It’s still a man’s world, but it is becoming a lot less clear how to be one

The price of progress for women has been the dilution of the traditional male role; the death of masculinity itself

Modern economies reward empathy, communication skills and openness; hardly synonymous with the male trope (George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images)

Last week the Higher Education Policy Institute released a report that showed in 2016 94,000 fewer men applied to university than women. Men, as New York Times columnist David Brookes recently noted, are a group whose empire is slipping away. This report is a reminder that we are badly failing our boys, and creating a generation of young men for whom the future is uncertain.

Women have been gaining ground in the academy and the labour market for the past forty years. It’s not just a UK problem, women are outpacing men across the western world. The price of progress has been the dilution of the traditional male role, of masculinity itself.

An outdated notion of masculinity is serving a generation of young men poorly. Modern economies reward empathy, communication skills and openness; hardly synonymous with the male trope. The strong silent type is now all too often the unemployed or imprisoned type.

Letting go of the ‘breadwinner’ mentality, however, is difficult. If being a provider means being a man, what happens when you can’t provide? Or, what if your partner is a better provider than you? Are we introducing boys and young men to the idea that for a great many of them their other halves will be the ‘earners’ in the family? We’re transitioning economically and as result women are becoming more powerful. Conversely, we need men to become more active socially, as fathers, neighbours, as husbands.

Herein lies the tension. We, as men, struggle to let go of the ‘breadwinner’ attitude. It’s clear definition of purpose is satisfying and comforting. Yet, we also know the world is changing and that if we don’t change it will be taken from us, maybe quite brutally. Some of us see this and understand it, others fear it.

Our politics has become a pastiche of the very same tension. Its flashpoints increasingly resembling the spasms of the knackered male psyche. Take the EU debate, (conspicuous in its absence of female leaders I might add) a reaction to the declining expectations of our role in the world. The rise of Corbyn, a grasp for the certainties of a bygone age, when left was left and right was right. When men, were men.

When James Brown first belted out the immortal line “this is a man’s world…” in 1966 he was no doubt correct. Exactly fifty years later he’s still right about the world, but it’s now a lot less clear how to be a man in it.