What Josh Hawley gets wrong about me

Nobody wants to "push" men into HEAL jobs, but it would be good for everyone if more men were in them

The share of male social workers is cratering. Image credit.

Josh Hawley of Missouri has published Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. I have thoughts. Many, many thoughts. And I’ll be sharing them all, in one place or another.

But for today I’ll just focus on the specific attack that Sen. Hawley makes on me. He writes:

One liberal researcher recently argued for pushing men into what he calls ‘HEAL professions—Healthcare, Education, Administration, and Literacy. He wants more men to work as home health aides, for example, and as teachers and social workers.

Yes, that “liberal researcher” would be me.

Again, men can HEAL

I do argue strongly that public policy should aim to increase the share of men in these professions. It’s a big theme in my own book, Of Boys and Men. I wrote about it in a previous post here “Men can HEAL”. I’ve also summarized the argument for TIME magazine, “Why America Needs More Men Working in Health Care and Education”.

The share of men in most HEAL professions has been falling in recent decades, even as the share of women in traditionally-male STEM jobs has tripled:

Sen. Hawley says there’s “nothing wrong” with these jobs, which is a relief. He even seems to agree with me that having more male teachers would be important. But otherwise he seems to think these are women’s work.

By contrast, I think there are three reasons it would be good to get more men into HEAL.

First, there are jobs there, and more coming. Second, many of these professions face looming labor shortages, which it would be foolish to try and solve with half the workforce. Third, and most importantly, it would be good for the users of these services to have more men providing them. As I wrote in the previous blog, it is not ideal if most substance abuse counselors are women (76%) when most substance abusers are men (67%), or that most special education teachers are women (84%) when most students being referred to special education are male (64%).

Given the mental health problems of so many of our young people, for example, I think it is a very big problem that men make up a shrinking share of psychologists and counsellors. As I pointed out before, the proportion of men in psychology has dropped from 39% to 29% in the last decade. And the trend is set to continue; among psychologists aged 30 or less, the male share is just 5%.

I’m not saying we need to aim for perfect gender parity in these occupations. But it is reasonable to aim for a closer match between users and providers. Getting more men into HEAL occupations would be good for men, good for the professions, and good for clients—a win-win-win.

Men are not ill-suited to HEAL jobs

Hawley seems a bit conflicted, however. As he writes:

There is nothing wrong with those careers, of course: to take just one example, many boys benefit from having male teachers as positive role models. But the fact is, men are historically less interested in these fields and less educationally prepared to take them on.

He seems to be saying that it would be good to have more men in HEAL, at least in the E for education part. That’s true, and one reason why we should be concerned that the share of male K-12 teachers has dropped to 23%. But the problem, according to Hawley, is two-fold:

1. Men just don’t want these jobs. Specifically, they are “historically less interested”

2. Men don’t have the credentials, so “less educationally prepared to take them on”

I’ll take each in turn.

In fact, historically men have been interested in these jobs, as the chart above shows. In 1980, men accounted for about half of all social workers, psychologists and elementary and middle school teachers; but in the decades since that share has dropped.

The feminization of these professions is a new problem, not a “historic” one. Historically, more men were interested. The idea that we need to “force” men in 2023 into jobs that they seemed content to do almost half a century ago is, well, odd.

Does Hawley really think that men in the 1980s were so much more resistant to these roles than in the 2020s? And if so, why?

Hawley is right that men are much less likely to have the credentials for these jobs. But that’s the very definition of a vicious cycle. People will only train for jobs that they want to do. It’s like someone pointing out that not many women had law degrees in the 1960s, making it hard to have many female lawyers.

Investing in men in HEAL

Hawley goes on:

Naturally, they blame traditional “gender role” stereotypes and call for more government spending to get men into so-called HEAL careers.

OK. Let’s unpack this criticism of my position.

First, I think it is indisputable that gendered ideas of occupations, the social signaling that certain jobs are “men’s work” or “women’s work” makes it harder to go “against type”. That’s a consistent finding from the identity economics field. It is much harder to be female engineer when you’ll be only 1 of 100 in the classroom or workplace; the same is true the other way round, for example, for men entering nursing, psychology or early years education.

Next, it is true that I call for “more government spending to get men into so-called HEAL careers”. I see these investments as directly analogous to the public funds spent to help women into STEM, including through the provision of scholarships. In both cases, the goal is to help underrepresented groups overcome the barriers to entering professions where there is a public welfare benefit.

This last point is crucial. Not many feminists argue for scholarships to get women into deep-sea diving, which is 92% male. And I’m not arguing for scholarships to get men into interior design, which is 89% female. That’s because, to put it gently, there is no strong argument for a public interest in the sex segregation of these occupations. Or to be blunter: nobody cares.

To be fair to Hawley, I’d suspect he’d argue to get rid of these government-funded interventions altogether, including those aimed at helping women, on the grounds that it is not the state’s job to influence labor market decisions. If so, his position would be internally consistent.

Hawley goes on:

To the experts safely ensconced in their think tanks [OK, Josh, I get it!], I would just say this: Is it really too much to ask that our economy work for men as they are, rather than as the left wants them to be?

Men who have an aptitude for blue-collar work and enjoy it shouldn’t be pushed by policymakers onto career tracks for which they’re ill-suited. And they shouldn’t have to apologize to anyone.

I agree with much of this. Certainly we should aim for an economy that works for both men and women “as they are”. And that will mean that some occupations will skew more male, or more female, not because of discrimination, but because of differences on average in the interests, proclivities and preferences of the two. The questions here are:

1. Which occupations are likely to see some gender segregation based on real differences?

2. How big would we expect the gap to be, under conditions of reasonably free choice?

Not that long ago, law and medicine were seen as jobs that men were naturally “better suited” to. But today there as many female as male lawyers and doctors. So, that was just sexism.

But that’s not to say there are no differences that will play out in the labor market. For example, one sex difference that gets a lot of attention is on the people/things dimension: men are on average a bit more into things, women are on average a bit more into people. In Of Boys and Men I cite a fascinating study from psychologists Rong Su and James Rounds who compared the proportion of women who would be expected to be in various occupations, based on gender differences on the people/things dimension, with the actual numbers:

Su, R., & Rounds, J. (2015). All STEM fields are not created equal: People and things interests explain gender disparities across STEM fields. Frontiers in psychology, 6: 189.

Su and Rounds found a good match in many fields, such as mathematics (with 40% female representation). But as you can see, there was a significant underrepresentation of women in engineering: around 30% of engineers would be female if interests alone were driving occupational choice, according to their estimates, but the actual number of women engineers is around half that. At the other end of the scale, there is a heavy over-representation of women in the medical services field, which includes nursing.

Hawley seems here to be following in the footsteps of Jordan Peterson, who said that “men and women won’t sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them to do it of their own accord.” That’s true, up to a point, as the Su and Rounds work shows. But Peterson then went on to say that ratios of “20 to 1” of men to women in engineering, and the other way around in nursing, are “a consequence of the free choice of men and women. Those are ineradicable differences.”

No, a 5% is not a reflection of “ineradicable differences”. But 30% might be. Likewise, Hawley sees the small and reducing share of men in certain professions, and says they are “career tracks for which they [men] are ill-suited”.

This is a mirror image of the sexism faced by women in so many professions up to very recent times. (I doubt Hawley would dare to claim that law is such a profession, for example, especially given that his wife is a successful practicing attorney).

Yes! More respect for blue collar men

Hawley points out, correctly, that there are many men with an “aptitude for blue-collar work and enjoy it”. Agreed. And there’s no contradiction between saying that policymakers should support both more opportunities in the growing HEAL sectors, and ensure more pathways towards good blue-collar jobs. That’s one reason why I support the creation of 1,000 new Technical High Schools, and one million additional apprenticeships; both policies that would overwhelmingly help boys and men.

It is also why I supported the Infrastructure Bill, which will create around 800,000 new jobs. Most of these jobs will go to men without college degrees. I see that as a feature rather than a bug. And this is the group of men Hawley says he is most worried about. So it’s fair to ask: why was he one of the 30 Senators to vote against the bill? (His Missouri colleague Roy Blunt voted in favor).

We need more opportunities for men to get into traditionally male blue-collar jobs, especially via non-college routes. We also need more opportunities for men to get into the increasingly female-dominated HEAL jobs. We can, in other words, do two things at once.

Hawley correctly points out that there is still too much snobbery about the value of blue-collar work, and an overemphasis on college. As he says, men in these jobs “shouldn’t have to apologize to anyone”. It’s an open question how many of them do in fact feel the need to apologize, but the point remains.

I’ve argued in fact that the roots of our current political crisis lie in no small part in the disrespect shown by elites, especially policy elites, towards the working class. See for example my work on respect, especially this short speech—really, a rant—at The Economist festival about how the elite failed the working class, in thought, word and deed:

I don’t think we should just sit by and watch the share of men in these critical occupations decline over time. Hawley’s message that men just aren’t suited for them, or aren’t interested in them, just adds to the problem.