Nevertheless, the transformation in men’s attitudes toward gender relationships has arguably been every bit as revolutionary as that of women, although it began later. Rosin and I agree that stereotypes about what men can and should do have changed much less than those about what women can and should do, and many men remain hamstrung by a powerful masculine mystique that is in part enforced by the structure of the workplace and partly internally imposed. Although men bore 80 percent of the job losses during the first stages of the recession, since then women have lost a higher proportion of jobs than men, and have recovered a lower proportion of those lost jobs. It remains to be seen how nimbly women will respond as the ripple effects of recession-induced cutbacks further shrink the government sector, another traditional area of female employment. It may be that women’s gender inertia simply has happened to be an advantage in a period when these jobs are expanding, while men’s gender inertia has left them more vulnerable to deindustrialization and the deskilling of traditional male jobs. Women, like men, continue to select gender-stereotypical occupations and college majors such as health care and services.
And I am not convinced that women have been that much more nimble and flexible than men in adjusting to new conditions. But labels such as Rosin’s “Cardboard Man” and “Plastic Woman” do not do justice to the nuance and compassion found elsewhere in her book.
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