At the Crossroads: Why 2024 Marks a Pivotal Moment for Men’s Economic and Cultural Survival
For decades, policies driven by Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) mandates and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives have had a measurable impact on male wages and livelihoods. Yet, the conversation often stops short of connecting the dots. Male labor force participation—especially among prime-age men—has been steadily declining.
These shifts, compounded by cultural expectations and economic pressures from immigration and trade, have left men trapped in a cycle of diminishing opportunities. To reverse this trend, it is imperative to address policies prioritizing equity over merit, dismantle biased family court practices, and recalibrate immigration and education funding to ensure a level playing field. Without such changes, the societal consequences will continue to worsen, be misunderstood, and be misattributed to temporary events like the pandemic, with little chance of ever being resolved.
Standards, Equality, and the Reality of Work
Hiring standards are supposed to be absolute—especially in physically demanding jobs like combat or law enforcement. How efficiently can you move an absolute load like a rucksack or an injured soldier? In Physics, Work is fundamentally a function of force over distance: it doesn’t care about gender. If you push against a wall with all your might but do not move it, in an oft-cited example, you have not done any work. Likewise, if a woman can keep up with a man in every way, without allowances for 10% higher body fat, fewer pull-ups, and other concessions, by all means, she should get a chance to do the job.
Instead, we’ve seen lower standards, yet wages for these jobs remain equal, and as a result, in nearly all cases, women have a greater chance of advancement. Why? Because while the “grunts” do the hard labor, women are freed up for advancement and promotion through politicking. There will also always be men who cover for women and help them do their jobs; it is in their DNA as a man to help not just a damsel in distress but anyone. And in these roles, the women clearly need the help. The dynamic is clear in example after example in law enforcement: many criminals would have no qualms about fighting a weaker male officer, even killing them, to get away. Many of the same criminals still would not strike a female officer and instead, just slither out of her grip and make a getaway. Yet, female officers continue to rise through the ranks in significant numbers, taking up jobs like Sheriff and all levels of law enforcement.
The Data Speaks: Uneven Advancement
Studies from the State Department reveal that women have been advancing professionally at significantly higher rates than men. This isn’t just anecdotal—it’s measurable. The Heritage Foundation did a 14-page report, excerpt below:
The year 2023 is no anomaly. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, analysis of promotion data from 2002 to 2018 “controlling for factors other than gender that could influence promotion, found that women in the Foreign Service had higher adjusted rates of promotion and higher odds of promotion than men in early to midcareer.”
U.S. Government Accountability Office, “State Department: Additional Steps Are Needed to Identify Potential Barriers to Diversity,” GAO-20-237, February 25, 2020, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-20-237 (accessed October 24, 2024).
The GAO analysis found that from 2003 to 2018, “the proportions of women hired at State, both overall and in Class 6 or lower ranks of the Foreign Service, increased,” and that during that time “women in the Foreign Service generally spent fewer years in each rank relative to men,” meaning that they were promoted faster on average.
This is all from just one department in our sprawling bureaucracy. Men often do the foundational work while women climb the ladder, bolstered by policies prioritizing women’s representation in all levels of leadership while not paying lip service to the overrepresentation of men in less prestigious positions that are arguably more essential.
No one is complaining about the lack of women in jobs like construction, trash collection, or the trades. Yet the men who fill these jobs pay the taxes that enable grants and subsidies for college, wherein by the academic year 2021-2022, women earned the majority of post-secondary degrees at every level, accounting for 58.5% of bachelor’s degrees.
The Family Divide: No-Fault Divorce and Custody Bias
The economic challenges don’t stop in the workplace. No-fault divorce laws, combined with a default bias toward awarding custody to mothers, have created an environment where men are systematically disadvantaged. Federal programs even match child support dollars with funding, further incentivizing family courts to rule heavy-handedly on child support obligations, almost always causing men to be overburdened. It is no longer about supporting the children when bureaucracies are incentivized in this manner. This creates a cycle where men are financially drained, while women hold a disproportionate amount of power in family dynamics, with the threat of Divorce always looming.
The Economic Squeeze: Immigration and Trade Policies
On top of these domestic pressures, economic policies have compounded the issue. The importation of blue-collar workers from South America suppresses wages for working-class men, while H-1B visas suppress salaries in white-collar industries. Meanwhile, jobs are exported through asymmetric trade agreements, leaving sane, able-bodied men squeezed from both ends of the labor spectrum. Few men would prefer to engage in hobbies aimlessly and do the bare minimum amount of work if they had reasonable options, with opportunities for advancement being key.
The Cultural Fallout: Unrealistic Expectations and Mutual Misery
Despite these systemic disadvantages, cultural and biological expectations remain unchanged. Women still expect men to earn and provide more, creating a double bind. Men are falling behind economically, yet they’re still expected to meet traditional roles. This dynamic breeds dissatisfaction on both sides. Women feel unfulfilled, unable to “settle,” while most men feel undervalued and trapped in an unwinnable game, while the top 10% have too many options of women to settle down with any single one. For those couples that do make it work, it is increasingly common for women to earn 50% or more of the total household income, pushing them to breadwinner status. However, men are still unable to get pregnant or breastfeed, meaning even breadwinner women have to fulfill all their motherly duties, leaving them burnt out.
Policy as the Path Forward
The only way forward is unrelenting changes to the policy measures that led us here. Some examples include
- Ending No-Fault Divorce to incentivize couples to make things work except in cases of abuse or infidelity
- Ending default custody of children to the mother; studies show single-mother homes have the worst outcomes for both boys and girls
- Ending diversity quotas in hiring, including preference for female candidates; gender/sex should not even be a question on job applications
- Ending college grants and subsidized loans; level the playing field and let people choose their career path without dragging the taxpayer into it
- Put a pause on H1B and similar visas and end illegal immigration until the labor force participation rate of prime-age males returns to what it used to be at its peak
The Urgency of Acknowledgment
It’s crucial to lay this all out—not just for the sake of documenting the reality but to ensure the true causes of this crisis aren’t forgotten or misattributed to convenient scapegoats like COVID-19. The damage is already significant, but if we fail to acknowledge it now, we risk erasing the lessons that could help future generations.
In the end, fixing these issues may not be credited to those who sounded the alarm early. But getting it on the record matters. Let history show that these challenges were real, systemic, and, most importantly, preventable.
Liberty Republicans 