On Sunday, news published a widely shared and debated post, written by psychology student Adam Njå. If we have understood him correctly, Njå believes that today’s society discriminates against men by the fact that aggression, chaos and disorder are met with sanctions. Njå characterizes these characteristics as masculine, and one can almost get the impression that his ideal image of “The Man” is men who are distinctly aggressive and horny. Njå also looks with concern at his own perception that the welfare state has become the woman’s new husband. He sees men as redundant in today’s society, unless war breaks out. The storm is raging on Twitter, so there is no doubt that the topic hits a nerve. As a psychologist and doctor, we respond to Njå’s simplified view of what it means to be human, and how we as a species develop our unique personality throughout life. The caricatured perception of masculinity and manhood is unscientific at best. In extreme cases, it can be harmful. Humans are far more than their sex chromosomes. Our personality is determined by more important and complex mechanisms than the hormonal balance alone. Children inherit their personality traits from both mother and father. Who we are and how we develop varies across genders. Among other things, it is influenced by attachment relationships, growing up conditions, life pressures and the culture we live in. We believe that there is a small number of the male population who yearn for a bygone era when honor killings and Viking raids were part of our culture. In one of the largest studies conducted on gender differences in personality traits, the researchers found that men and women are much more similar than different. The study is a meta-analysis that includes over 12 million people. It shows approximately 80 percent overlap for more than 75 percent of the psychological traits examined. Njå is right that when it comes to the extreme ends of the scales, there are differences between the sexes. There, men are more aggressive and women show a greater ability to care. But then it is also not the case that extremes represent the common man. Njå’s presentation is only correct if you compare aggression in men serving time in prison for violence with aggression in the average woman. It is therefore a rather distorted description of reality that he serves, apparently without thinking about whether most men will recognize themselves in his descriptions. Even if adult women and men are more alike than Njå seems to believe, it is still necessary to take school difficulties among boys seriously. Here, too, we believe that Njå’s explanations about the proportion of female teachers in Norwegian classrooms and a feminized school fall short. Research shows that the teacher’s gender has little impact on children’s school performance, while the quality of the teaching is of great importance. Unfortunately, both boys’ and girls’ grades are colored by their social skills and relationship with the teacher. Here, Njå is right that the boys, who mature later, come out at a disadvantage. More physical activity, play and creativity must enter the classrooms to take care of all children’s individual needs and skills. This has been requested by the teaching profession for a long time, but it is governing politicians who set guidelines for how the Directorate of Education should design the curriculum goals in schools. Are we really living in a feminized society, subsidized by men’s tax contributions? Although 60 per cent of those taking higher education are women, there is only a 36 per cent proportion of women among professors in academia. In the period 2009 to 2023, the proportion of female board representatives in joint-stock companies was 18 per cent, while the proportion of women among day-to-day managers in joint-stock companies was 15 per cent. According to figures from Statistics Norway, there were a total of 383,091 limited liability companies in Norway as of February 2023. Among these, the proportion that only had men on the boards was 70 per cent. When it comes to sickness absence, nine out of ten women have the same sickness absence as men. The last proportion of women increases the average sickness absence and makes the gender differences appear larger than they actually are. There is little doubt that men are overrepresented in positions of power in Norway today, even though the welfare state is built by hard-working men and women. The notion that men are systematically discriminated against in a feminized Norway can better be described as an internet phenomenon among men who feel that they are falling short. Perhaps because these men are not allowed to live out aggressive and sexual impulses at the expense of women’s physical and psychological safety. The vast majority of men are well adapted and well integrated into an equal and modern society. We have trouble believing that hordes of men want to return to Viking expeditions, where aggression, rowdiness and rebellion unfolded. Njå serves up a number of stereotypical perceptions, which create popularity among certain sections of the male population, but which will not help boys struggling in school. FOLLOW THE DEBATE:
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Man is more than gender – Expression
