The Atlantic has published a round-up of studies that detail how being around women changes men (Did You Know: it’s harder for a man to be sexist after he spends time with actual women?). The studies’ findings are interesting and telling — but what’s perhaps most telling is the fact that they’re not even the tip of the “women be changin’ men” iceberg. Why are we, as a society, so obsessed with quantifying the ways in which the presence of women alter men’s behaviors? It’s far from a reciprocal relationship: studies looking to elucidate and explicate how women change in the presence of men are few and far between. What’s going on here?
Most of the studies included in the Atlantic piece come to somewhat encouraging conclusions: male CEOs pay their employees more after having daughters! Men in general grow less attached to traditional gender roles after spawning little girls! Working in a female-dominated workplace will make men more likely to be egalitarian in their household duties! However, as Katy Waldman points out at the XX Factor, these findings are accompanied by a bevy of less gender roles-oriented studies: