Give Me a BreakWe're always going on about the huge advances women have made - the incredible shift in thinking achieved in just one generation as Irish women have transformed themselves from people defined by their contribution in the home to people with varied and challenging lives outside the home as well. We use words such as juggling, stress, sacrifice, ambition and role-strain when we talk about how we women have willingly submitted ourselves to a sea-change in self-image and confidence.
And there's always a little bit of the victimhood thrown in, as women complain about lack of support, about a State that has failed to keep up with the changes by exploiting women's contribution in the workforce but failing to provide affordable childcare and to pay much more than lip service to flexible working.
There's nothing wrong with any of this soul-searching and breast-beating - except that one essential change has been forgotten. Men have had to change more than we have and we rarely give them credit. Men aren't allowed to talk about stress and sacrifice. Their own heroic efforts to keep up with the social changes that women have wrought are unsung.
I've been listening to men talk about this lately - only because I've asked. There's the CEO whose father, a company director, worked nine to five with Wednesdays off for golf. When take-home pay and property costs were considered, this older man had more in his pocket and didn't even know the word "commute". He never had to worry about the children during the day because that was his wife's role. He came home to a hot dinner in the evening and weekends were for family time and social life, with the sit-down family Sunday dinner a major fixture.
His son works 6am to 8pm (when commuting time is taken into account) and many nights has to travel, meaning he doesn't make it home at all. Working weekends is normal. The mobile phone and internet ensure he's never out of the office's reach. Checking in is his last task at night.
"My father's generation worked hard and you do hear some of them say that they missed out on rearing their children. Actually, I think my generation are the ones missing out more, because we're aware now that we should be involved, whereas our fathers' generation wasn't. We know how important it is for us to be there for our children, yet it's more difficult now," he says.
There are exceptions. One guy I know runs an international company from home, basically, so that he can have quality of life. But he's part of an elite. The nine-to-fivers, who are actually six-to-eighters, don't have those choices.
And it's not just men with families who are struggling to keep up. Many single men in their late 20s or 30s are rather at a loss as to how to deal with this new, powerful generation of female peers. They find them intimidating at times.
One male friend has confided to me that his two room-mates, both in their early 30s and relatively high-earning, good-looking guys, haven't dated in three years. They're terrified. Women who know what they want are no match for men who haven't a clue what they want because it's not part of social discourse. These men have had to go with the flow and they haven't a notion where it's taking them.
In their social scene, there are pubs where people gather - but it gets boring after a while. And anyway, you don't know if you're meeting the real woman or what's in her glass or up her nose. There seems to be no place to share in non-drinking non-drugging activities and that isn't fizzing with sexual conquest.
Sometimes these guys meet women they feel attracted to in work situations, but know if they ask for a date, they risk rejection or worse - an accusation of sexual harassment. It could sour the atmosphere to ask, "Would you like to meet for a coffee?" One guy told me women always seem to have an agenda, which varies according to the stage they're at in their career. There are those who want a little fun, but who have no intention of committing themselves. And then there are those a little older with biological alarms ringing, who wake up one morning determined to go straight from coffee to commitment with indecent haste.
Women are so much more emotionally intelligent, so potentially manipulative, that we must seem like treacherous aliens at times. If you're a woman, imagine for a moment you're a man who has to deal with you and your friends. Think about how much you and your friends analyse men, create game-plans, laugh at them behind their backs. Imagine being the butt of the jokes. Scary, huh? We women have been so busy fighting our patch - not that we've been completely successful, we still earn only 75 per cent of what men do in the same work - that we've failed to notice that men need to change too. They need support, emotional conversation (but not too much) and respect. And they need to get home to their kids too.
Maybe if we women started thinking about men a little differently and were willing to compromise rather than compete and manipulate, we'd start earning that other 25 per cent.
