Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

by Richard V. Reeves

In a fascinating study conducted before the 2016 election, Dan Cassino, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, added an unusual question to a survey of voting intentions: “Do you earn more, less, or about the same as your spouse?” Half the respondents got the question early in the survey, before being asked about voting, and the other half got it after declaring their voting intention. The question was intended to prime men “to think about potential threats to their gender roles,” Cassino writes.36 The results were striking. Men asked the question about spousal earnings early in the survey were much more likely to say they would vote for Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. This was a small poll of around seven hundred registered voters. But Cassino’s experiment hints at the potential for politicians to activate and exploit male anxiety about the loss of status.