Friday Musings
GIRLS being on top do not bother me much since I am not among those men who are against women domination.
The more women around me, the happier I am and that’s the way it should always be — now and forever more, amen. I have heard complaints about dwindling numbers of men in offices but, for me, that should not be any major preoccupation. The major factor is job performance – those who perform well on the job are valuable assets and gender does not matter.
There was a time when as Editor-in-Chief I was worried about assigning female reporters to cover dangerous stories, like violent street protests, or sending them out into the fields, trekking through jungle or working late into the night.
But they have proven themselves time and again. I remember with pride some female reporters who worked with me, excelling in covering the violent street protests that erupted in Georgetown after general elections in October 1992 and after, and other street disturbances that rocked the country at several periods up to around 2002.
Female reporters have sometimes outshone male counterparts on beats that men only once covered. And today, most newsrooms here and in the Caribbean are dominated by women and female reporters are even on warfronts in several parts of the world.
Men appear to be a dying breed in offices in Guyana and there seem to be even more women security guards than males these days.
Girls have outshone boys in the latest secondary schools entrance examination results with boys barely making it among the top performers.
And females are clearly in the majority on the Turkeyen campus of the University of Guyana and I’m pretty sure it’s the same at all other educational institutions.
While you won’t hear me complaining, I’m among those wondering at the reasons behind this decline in men in some sections of the workforce and why women are outperforming men in other areas.
Men are still dominant in the jobs that demand hard labour – construction, cane harvesting, mining and agriculture come to mind; and there seem to be more men in the military and other joint services.
So, what’s the story? Are our women overtaking men in the jobs and fields that demand higher education and intelligence, with men opting more and more for jobs that are less demanding mentally?
It was not so long ago that boys outnumbered girls among top performers at examinations, with most girls graduating from school heading into marriage not long after and settling into running a home, making and raising children.
A woman’s place, they used to say, was in the home.
Well, that kind of thinking went straight through the door some time ago and men are desperately trying to find their place in the new pecking order in society.
Some feel that the end to corporal punishment in schools, under which boys were caned for misbehaving or not doing well in class, has diminished their drive to excel. (In those days, while boys were caned, girls were merely sent to stand in a corner of the classroom.)
It may be; it may be not.
But, there should be some serious research into this descent of men because no country needs a growing army of male layabouts, louts and deviants.
After all, too many women on top can stifle men.