AAUW Dialog

In March 2009, Steve Saltarelli published a satirical article in the University of Chicago’s student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, entitled “Men in Power: true equality means groups that advocate for men as well as women.” Strangely, students at the elite school where fun goes to die were evidently unable to discern the obvious satire in the article, which includes such ridiculous suggestions and observations as

Firstly, we will be hosting weekly study breaks/screenings of movement-oriented films, including: A Few Good Men, 12 Angry Men, Men of Honor (and many other Cuba Gooding Jr. masterpieces), All the President’s Men, and — of course — X-Men.

Additional upcoming events will include an open-mic night on issues concerning body image, a tutorial on barbecuing, and our much-anticipated workshop “Protecting What’s Yours: Drafting a Prenuptial Agreement.”

Instead of receiving the message that Saltarelli intended — that it would be foolish and humorously misguided to start a student group to enhance status of those who are already afforded a disproportionate amount of power and privilege — students flooded Saltarelli’s inbox after the article’s publication with notes asking how to get involved in the fictional group.

Later in the spring semester, the alpha chapter of Men in Power was founded with the dubious mission of helping men access the resources to get initiated into the professional workforce. Equally as confounding is the fact that Saltarelli is now the organization’s president.

Supporters of the group point out that organizations like Men in Power are necessary because the recent economic downturn hits male dominated fields—like construction and manufacturing — the hardest, while female-dominated fields such as nursing and education have job stability. Never mind that men currently occupy an overwhelming percentage of upper-level jobs in America’s top 500 companies (around 85 percent),that men make up 97 percent of CEOs in the most recently published Fortune 500 list, and that working women earn 20 percent less than working men (a cruel reality that President Obama hopes to address).

These supporters miss the point that this group does little to help men maintain job security in unstable fields because it myopically focuses on the “professional” workforce. More importantly, the relative security that comes with female-dominated jobs has tradeoffs, such as limited growth potential and a painfully evident ceiling.

Supporters similarly argue that groups like this are increasingly needed because, since 1981, women are earning 135 undergraduate degrees for every 100 degrees men earn, with a ratio of 1.5-to-1 at the master’s degree level. Yet, as the most recent AAUW research report notes, women’s gains in educational achievement have not come at the expense of men’s achievements, and education is not a zero-sum game. Indeed, as the report points out, the problem is that both women and men in low-income households are falling behind; and their working-class parents are most affected by the economic downturn.

My main problem with such a group is that it squanders the opportunity to create a men’s group that could address real issues that systemically affect men — like the tendency for violent crime against men to be committed by other men or the alarming instances of fatherlessness in America.

Unfortunately, with a leader unwilling to explain his own satire or abide by his own criticism and with a student body eager to join him, it appears unlikely that such a group will come to be.

Written by Tom Rosen, 2009 AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund/Leadership and Training Institute summer fellow.