Rhetorical Analysis Of The Myth Of Male Decline By Stephanie Coontz

Rhetorical Analysis of “The Myth of Male Decline”

Many people believe that women are coming up in the world and men are beginning to fall. In the New York Times, “The Myth of Male Decline” by Stephanie Coontz, an author, historian, and faculty member at Evergreen State College, she provides her own thoughts about how women are still second class to men in regards to jobs and pay. Coontz begins building her credibility with facts and statistics, as well as some emotional appeals; however with the amount of statistics she used, she weakened her credibility and overall, her article.

In her article, she first talks about how in recent media they are showing women gaining ground and are being considered the new “breadwinners”. But she goes on to

She points out that, “although women have significantly increased their representation among high earners in America over the past half-century, only 4 percent of the C.E.O.’s in Fortune’s top 1,000 companies are female” (Coontz). She is suggesting that even though women are portrayed as big earners compared to men, they actually don’t even come close to having the well-paying, exclusive jobs that men do. Coontz continues with many logical facts: “Studies show that as occupations gain a higher percentage of female workers, the pay for those jobs goes down relative to wages in similarly skilled jobs that remain bastions of male employment” (Coontz). She is illustrating that workers from the company with the females receive less pay just because of their gender, even though it’s the exact same job of the male company. Coontz also states that, “Among never-married, childless 22- to 30-year-old metropolitan-area workers with the same educational credentials, males out-earn females in every category” (Coontz). She is depicting that even non-married women with no children still don’t make the same amount as males, even though both the men and women have the same credentials. These statistics are just a few of the many in her article that support her claim that it is a troubling problem that women are being discriminated against for their gender in the workforce. The statistics and facts that she provides build an appeal to logos and show the reader that gender discrimination is a problem worth