The XX Factor: What women really think.

Real Men Don't Take Dictation

When the focus of an economy changes from making stuff to helping people—that is, manufacturing to services—low-skilled men drop out of the labor market in droves. A new study of unemployed men in Manchester, England, suggests that "idealized embodied masculinity" is partly to blame. Manual labor, claims Sociologist Darren Nixon, imbues working class men with a sense of pride that helps compensate for the very fact of being working class. They may not be financially dominant, but they feel relatively masculine compared to their white, middle class counterparts.