It is not easy to be a man when replaced by a robot: A. Kluth | ECONOMY

Por Andreas Kluth

It is not easy being a woman. But many times neither is being a man. The world is changing faster than ever and, with it, so are notions of masculinity. Many men feel helpless, for better or for worse.

If you are James Bond, you will take this change in stride and effortlessly pass through a few incarnations in between, from the Sean Connery version of masculinity to the more vulnerable and complex variety of Daniel Craig. But how many men in real life have an internal 007 to channel?

The reality for many of those who are not necessarily alpha males is bleaker. In the United States, for example, a record number of deaths from drug overdoses has just been recorded: more than 100,000 in one year and approximately double that in 2015. And about 70% of those who died were men.

In China, the government is concerned about a “masculinity crisis“As the nation’s children are supposed to become effeminate, whatever that means today. Educators reflect on how to strengthen the “yang spirit”, As in the masculine yang that complements the yin force, more feminine, in Taoism.

Some experts in Germany use the exact same phrase —a “masculinity crisis”- to describe the situation of men in what used to be communist East Germany. For decades after reunification in 1990, eastern women moved west or married western men, leaving many of the region’s men single, frustrated, and alienated.

Reunification and its discontent may be a unique situation, but there seems to be something more general about modernity that can undermine and threaten manhood. Consider, for example, how one particular vector of change is hitting masculinity: the automation of manufacturing with robots.

In general, I consider robots to be an advantage. They make production more efficient and therefore we are all better off. But even good things are not usually good for everyone. With automation, the losers are the workers who did what robots now do. And those workers are mostly men. I am not the one casting stereotypes, but rather concrete statistics.

On the other hand, jobs in the service sector, and especially those in which the “social skills“They are not threatened by robots, at least not yet. And here women seem to have a statistical advantage. In economies where robots are widely used, male workers find it more difficult, on average, to keep or find a good job, while women generally do better.

This bifurcation in the perspectives of men and women translates into a reduction in the wage gap that traditionally favored men. Overall, that’s a good thing, of course, as it leads to fair rewards – equal pay for equal work. But the disappearance of the wage gap also has side effects, as the late Gary Becker, Nobel laureate in economics, explained.

In “A Theory of Marriage,” published in 1973, she introduced the notion that narrowing the wage gap between men and women reduces the value of marriage for women. Back in the days when boys were earning much more and girls earning a pittance, it made sense, economically at least, to “specialize” in a household made up of a working husband and wife, and perhaps children. However, once women earn better wages, they no longer benefit much from tying up with a man, at least not in the same way.

The consequence of Becker’s logic should be an observable bear market in men’s marital value, leading to fewer marriages and fewer intra-marital births (though not necessarily fewer births overall). And so it seems. The coal country of Appalachia, for example, had a boom in the 1970s and a slump in the 1980s. As predicted, marriage rates and intramarital births rose in the 1970s when the Coal miners (mostly male) did well, then declined in the 1980s when they struggled.

Massimo Anelli, Osea Giuntella, and Luca Stella are researchers at the Bocconi University of Milan, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Free University of Berlin, respectively. Using data from the United States, they found that the more robotics transformed the manufacturing industry in a given region, the smaller the income gaps between women and men. Marriages decreased and divorces and living together increased. Conjugal fertility also declined, while out-of-wedlock births increased.

There is nothing inherently good or bad about these correlations and trends. They just mean that societies are changing. But change is difficult for people. And men, as they lose roles that their fathers and grandfathers might have seen as patently masculine, appear to be at particular risk.

One of them is that they fall victim to extreme right-wing demagogues. In eastern Germany, male frustration is certainly one of the explanations for the rise of the populist Alternative for Germany party. In the United States, regions with many robots are among those with the strongest Trumpism.

A related phenomenon is the misogynist movement “incel“Of men who call themselves”involuntary celibates”. They are often radicalized online, blaming women for their low status and spreading conspiracy theories. In California, Florida and Toronto, the “incels” have carried out massacres.

The best advice for individual men seems to be to welcome the evolution of masculinity as a liberation – let’s stop worrying about it and flow with it. But, for communities and societies, the change in masculinity carries dangers. This Chinese speech on strengthening the yang spirit seems corny and incorrect. Still, it is worth remembering that yin and yang must be in balance for there to be harmony.

– .