What the ‘Men Are Falling Behind’ Panic Is Really About

Too often, it’s not about genuinely helping men and boys at all

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‘School has changed in ways that favor girls, and work has changed in ways that favor women,’ writes Claire Cain Miller in one of the first paragraphs of a recent New York Times article titled It’s Not Just a Feeling: Data Shows Boys and Young Men Are Falling Behind.

This is hardly a new idea. For the past decade or so, there’s been no shortage of think pieces and online posts painting a picture of girls and young women surging ahead — and ‘taking over’ — while their male peers lag behind, struggling to catch up in a society that now, supposedly, gives women the upper hand in nearly every area. Increasingly, young men themselves share this belief, too.

And so do people with some of the loudest megaphones in the world. Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with podcaster Joe Rogan and lamented the decline of ‘masculine energy’ in the corporate world, implying, much like Miller, that workplaces have shifted too far in accommodating women. Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign carried a similar message, built around the idea that American society has become ‘too feminised’, to the detriment of men.