Blog Post

AEIdeas

Below are the final two paragraphs of Camile Paglia’s opening statement at the Munk Debate, “Resolved: Men Are Obsolete” held in Toronto in November 2013, and which appeared in Time Magazine in December 2013with the title “It’s a Man’s World, and It Always Will Be” (subtitled: The modern economy is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author):

Men are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments (see table above). It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall. Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!

MP: As can be seen in the table above, BLS data confirm that there is a disproportionate number of men working in higher-risk occupations like coal mining (almost 100% male), commercial fishing (99.9% male), police officers (85.9% male), logging (94.9% male), truck drivers (94.0%), roofers (98.3% male), and construction (97.3% male). For the 20 most dangerous US occupations based on fatality rates per 100,000 workers by industry and occupation in 2016, men represented more than 90% of the workers in 14 of those 20 occupations and more than 85% of the workers in 18 of the 20 most dangerous occupations. Overall, 92.5% of workplace fatalities in 2016 were men (4,492 men vs. 344 women), who experienced a death rate almost ten times higher than women (5.8 male vs. 0.6 female fatal injuries per 100,000 full-time workers).

Related: CD post from April 2018 “‘Equal Pay Day’ this year is April 10 — the next ‘Equal Occupational Fatality Day’ is on May 30, 2029.”