Today’s women’s movement also needs to reckon with the fact that men struggle just as much as women. Modern life is a complicated mix of burdens and advantages for each sex. Too often, feminism focuses on gender inequities among elites: CEOs, MIT astrophysicists, U.S. senators. It is true that there are too few women in those positions, but we need to consider the entire workforce for context. Most backbreaking, lethally dangerous jobs — roofer, logger, roustabout and coal miner, to name a few — are done by men.
It is men — especially working-class men — who are disproportionately crushed, mutilated, electrocuted or mangled at work. Activists lament the dearth of women in the Fortune 500, but they fail to mention the Unfortunate 4,500 — the approximate number of men killed on the job every year.