Real Men Don't Take Dictation

When the focus of an economy changes from making stuff to helping people—that is, manufacturing to services—low-skilled men drop out of the labor market in droves. A new study of unemployed men in Manchester, England, suggests that "idealized embodied masculinity" is partly to blame. Manual labor, claims sociologist Darren Nixon, imbues working-class men with a sense of pride that helps compensate for the very fact of being working class. They may not be financially dominant, but they feel relatively masculine compared with their white, middle-class counterparts.

The kind of low-skill jobs that service economies create—receptionists, sales clerks, retail cashiers—offer no such compensation. And the men Nixon interviews find the "emotional labor" required to perform such jobs well incredibly taxing. "I've got no patience with people basically," one interviewee says, "I can't put a smiley face on, that's not my sort of thing." You might expect this kind of reaction from men who have spent years working labor-intensive jobs, where they've adapted to a male-only working environment and rarely encounter customers. But Nixon finds that even younger men, who haven't spent years absorbing a gendered workplace culture, find the deference required to work a sales job hard to muster. "If someone [a customer] gave me loads of hassle I'd end up lamping them," one reports.

Nixon concludes that "sticking up for yourself is a defining characteristic of the working class habitus," and it's a characteristic that's incommensurate with entry-level positions of the kind that working-class men are likely to be otherwise qualified for. Their gender identities are, in a sense, maladaptive; traditional gender norms and the needs of the modern economy are at odds. On Friday, Stephanie Coontz pointed out a study showing that middle-school boys "brutally police" one another's conformity to masculine ideals. Nixon's study suggests that these kind of cultural constraints have long-term economic consequences.

Photo by Digital Image/Getty Images

Tags: economics

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Kerry Howley is a contributing editor at Reason Magazine and an Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa's literary nonfiction program.

Comments

I think that what we need is

By: rashoodollison | Tue, 07/28/2009 - 03:07

I think that what we need is more exploration of masculinity and how it intersects with economics and financial choices in the current Great Recession. After all, those service jobs have always paid poor wages with few benefits and lots of customer hassle, but, historically, women have opted to take them rather than to drop out of the work force.

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he part I disagree with is

By: rashoodollison | Tue, 07/28/2009 - 03:07

he part I disagree with is that this is a disadvantage in sales, as if sales is inherently deferential. Sales involves identifying with the customer, and a masculine customer will identify with a masculine approach to sales. A good salesman will know when to say, "OK, well go on down the street then, and if you can do better, buy their stuff", which means he might lose a few of his weaker prospects once in awhile but over the long term will sell to a class of customers who won't cause him grief in the future.

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Manchester isn't America

By: ISTHATALLTHEREIS | Sat, 05/23/2009 - 15:46

Having once lived in England for nearly a decade, I have to caution against extrapolating results from a sampling of working-class men from Manchester and making conclusions about men in America. When I used to fly back to the states from the UK, I felt that I was not only traveling thousands of miles to the east, but also, in the case of women's rights, about twenty years into the future. It's not surprising to me that working-class Mancunian men wouldn't want to undertake a service job as they do consider it women's work. It must also be said that many Brits have a problem with service positions no matter what their gender. I absolutely love the place, but I'm not alone in disliking their snotty shop assistants and receptionists who'd make David Spades's send-up on SNL seem like teddy bears in comparison. Being "in service" to them means being a servant, and that makes you working class, whereas these days most folk want to be considered middle-class. So service jobs to them have both a class based taint and an even stronger gender association, than they do here in the US.

bartending as male

By: PGofHSM | Thu, 05/21/2009 - 16:57

Women often were specifically excluded from making alcoholic drinks (as late as 1948, the Supreme Court upheld such a law in Goesaert v. Cleary), although they were free to serve them once they'd been poured, which is very much a service job. Being a chef is identified as a more "male" job, even though cooking for a family is "women's work."

I think the *making* of food or drink for the public is deemed masculine, and while bartenders often are both making and serving drinks, they're also charged with cutting off a customer who's had too many, and in small establishments without a bouncer or other security, with getting out of the bar the customers who've worn out their welcome. The Supreme Court used the potential hazards of being in the bartender role as justification for letting the state withhold bartending licenses from women. (Serving drinks, e.g. as a waitress, is not a state-licensed function.)

A man who can fix anything is the ideal

By: doovinator | Thu, 05/21/2009 - 11:43

I think this study is a little off the mark but pretty much true. There's a lot to be said for having the skill to do a job from start to finish that doesn't involve answering to someone else. A guy who can do his own plumbing, patch a roof, fix his own motorcycle, make his own banjo or whatever will always have a level of confidence that will allow him to tell the boss to go to hell if the boss gets too big for his britches, which keeps him from getting pushed around. It may limit to some degree his financial success, but a man who can do everything for himself doesn't need to pay someone else to do it anyway. The part I disagree with is that this is a disadvantage in sales, as if sales is inherently deferential. Sales involves identifying with the customer, and a masculine customer will identify with a masculine approach to sales. A good salesman will know when to say, "OK, well go on down the street then, and if you can do better, buy their stuff", which means he might lose a few of his weaker prospects once in awhile but over the long term will sell to a class of customers who won't cause him grief in the future. The "emotionally taxing" part is putting up with anything you disagree with, but integrity has its own reward.
~DJ

There are lots of male

By: smash | Thu, 05/21/2009 - 11:14

There are lots of male bartenders which is a true service job and involves putting on a friendly face and taking orders (literally). Perhaps even a majority of them are men. These are service jobs that pay well, at least here in new york. Something about this study stinks. Someone is extrapolating a little too hard. Society has a way of redefining what women do as undesirable and what men do as acceptable.

Dictation

By: h0tr0d | Wed, 05/20/2009 - 14:21

I would suggest men drop out of the workforce because service jobs, at least the ones given as examples, do not represent the type of pay that allows you to provide for your family....which is the significant driver for men's ability to do shit work and stick with it. I mean really, do you think digging a cesspool has anything to do with a man's feeling of masculinity? Please stay away from "what makes a man" type stories.

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By: klucassm | Thu, 05/21/2009 - 10:26

h0tr0d, I get what you're saying that this post makes things a bit too pat, that men don't merely have trouble with service-sector jobs because it requires them to be deferential, which they feel is emasculating. Obviously, the crappy pay plays in, too. It's not worth tolerating emasculating working conditions if the pay is barely enough to cover rent, and what are you going to do to feed your kids? However, I think that what we need is more exploration of masculinity and how it intersects with economics and financial choices in the current Great Recession. After all, those service jobs have always paid poor wages with few benefits and lots of customer hassle, but, historically, women have opted to take them rather than to drop out of the work force. What does that indicate about gender roles and what men and women need to get out of a job in order to find it worth doing? I think that's an interesting question/set of issues that is worth exploring, and I hope Double X does more of it.