"Before the late 20th century, a job furnished not only security, but also an identity and an orientation to living. The original meaning of the word, “career,” was a carriage road and, as it came to be applied to vocations, a clear way ahead—a prepared path. This no longer is the case. Career counseling clients are now told to expect 11 job changes over their working lives (Sennett, 1998). The neo-liberal context of employment is perpetually transitional. It demands and exploits a workforce that is global, dis-embedded, mobile, and flexible. In many sectors, lifelong vocations are being replaced by job portfolios composed of short-term projects and contracts."
From:
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/teo-a0038960.pdf
Initially, and according to what I've written in other threads lately, I thought men were in a better position relative to women, given their ability to be freer agents in the jobs market even now. That is, I pretty much assumed that neo-liberal policies weren't capable of toppling the normal state of affairs (men in more stable jobs, women more on the lower-paid less secure periphery). Because of this, I wasn't able to understand the apparent depth of responses I've inadvertently provoked. Even though the boom itself tended to re-polarize the sexes (still seen in sales materials today -- businesses haven't given up on drumming up trade by being unfair to one sex or the other), and fingers were pointed to the 'other' side across the newly-rendered divide after the crash, it still doesn't explain why a proportion of Irish men are still feeling significant negative affects of the whole affair.
Anyway, I think it's fair to say that a cause of malaise is the newly emerged idea of 'career'. As given in the quote above, the traditional idea has been overturned in favour of that suiting the demands of a fickle neo-liberal market. According to innate gender differences, (i.e. not arguable) men will feel naturally daunted by an unsure path to (in sharp contrast with women) self actualization. Women can roll with an unsure or badly-defined path relatively successfully due to their derivation of secure sense of self more from an ability to be flexible, fit in, create children, and tend to family). Because of this, I think it's quite difficult for the average woman to realize exactly how emotionally and psychologically important it is for a man to chart the course of his own life on his own terms, using the gifts of his own brilliance and insight to do it.
When job definitions and company structures were overseen by people on the ground and in the community with no regard for world-market finance, men's need to define themselves thusly was naturally understood, respected, and accommodated. Today, conglomerates of the international super-rich provoke unpredictable needs for changing skills and approaches. If ever there was a reality designed to upend men's sense of security, this is it, while women can withstand this more fickle approach naturally.
Outside of this, it's necessary to consider how neo-liberal market need translates into an unbalanced demand for women over men in the relatively unskilled part of the market -- the part of the market most important to men seeking to start their great courses. Is the same imbalance evident in England, for example? I suspect that this effect is largely a result of local interpreters of world market need. That is, Irish company heads are on the neo-liberal wagon to such a degree that they have tunnel vision and can only see 'flexibility' as being the desired end. It is a short sighted (and socially irresponsible) move to hire more women than men regardless of capability for junior jobs. The government should step in to mandate a just antidote to this, I think, on the basis that any psychologist can outline the potential long-term negative consequences of making the starting playing field unfair for young men. As well, there seems to be an inherent declaration in this that the way of the financial future is necessarily feminine, hence Blind Boy Boatclub's sage advice to do what neo-feminists order, and become women. To any average-brained man, this is what this nonsense sounds like, and rightly so.
And last into the mix, on top of this negative state of flux for men, is a factor that no-one could ever expect on top of this massive discomfort -- the wholesale blame and complaints from the neo-feminist side of the equation. I imagine that a set of unwarranted complaints has never been quite so untimely or damaging. Their conception of the problem, in cohesion with the conception of local market interpreters, is that men are simply too masculine, given their need to operate on a more definite and determinable footing in reality. Hence the impossible demand that men join them in the future on planet neo feminism, admission: losing your innate self-concept and hailing illogical and destructive neo-feminism ideals forevermore.
Anyway, according this this, I think all normal men and women should campaign and lobby the government for a normal fairness in entry jobs admissions as a matter of social justice, and across the whole spectrum after that. It's technically an act of social destruction for the government to keep the neo-liberal lassez-faire stance on this part of the equation. As well, it wouldn't be a bad idea to campaign in the direction of local market fielders who reckon their expedient approach is just.
In keeping with the idea of a thread, I would like your ideas and information about this part of the picture. This is as good as I can do from a few thousand miles away and nothing but the internet to give me a a clue. :pac:
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