Gov. Gavin Newsom acts on boys and men

The list of Dems taking male issues seriously is growing

I’m feeling very Californian right now. What a great state! There’s the weather, the wine, the waves. But above all there is Executive Order N-31-25. This EO from Gavin Newsom represents a comprehensive push to do more for boys and men, across a whole range of domains. Here’s how the Governor announced the Order:

Too many young men and boys are suffering in silence — disconnected from community, opportunity, and even their own families. This action is about turning that around. It’s about showing every young man that he matters and there’s a path for him of purpose, dignity, work, and real connection.

Strikingly, his wife First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom also provided a comment:

Women and men face different challenges — but there are systemic barriers we can take on together. Whether it’s the shortage of male mental health providers, outdated ideas about care work, or boys falling through the cracks in school, this Executive Order is a step toward real solutions. Our young men and boys are facing a crisis of loneliness and social isolation that is showing up in their mental health, educational outcomes, future economic opportunities, and more. Raising healthy boys will take all of us—moms, dads, teachers, coaches, and mentors—working together to find new ways forward.

A sweeping Executive Order

Gov. Newsom has been talking a lot about the issues facing boys and men in recent months. Now he is acting, too, putting the weight of his administration behind a serious, data-led, solutions-focused plan to lift boys and men in his state.

Gov. Newsom’s EO is comprehensive, aiming to:

• Address the suicide crisis among men and ensure faster mental health support for boys and men

• Provide and promote volunteer opportunities for men

• Identify and fix gaps in health and human services for men and boys

• Recruit more men as teachers and school counselors

• Improve early education programs to better support young boys' learning

• Explore new ways to help men find purpose and opportunity

These are all the right domains to work on. I’m especially encouraged to see the focus on both mental health, given the rise in suicide rates among young men, and on the intention to get more men involved in service opportunities. There’s a lack of men in volunteer organizations, both public and private, and it’s terrific to see this highlighted in the EO.

I was honored to join Gov. Newsom on his podcast, This is Gavin Newsom, to discuss these issues, and the episode aired the same day that the Executive Order was issued. We covered a lot of the same ground as the EO, as well as how to talk about the so-called “manosphere”, the barriers that have faced Democrats seeking to talk openly about these challenges, and his own political journey on the issue. Do check out the episode and let me know what you think:

I was also pleased to have the chance to talk about the EO and the broader issues surrounding it with the Morning Joe team:

Dems for Men

Newsom joins other Governors who are taking strong, positive steps on this front, including Spencer Cox in Utah, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, and Wes Moore in Maryland. (I’m delighted to say that AIBM is partnering with Gov. Moore’s team to support a Senior Fellow dedicated to supporting his efforts).

What is most pleasing about these efforts is that they are focused not on the culture war stuff of “whither masculinity”, but on concrete plans to address actual problems; on governing, not lamenting. It is also good news that Democrats now feel able to address these issues in a way that seemed difficult just a few months ago.

In every case, these leaders have stressed that efforts to help boys and men should not be seen as in conflict with the necessary work still needed for girls and women. As Newsom’s EO states:

[T]he progress that women have made is to be celebrated, and it is not a zero-sum question of continuing the important work to support equality and opportunity for women and girls while also addressing the challenges facing men and boys: doing so directly benefits society as a whole.. and it is therefore in the best interest of all of us to broaden opportunities for success and address the disparities in outcomes.

This is exactly right and echoes similar comments from the other Governors. It is a terrible mistake to think that doing more for boys and men means doing less for girls and women; or of course that supporting men somehow requires rolling back efforts to lift up women. It is not a zero-sum game. We can do two things at once.

It is exciting to see so many political leaders taking up the cause of boys and men. It feels as though the permission space for addressing this issue is widening rapidly. This doesn’t mean there isn’t still work to do in terms of raising awareness and creating the right rhetorical frameworks for discussion. But it does mean that we can now start to focus more on solutions than on making the case.

Those job numbers: men in HEAL needed!

A quick note on recent job numbers. As you may have read, the employment trends look worse for men, especially among college graduates. As so often, it was the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch who really shone a light on this trend. Why? A big part of the explanation seems to be that the most robust job growth is coming in health and social care, which skew heavily female. As Business Insider reports:

Healthcare is one of few industries showing job growth for the six months ending in July. Hospitality and education — two of the other fields with growing job numbers — are also predominantly women.

This chart from BI makes the point rather sharply:

This is a timely reminder that we need more men in HEAL occupations (health, education, and literacy), not only because representation in those fields matters, but simply because there are jobs there. The impact of AI is only likely to make this need more urgent.

This has been a big theme of our work for a while now: for more on the overall trends see our paper “The HEAL Economy”. One key finding is that there are now fewer men as a share of HEAL professions than women as a share of STEM occupations:

But gender representation matters at least as much in HEAL as in STEM. As we wrote in our paper:

A particularly pressing issue is the lack of male representation in the HEAL workforce. Understanding the barriers for boys and men from entering these fields is important. Are cultural perceptions of care-related roles driving men away? Could targeted training programs, role models, or early exposure to these careers make a difference? What is the role of pay? Lowering some of these barriers could help improve the gender balance of HEAL occupations, as well as broaden employment opportunities for men. Getting more women into STEM has been a win for those professions, for women and for society as a whole. The same would be true of a successful effort to increase the share of men in HEAL.

Another recent AIBM paper from Isaac Bledsoe, “What teens want to be: Gender differences in careers and majors”, shows that gendered ideas about occupations set in early. Among 9^th graders, girls are four times as likely as boys to say they expect to end up working in one of the HEAL occupations:

There is a growing appetite among state-level policymakers to do more to encourage men into teaching (including most recently in Gov. Newsom’s EO); but we also need similar efforts to increase male representation in healthcare professions, especially in mental health where, as AIBM’s work shows, the male share has cratered:

What I’m reading

Here’s a few things that have been on my reading app recently:

1. Our frequent collaborator Allen Downey did a deep dive into the American National Election Survey (ANES) to see if young men were really swinging to the right. The short answer is, as his article title suggests: “Are Young Men Veering Right? Not really.”

As he writes:

Gender gaps tend to be larger on abstractions like ideology and party affiliation, and narrower on concrete policies and cultural issues. Young men are more likely to identify as conservative than we would expect based on long-term patterns, but their views on most issues are on trend.

A speculative explanation for this discrepancy is that “conservative” and “liberal” are relative to a perceived center — and for many people that perception is driven by their peers and media consumption. If young men imagine that the center has moved far to the left, they might be more likely to identify as conservative, even if their views are actually center-left. And if young women believe that the country has veered to the right — as they might if they are concerned about issues like abortion — they are more likely to identify as liberal, even if they have moderate beliefs on other issues.

2. The folks at Third Way, a centrist Democrat think-tank, did some good interviews with young men. The findings confirmed that many young men felt overlooked, or ignored by the Democrats and/or that there was little alignment in terms of values or policy priorities. Well worth a read. Here’s one key takeaway:

Most importantly, these young men don’t feel that Democrats understand or speak about their economic concerns. Few of the young men in these groups could name a policy that Kamala Harris ran on last year or describe what her vision for the country was. However, what did stick with them were Trump’s attacks on transgender issues and immigration, and a perception that the Democratic Party is culturally alienating and failing to address their economic struggles. The groups widely shared the belief that Democrats are out of the mainstream on social and cultural issues, and they felt that when they share their opinions on these issues, they are pushed away and looked down upon by those on the left—a sentiment that has been shared by former Democratic voters who lean more culturally moderate and conservative.

The interviews reminded me of the finding from the Equimundo survey which found that two-thirds of young men (69%) agreed with the statement: “no one cares if men are OK”. Just sit with that finding for a moment.

3. Lenore Skenazy, Zach Rausch and Jon Haidt (AIBM Advisory Board Co-Chair) have a terrific article in The Atlantic on the decline in free play, often crowded out by smartphones. They don’t say that the decline in free play has been especially damaging for boys (though Barack Obama speculated recently that it had been). But I think that’s at least plausible, and I’d love to see more work on gender and play.

4. A good piece in the Independent (UK) on “How the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ turned toxic”. It makes the point that while politicians still use the phrase, everybody working with young people, including the most feminist groups, have stopped using it. The UK Prime Minister held a roundtable with many of these groups. The reporter contacted these groups and found that “all of the named attendees bar one – the NSPCC – has since told The Independent that they avoid the term ‘toxic masculinity’”. Yup. It’s a bad term: counter-productive, deficit-based and insulting. Nobody serious about positive change is using it anymore.

Vote for me! (But not just me)

Should I be on a panel at SXSW on boys and men? Only the people can decide! That’s how SXSW works. So do take a moment to vote for one or both panels; thank you in advance.

Bridging the Dad Gap: Fatherhood on Screen and in Real Life (with some breaking new research from NRG)

Advancing the Educational Attainment of Boys and Men (an expert panel discussion on making schools and colleges more male-friendly)