my point - much of female economic success is subsidized by tax dollars. Health care can't fail, not because it's too big, but because, like a skinny kid with a smart mouth, it's got a big friend for protection.

8. The language used by NOW - "a burly man bailout" - shows the kind of attitude that gets Hanna rosining up her bow and playing a scratchy tune. Her book drips with this kind of sitcom contempt for men, without even sparing her own son. Maybe she would have rather had another daughter; she gleefully recounts an anecdote of a doctor specializing in sex selection who believes that couples are requesting girls these days. "In the '90s, when Ericsson looked into the numbers for the two dozen or so clinics that use his process, he discovered, to his surprise, that couples were requesting more girls than boys, a gap that has persisted, even though Ericsson advertises the method as more effective for producing boys." The doctor Rosin apparently interviewed hardly invented prenatal sex selection: it's been available for ages. And researchers (remember them?) see evidence that in the United States, as everywhere else, couples are picking boys. A study at the University of CT Health Center looked at the ratio of live births in the U.S. and found evidence that couples were selecting for boys (Prenat Diagn. 2011 Jun;31(6):560-5. doi: 10.1002/pd.2747. Epub 2011 Mar 27). A second study at the Department of Economics, Columbia University looked at the census and found "son-biased sex ratios" (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Apr 15;105(15):5681-2. Epub 2008 Mar 31). This is not to mention the strong bias for sons in China and India which threatens to create a worldwide male majority. AIDS, which disproportionately affects women in Sub-Saharan Africa, may contribute to this male future.

Since virtually every country in the world with birth rates above replacement levels is Muslim, one might look at the evidence and worry about the end of women. "Hooking up" is punishable by death in some countries.

But who cares about evidence when you can interview a small, all-female sample, throw around some anecdotes and get more hype than, well, a real journalist? Credulous Amazon buyers will praise this because it's familiar and makes them feel good. It keeps them vaguely amused and pleased until next month's book about male obsolescence (or maybe a musical?).

And why? Because readers like to hear their group praised. Read more ›

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A Believable Premise, an Overhyped Book September 17, 2012

By Nancy Finn

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The End of Men boils down to a handful of really significant statistics. Young women hold a 3 to 2 advantage in bachelor's degrees, are outearning men in their twenties, and are beginning to crowd men out of nearly all the major professions. Exactly what this might portend is appropriate to an Atlantic magazine article, which served as the basis for this book, but does not suffice in Rosin's hands to make a thoroughly engaging book. Instead, she creates a dichotomous narrative structure emphasizing Plastic Woman, who is flexible and adaptable to the new economy, and Cardboard Man who manifestly is neither. The examples and interview subjects that she selects never stray outside this arc. The men are universally either sniveling Greenberg-like characters, when not represented as merely stupid and lazy, while the women are described in the most gushing diction as literally, "Katniss-like." The book is riven with pop culture and literary references apparently meant to support the thesis, but Rosin makes only the most half-hearted attempt to get behind what accounts for this role reversal. She simply appears to believe women are by nature innately suited to the service economy, while troglodytic men are not. Furthermore, despite taking a few jabs at class inequality, she positively swoons over the rich and powerful. Her portrayal of most working class people, male and female, smacks of smug condescencion.

Her forecasting models for what this dangerous economic imbalance might entail do not seem in any way systematic. Rather, they are derived from anecdotes, which of course she selects. She claims to be apoltical, merely a faithful chronicler of the "the world as it is," producing a work to transcend the gender wars, a conceit into which many reviewers seem have invested.... In its language choice, illustrative examples, and chosen quotations, however, it is a work of considerable misandry. The End of Men looks forward not just to an age in which male supremacy will end; it glories in their approaching humiliation as incompetent, unbending males founder in the new economy while infinitely adaptable women flourish. She never sees fit to examine why boys might be failing, except when, in a remarkably distasteful vignette, she holds up her own son's shortcomings relative to her daughter; she never tires, however, of explaining how women's supposed inherent qualities are bolstering their success. She may well have accurately identified an important social trend, but rather than produce thoughtful social analysis, she has contented herself with a venomous jibe. Read more ›