Scott Galloway: how tackling the 'crisis of masculinity' would also help close the gender gap

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Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business: Lifting a young man up and also celebrating and being afterburners for women's progress is entirely compatible.

Empathy is not a zero-sum game. Gay marriage didn't hurt heteronormative marriage. Civil rights did not hurt white people.

We are finally coming to the realization that women and the West cannot continue to flourish if young men are flailing.

Robin Pomeroy, host, Radio Davos: Welcome to Radio Davos, the podcast from the World Economic Forum.

Our guest today is an investor and academic, an author, a podcaster. His latest book is called Notes on Being a Man. Welcome Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway: We need to stop this men versus women thing and restore the alliance and say, I think it's wonderful you are doing well, and at the same time ask women to have more empathy for men and not immediately couch this as men against women and believe that all men are somehow a threat to women. That's just not accurate.

Level up. Women are ascending. They're going to want you to level up. And that's a natural part of the marketplace, but there's no reason why you can't level up.

Robin Pomeroy: On this episode, I'm joined by co-host Silja Baller. Hi Silja.

Silja Baller, Head of Economic Inclusion, World Economic Forum: Hi Robin. Thanks so much.

Robin Pomeroy: Tell us what you do at the World Economic Forum.

Silja Baller: I look after the Economic Inclusion portfolio at the World Economic Forum. And we work on understanding economic gaps for underrepresented groups, including for women. And we do this across the economy.

So of course, we look at labour markets, but also increasingly financial markets and innovation ecosystems.

And very excited to be able to talk about all of these with our guest today.

Robin Pomeroy: And our guest today is Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway: Thanks, Robin. Thanks, Silja.

Robin Pomeroy: Let's talk about your book, Notes on Being a Man. I'm very, very interested, because Silja is involved in the Gender Gap Report, which looks at the difference between attainment by women across all kinds of sectors.

You've taken a very interesting look at the differences between men and women, and the situation of men and masculinity. Why did you write this book, and why did you right it now?

Scott Galloway: Well, I think the data is stark.

I think you could fairly argue that no cohort in America has fallen further faster than young men. One in three men are still living at home at the age of 25. One in five are still at home in the age 30. Only one in three is in a relationship versus two in three women. And you say, well, that is mathematically impossible. It's not because women are dating older, because they want more economically, emotionally viable partners. 60-40 female to male college attendance and maybe 2-1 college grads in certain states because men drop out at a greater rate. And finally, if you go into a morgue and there's five people who died by suicide, four are men.

And what's making the problem worse or getting in the way of addressing it, I think there's a lack of empathy because of the unfair advantage men of my generation registered. So if you look at the US 1945 to 1995 which is five percent of the population, we garnered or registered one third of the world's economic growth.

So if you think about it, we had six times the prosperity of the rest of the world, crudely speaking, and then all of that massive prosperity was crammed into one third the population that was white, heterosexual, and male.

So I think people have a fair gag reflex when they see someone of my identity, quite frankly, talking about the problems of men because it's reasonable to say we've had a 3,000 year head start, and the question is, should young men be held accountable and pay the price for my unfair advantage? And I think as a result, young men are not getting the empathy that any other group would receive where they encounter the same types of obstacles.

Robin Pomeroy: There's a lot of talk about a crisis of masculinity. There are a lot very negative role models out there for men, macho men, misogynistic men. And there's this phrase, toxic masculinity. I notice in your book, you say that toxic masculinity can't be a thing because masculinity has to be seen as positive.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think it's an oxymoron. And that is there's cruelty, there's abuse, there's leveraging your power for terrible means in the workplace, there is violence.

But masculinity is to, in my view, to protect, to provide, to procreate. So I don't think the two are compatible with one another.

Every young person needs a code, and that is a series, an operating system by which to make decisions by. Some people get it from religion, some people get from service in the military, from their job, some from a very strong family unit that has very strong values.

And I would argue a lot of young men are really wanting for a code. Church and attendance religious institutions at all time lows are not going to work as much.

So what I'm trying to put forward is essentially a positive or aspirational code set against the context of masculinity, because I do think people born, most people born as males, have an easier time leaning into some of these things. Which isn't to say wonderful masculinity can't be demonstrated by women, and isn't the say that wonderful attributes of femininity can't can be demonstrated by men.

But at the same time, is there an opportunity to reframe masculinity away from the extremes right now? Because basically we need to find masculinity. They'll say, well, OK, what is masculinity? Well, don't be toxic. Well, what do you mean don't toxic? Well, Don't be violent. Don't aggressive. Don't abusive. Well, OK. It has to be more aspirational than don't be these things.

The far right, to their credit, recognize the masculinity crisis. But their answer is to conflate masculinity with coarseness and cruelty and to take women and non-whites back to the 50s. In a general underlying philosophy that women's ascent somehow caused men's descent, and that could not be further from the truth. I think a core component of masculinity is to recognize and celebrate the progress of our mothers and our sisters and our daughters.

At the same time, the far left, their advice around what it means to be more masculine would be a pause and then we'll act more like a woman. That's not helpful either.

So there has to be something in between being coarse and cruel, and acting more like a woman.

And I think we've done a pretty good job of embracing some of the feminine attributes that are demonstrated by women and celebrating them. But I think, we've decided to kind of pathologize masculinity, and this is from Richard Reeves, one of my role models at the American Institute for Boys and Men. There's something called the Carnegie Award, where they give an award to someone who essentially puts their own personal well-being in danger in the moment to save someone else they've never met. Literally running into the burning house. You're walking by a house that's burning, you run in and you're trying to help people.

There were 81 awards given last year. 77 of those awards went to men. So while men's aggression is positioned as reckless, it can also be valor, I believe, and this gets a lot of pushback, women should have absolutely the same amount of opportunities to be entrepreneurs. And there's an absence of capital, and we were talking about this before, an opportunity, because of the absence of capital to fund more female entrepreneurs. But even the quality of opportunity, I don't think will result in a quality of outcomes. I think there will always be more male entrepreneurs.

And we're so low, if I say women make better managers in general, and they might make better doctors because they have better fine motor skills, better nurturing skills, better bedside manner, everyone just nods. If I were to say, though, that men might make better combat soldiers. And on a risk-adjusted basis, there'll be more male entrepreneurs. Everyone goes quiet, looks around, and then calls me dangerous. So I think it's okay to recognize that the majority of us will have an easier time leaning into certain attributes based on our gender and that we should celebrate them, while not excluding the other gender for people who don't identify, right?

But there has to be a code for young men. And I think masculinity can be a code. And just quite frankly, I relate to some of these startling young men. I was one of them. I didn't have a lot of economic or romantic opportunities. And hadn't it been for big government, which kind of saved my ass with an accessible, affordable education, assisted lunch, Pell grants, taxpayers paid for this amazing communications network called the internet, I don't I think I thereby the grace of God go I could have been easily one of these guys gaming in my parents basement

So I think there's an opportunity for the establishment of a code around masculinity a aspirational one. And I relate to these young men and also I think it's a lot instances I'm saying what a lot of mothers are noticing with boys that there's something going on here with young men. It is really troublesome.

Robin Pomeroy: Silja.

Silja Baller: And to me, one of the overarching questions is really, how do we find our way back to each other? It seems like there's so much division, right?

And the conversation about the crisis that men are facing is happening in different spaces from conversations about the gender gap, and we see a divergence in terms of political leanings. Online spaces, boys and girls are in completely different spheres.

And I wanted to ask you about allyship and also how do we go beyond allyshp because it seems like allyship is more about cheering on from the sidelines as opposed to having the impression that we're actually working on the same cause and we're working in the same direction.

So I'm curious, from the conversations that you've had with other men, how, what's your sense around this?

Scott Galloway: We need to restore the greatest alliance in history, which is greater than NATO, greater than ASEAN, any alliance. The greatest alliance of history is the alliance between men and women.

And the genders have done a great job of convincing themselves that it's the other gender's fault. I mentor a lot of young men, when I know they've come off the tracks, and I've said this twice, I can't help you is one when they start blaming immigrants for their economic problems, but they start blameing women for their romantic problems.

The bottom line is women are leveling up, and naturally, their standards are rising. And that makes sense, just as a man levels up and gets more attributes in the sexual market or mating market, his standards are going to go up. So, there's this basic, this incorrect assessment that women's ascent has somehow come at the cost of men.

Let's go all the way back to World War II. One of the reasons we won the war in five years or in four years from the U.S. participation is because we realized women could build P-51 bombers just as well as men, whereas Hitler decided all women needed to be in the home. If women hadn't been given the rights and protections for some sort of equality in the workplace in the 60s and 70s and 80s, we'd be a second rate economic power to China. So we should be celebrating the progress of our mothers, our daughters and our sisters.

At the same time, women have also decided if you go on TikTok, there's a big trend that says women expect a great deal from a date because they aren't putting themselves in physical harm's way They use the term unalive that if they go on a date, they might be unalived.

Well, here's the data 2,500 women a year are murdered by men. That was way too many is terrible 70% of my people they know So, you know, what is that? 750 or less by quote-unquote strangers. If you go on a date with a man, he is 16 times more likely to go home and hurt himself after that date than hurt you. You are four times more like to die in a car accident, in a car ride, or choking at dinner.

So this notion somehow, the young men are a physical threat to women on a date. That's just a small example of how I think quite frankly a lot of women and progressives are pathologizing and demonizing young men.

So I think that, and there's just this notion that it's men against women. Look at Title IX, which said women have to have unfettered access, which is a great legislation, to college, they should be discriminated against. Okay, 97% of our elected leaders who voted in favour of that were, wait for it, men. This isn't men versus women. This is liberal versus illiberal thought.

There are a lot of women, especially mothers who have a lot of empathy for young men right now want to be part of the solution and there are a lot of young men, they don't want to demonize the transgender community, want women to have bodily autonomy, see how wonderful it is that women are doing well.

So we need to stop this men versus women thing and restore the alliance and say, I think it's wonderful you are doing, and at the same time ask women to have more empathy for men and not immediately couch this as men against women and believe that all men are somehow a threat to women. That's just not accurate.

Robin Pomeroy: And how do we do that? I mean, I've heard you speak on this subject. I know there's kind of macro and micro changes you'd like to see in society, things that, literally, the macroeconomics, which will help young men, and also young women, lift them up in a way so that's ticked one box away. I mean we don't have time to go through all the things, but can you give us an example of a macro policy, and maybe a micro thing that people can do for themselves?

Scott Galloway: I'll give you seven on a rattle off. The incumbents want to weaponize the illusion of complexity to pretend these problems are unsolvable. All of these problems are solvable.

Robin Pomeroy: You're talking about the incumbent government of the USA here.

Scott Galloway: Well, not only the incumbent government but the incumbent asset owners.

Robin Pomeroy: I see.

Scott Galloway: A big problem amongst young people not mating is they can't afford to buy a home. They're not economically viable. People under the age of 40 are 24% less wealthy than people under the age 40, 40 years ago, people over the age of 70 are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago.

There are economic policies that have deliberately transferred money from young people to old people. This hurts men and women, young men and woman, but it especially hurts young men because they are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic viability, just as women are disproportionately evaluated based their esthetics. Is it unfair? Yes. Is it the way the world is? Yes.

So, some programmes. Red shirt boys entering kindergarten for a year, boys biologically are 18 months behind a woman, more men in K through 12, expand freshman class size opportunity for not only more males, but more women, more transgender, more gay kids, more Republicans in red states, but stop this bullshit rejectionist culture adopted by my industry where we get some sort of psychological compensation by rejecting 90% of the people who show up.

Stop these ridiculous economic policies that are nothing but a filled, thinly veiled transfer of wealth from elected officials who are very old, being elected by even older people, and then voting themselves more money. Too big as tax cuts, mortgage interest rate, tax deduction, capital gains. Who owns homes and stocks? Guy' my age. Who rents and makes some money from current income? Some of the dudes in this room. We have purposely transferred money from young to old. Let's restore their economic viability.

It's pretty, it's pretty damn simple. More opportunity for young people, stop weaponized housing permits. As soon as people own a home, they get very concerned with traffic. It shouldn't be drill baby drill, it should be build baby build.

More homes, more freshman seats at college, a tax policy that invests in young people and stops robbing from them. So it's very simple. Less expensive housing, more attainable and affordable education, and putting more money in the pockets of young people which will lift them all up, but quite frankly disproportionately help men who are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic viability.

And then finally, mandatory national service. Let's put people in the company of each other so they can see that women can make great leadership positions, that men can be great in health care, that people from different sexual orientations, ethnic groups, income groups. When you're in a foxhole next to something, who that person's father is doesn't mean a thing anymore. Lowest levels of young adult depression in the Western world, Israel and Singapore. What do they have? mandatory national service. There are a ton of things we can do to help fix these problems.

Robin Pomeroy: I wasn't expecting that one, mandatory national service. Well, Europe's going in that direction for various reasons. Silja's dying to get back in, but I just want to ask you, what about if I'm a young man? I'm not in that position. What can I do? I can't wait for all these wonderful things to happen in the outside world. What can I do?

Scott Galloway: Recognize that you have more agency than 99 percent of men who've ever walked the planet. A lot of men complain about the absence of mating opportunities. The reality is throughout history, 80 percent of women have reproduced, only 40 percent of men. In the U.S. It's 75 percent of the men, 85 percent.

So as difficult as the mating market is now, Historically, it's never been better for men in the West, right? It's gotten worse the last 20 or 30 years, they would argue, but it's still pretty good.

If you do, I call it the rule of three. So if you do these three things: one, you work out at least three times a week. Two, you spend at least 30 hours a week working outside the home. Can be an Uber driver, a Task Rabbiter. While employment has gotten more difficult, youth unemployment is ten percent. That's a historical low, right? And then three times a month put yourself in the company of strangers and the purpose in the service of something bigger, volunteer group, church group, sports league, riding.

If you do those three things you immediately put yourself on top five percent of young men The bar has been lowered quite frankly. And if you were in the top five percent of young men for long enough. I hate the incel movement most of these men should call themselves v-cells They're voluntarily celibate. They've given up. If you put yourself in the top 5% with those three things for long enough you will be over time voluntarily incelibate, which is awesome. We need to get you away with this incel movement. I think it is terrible. I think there's young men giving up and feeling sorry for themselves. But if I'm a young man, you have more agency than 99% of the men in history.

Level up. Women are ascending. They're going to want you to level up. And that's a natural part of the marketplace, but there's no reason why you can't level up

Robin Pomeroy: Does that mean if you manage to level yourself up by doing those three things, also you're going to be a better friend to women, less of a misogynist?

Scott Galloway: I 100% think so. One of the keys to getting a girlfriend is to have girl friends. Put yourself in the company of other people. Express friendship.

Because what is going to happen? You're going to start to figure out things like what's more important than hide and money? This amazing thing called follow up questions. You're going to learn what women value. You're going to learn how to read a room. And by the way, if you demonstrate excellence to that girl friend, she will introduce you to her friends. You will be less awkward around strangers.

I was an incel until I was 19. I desperately wanted a girlfriend in high school, but no one was willing to participate in my plan. So I levelled up. I started working out. I went to UCLA. I got a job. I made girl friends and started figuring out what I thought would impress women. And they started introducing me to different women.

Having girl platonic friendships is key to getting a girlfriend.

So I think there's. Again, men, and they face this almost indomitable foe of godlike technology from the deepest pocketed companies in the world who have one objective. And that is to sequester you from everybody else. To convince you you can have a reasonable facsimile of life, you don't need friends, you have Discord and Reddit, you don't need work, you got crypto and Coinbase, and you don't need to go through the pain, the humiliation, the expense and rejection of trying to find a romantic partner because you have porn.

Well, guess what? You follow that, you go down that rabbit hole, by the time you're 30, you're going to be anxious, depressed, obese and alone.

And I can promise you the fear of anything that faces you outside is dwarfed by the anxiety and depression you're going to feel not taking those risks. Get out.

I hate the anti-alcohol movement. I think young people should get out and drink more. I think that young people can go out, and I say this sort of jokingly, and drink more and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off.

You need to be in the company of other mammals. Nothing great is ever going to happen to you on a screen.

Silja Baller: I actually wanted to loop back to this intersection with the economy that we were talking about earlier and think a little bit about who is actually building our future economy. What does our technological future look like, and who is building that?

If we look at the financial markets and investment landscape, we have about less than 20% of women in leadership positions in private equity and venture capital. There's this famous number of only 2% of venture capital going to women entrepreneurs. Now, we have a big opportunity with the great wealth transfer and women actually owning more wealth. But how do we convert this into allocator power? How do we covert this into investment decisions? And are there other ways in which we can have actually a broader range of people building our future economy?

Scott Galloway: So just ten years ago, 40% of all venture capitalists were white dudes from one of two schools, Harvard and Stanford. So naturally they're going to invest in people that remind them of themselves, establish relationships with people that remind them themselves. And I bet that 40% number is underrepresentative because I bet it was 60 or 70% of allocated capital.

I remember going in for the final pitch for the company that funded my last company, L2. And my two co-founders were female, and everything's great. You have to meet the partners. We met all 27 partners in one meeting, and they said, we need to speak to you. And they said, you know, we can't take their money. I said, what's up? They said, they're all men. And I felt embarrassed. Now, one of the 27 partners, this was 2014, was a woman. Now it is nine of their 36 partners. So still a long way to go, but it's gone from zero to 25%.

The thing ultimately that will fix this is the following, is a couple well publicized huge outcomes from companies started by female founders.

And that's probably in the pipeline. There's a number of unicorns now founded by women and that will, that quite frankly, nothing changes the market like the greed glands get going and that is if that community of female founders.

I'm going to virtue signal right now. I did an analysis of the 31 people that have had seven figure equity outcomes at the companies I've started, 27 are female or LGBTQ. And it wasn't my progressive values. It wasn't me trying to be a good person. Wasn't me try to improve the state of the world. But I found if I offered people flexible work in the 90s, I got this incredible talent pool that were leaving the corporate world.

So just as I think there's this under, there's quite frankly, there's alpha in females right now. And that is if you look at FemTech or FemHealth, feminine health is under invested right now, right? So I think that while we need to be cognizant of the actual numbers, I think what will actually shift it is when there's some well publicized multi-billion dollar outcomes from female founders.

Robin Pomeroy: Silja is a big part of the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Report. From what you're saying, Scott, I think you would probably agree with her that the gender gap between men and women is a problem that needs to be solved. What you are also saying is, now the analysis is there's a stratum of young men who need help to be lifted up. I think some people have interpreted what you say as those two things are in conflict. Can you convince us they're not and they actually agree with each other?

Scott Galloway: Lifting our young men up and also celebrating and being afterburners for women's progress is entirely compatible. Empathy is not a zero-sum game. Gay marriage didn't hurt heteronormative marriage. Civil rights did not hurt white people. We are finally coming to the realization that women and the West cannot continue to flourish if young men are flailing.

Young men, unfortunately, when they aren't doing well, are quite frankly more dangerous than young women. And I'm not trying to repackage violence. I'm not in any way insinuating that, oh, help young men or it's going to become violent.

And also no one has a right to reproduce, no one has the right to a job, no group is responsible for servicing another group economically or romantically.

But the bottom line is when young men come off the tracks, when a young woman is not doing well or doesn't have a relationship, she pours that energy into her friend network, her professional network, and herself sometimes. And I'm not to say that's not, it's a good thing, but there's this cartoon of a lonely woman in her thirties who didn't find love, let's call her Lisa, Lisa's just fine. Lisa typically has a job and a very strong friend network.

When a man doesn't have a relationship, hasn't cohabitated or lived with someone by the time he's 30, there's a one in three chance he's going to be a substance abuser.

And who wants more economically and emotionally viable young men? Women! So let's again restore the greatest alliance in history and recognize that women still face huge problems in the workplace, especially once they have kids. That 27% of our elected leaders being women, that means there's still a big problem.

Let's address the fact that women feel very understandably hesitant to engage in relationship because of the threat of sexual assault, there are still huge problems.

We can walk and chew gum at the time and recognize that our young men are really struggling and deserve more attention than they're getting because people look at me and say, boss, you've had it so good for so long. I'm not going to listen to your problems around young men. That is not the answer.

Robin Pomeroy: Scott Galloway, thanks very much for joining us on Radio Davos.

Scott Galloway: Thank you, I enjoyed that.

Robin Pomeroy: We've been recording lots of great interviews here at Davos at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum.

To be sure not to miss them, follow Radio Davos and Meet the Leader, that's our sister programme, wherever you get podcasts or you can find them all at wef.ch/podcasts.

I'm Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic forum, thanks for listening and watching Radio Davos. From me and from Silja, goodbye for now.