It also means that because I know and have experienced exactly how the tech industry is covert – and not in a Chuck Bartowski kind of way – that I should somehow know how to navigate the mines. That I should somehow be farther ahead than I am. But I don’t. And I’m not.

I don’t think it’s just me. It’s other women too. They feel uncomfortable. The simple act of writing about women in tech means I’m asking them to define their relationship with tech as more than their roles in PR, human resources, marketing and community management. It’s insinuating that those roles aren’t good enough. That women need to code. That they need to be the founders and visionaries and C-level execs. There is a sense that women don’t want these roles, but really, there is not even an inch – not even a centimeter! – of a clear path to get there.

So, women in tech are stuck on a career roundabout when men logically take the next exits to code, found, and invest. Pseudo-equality exists, but only to satiate the cries for respect and inclusion, not to actually address or eliminate sexism. For instance, the typical response to the lack of women in tech is to form pockets of women, which just adds more turbulence to the discussion: tech blogs publish posts from women about a woman’s role in tech; a tech meet-up features presentations from female-only founders; women form mailing lists for other women to discuss the problem of more women in tech.

In reality, guest posts from women on tech blogs need to be about topics other than themselves. When women are invited to blog on Tech Crunch, they write about women. They don’t write about tech. Last time I checked, however, our knowledge extends far beyond that of ourselves. And, just because a woman is speaking doesn’t mean she speaks for me. I don’t particularly like talking about shoes and I certainly don’t believe that because women love to shop that we control the Internet. And yet, that’s the message so far, twice-over this year, when women take the pen on Tech Crunch.

Without a voice in these places and without access to leadership in others, it seems women are keen to start women-only groups and mailing lists to promote new leadership and get ourselves heard. But while that’s an easy route, it’s not the most effective. Particularly because existing leaders and power-brokers will never attend your meetups and will never join your conversations. We all just end up talking to people like ourselves.

Too many women-only groups exist now to stop them, but really, I don’t disagree with them in theory, just in execution. So here’s a simple solution now: co-plan and co-sponsor your next event. Bring both audiences and decisions-makers together. Invite a man to your Google Group in exchange for a seat at his CEO breakfast. Separate interests are well and good, but not when you silo dialogue and interaction.

And that’s doubly and triply true at tech events. The segregation of women and men on stage needs to stop. So, if you organize an event an like the DC Tech Meetup and you get complaints about the persistence of your all-male panels, your response should not be to create an all-female panel.

There are no make-up tests for equality. You can’t just show up with all the available women in one room and expect a gold star. It is far less important to see all the women in tech at once than it is to see all the women in tech as speakers over time consistently and often. There are a minority of women in tech (for reasons we’ve talked so far about here and here), but that doesn’t beget special gloves. Such an event is unavoidably condescending, and it also means you won’t have any women for your next event; the cycle of men on stage continues.

(Case in point, of the seventeen speakers and panelists scheduled at yesterday’s DC Tech Meetup, the event following their all-female panel, only one was a woman. That’s not good enough.)

I don’t think that the majority of men, or women for that matter, are intentionally holding women back and fencing them out of the tech industry. But no one is being particularly smart about the issue either. It seems everyone is throwing spaghetti on the cupboard to see what sticks. But we can do better. This is start-up land, after all. We know how to test and evaluate, to solve problems and find solutions. And we already know, the only way to have enough people working on the big problems, is to solve this little one.

Generation Z is the most technologically immersed and advanced generation ever. They are known as “digital natives”  because they have never known a world without iPhones, laptops, video games, chat windows, tabs and texts. On airplanes, toddlers are abated with digital shows and video games instead of stuffed animals and paper coloring books.

Such tech-ubiquity means Gen Z holds the following traits above and beyond any other generation, all of which will eliminate gender inequality:

1. Multi-tasking. Gen Z are innate multi-taskers, and are primed to want instant and immediate outcomes. It also means that Gen Z wants clarity and simplicity – some say they tend to oversimplify – but this is good for inequality. Gen Z won’t have the time or patience to engage in the nuances of gender, and thus, will simply allow people to just be “who they are.”

In the “Becoming Chaz” documentary, Chaz Bono remarked it was the youngest members of his family that took his transition from female to male the easiest. In fact, these youngsters said it wasn’t a big deal at all. That’s just “who he is,” they said.

2. Globalized empathy. Part of their ease with gender is that Gen Z is well-educated. “They are much more connected to the outside world than previous generations,” says Alec Mackenzie, an eighth-grade Spanish, language arts and film teacher. “They know what is hanging in the Louvre because they’ve seen it on the Internet. They know more about the world because they visit it on the computer.”

As such, they are much more empathetic and knowledgeable to the plights of their peers. Generally known to be wise beyond their years (“12 has become the new 22,” says one Gen Zer) and living in a fully postmodern era, they are especially aware that everything is a social construct, particularly gender. They shy away from sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black.

3. Lack of ambition. Their elders are already bemoaning Gen Z’s lack of ambition, but that is really their dis-enthrallment with traditional power structures and control. Gen Z is growing up in a world where the old power structures have already fallen apart (marriage: divorce, wealth: financial meltdown, security: terrorism), so there is nothing left to put on a pedestal.

Climbing the ladder will become less important as a result. Gen Z will job-hop in their careers to find satisfaction, just like they multi-task in their daily lives. They’re expected to have at least five careers and more than 20 employers in positions that don’t even exist today. It’s hard to be ambitious when you don’t know what the future will hold.

“They are very collaborative and creative. They will change the workplace dramatically in terms of work style and expectations,” argues technology professor Larry Rosen. While Gen Y strived for team-oriented work approaches and collaborative environments, it will be Gen Z who really reaps the benefit. As old power structures melt away, and the status quo becomes working together instead of in competition, women and men will find themselves on an even-playing field.

4. Pleasure-seeking. Those power structures will shift from the workplace to personal lives. Previous generations have paved the way for a workplace that was first live to work (Boomers), then work to live or work/life balance (Gen X), and is now live with work or work/life blur (Gen Y). Taking this to it’s natural conclusion, Gen Z will live. Work will take a backseat to Gen Z’s hedonism.

Already Gen Z has a reputation as pleasure-seeking and consumerist. Not to mention anyone can be a star now and have their own following due to the decentralized web. Consumerism used to confer status (which was traditionally wrapped up in a man’s success and career), but Gen Z will buy things simply to feel something. When that happens, when men and women care less about power and more about pleasure, equality will be easier.

5. Remote workers. “Computers have blurred the line between the workplace and home for adults, and the same is true for today’s students,” argues Duane Mendoza, a technology resource teacher. Via web-based lessons, students in Mendoza’s yearbook class are able to work from anywhere.

Gen Y blurred work and life to work remotely because they wanted flexibility and fulfillment. But Gen Z will work remotely because they know no other way. They prefer to communicate via email and text. While replacing side-by-side and eye-to-eye human connections with quick, disembodied e-exchanges may seem counter-intuitive, it will allow sexual innuendo to stop. Not being in the same physical location alone will decrease harassment. And when Gen Z isn’t working in person, they won’t be able to see the perpetuity of men in power that keeps men in power.

Gen Y believes in equality, but can’t have it because they’re stuck in a workplace with outdated paradigms. Gen Z won’t be stuck there though. They’ll be at the coffee shop with their friends on their laptops. As a result, Gen Z will be the first generation where women and men are mutually respected not just in their personal lives and relationships, but also at work.

In the comments below, let me know me know the single biggest insight you gained from today’s post. Of course, if you have additional ideas or resources about Gen Z, technology, and the future of equality, share them below as well.

“Only an elite gains the ability to fully exploit the new medium on offer,” writes Douglas Rushkoff in Program or Be Programmed. “The rest learn to be satisfied with gaining the ability offered by the last new medium. The people hear while the rabbis read; the people read while those with access to the printing press write; today we write, while our techno-elite programs. As a result, most of society remains one full dimensional leap of awareness and capability behind the few who manage to monopolize access to the real power of any media age.”

Young white males are still in charge just as they have always been. If you want real equality, everyone needs to build the revolution. Women need to learn how to code.

“Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer internet and e-commerce companies.  Especially when it comes to social and shopping, women rule the Internet,” argues Aileen Lee on Tech Crunch. She goes on to reveal that 77% of Groupon’s customers are female and that women oversee over 80% of consumer spending, or about $5 trillion dollars annually.

All well and good, but women do not rule the Internet. We are not deciding how these experiences are being developed, built or regulated. We are not deciding how products are displayed, inventoried, or marketed. We are not creating the user interfaces or user experience.

While more than 50% of the US population are female, 92% of founders are male and 87% of founding teams are all-male, report several studies. Not to mention computer science is one of the last disciplines where there is a gender imbalance in the US: about 80% male, 20% female.

Arguing that women control the Internet because we love to shop only panders to and reinforces the social construct that will truly bring equality: being part of the revolution as it happens.

No longer is it enough to know how to put together a slide deck or write and publish a blog post. Instead of learning how to build the software, we learn how to use the software. And when you use programs that are made for us without understanding how they work, you allow the technology to teach you. But you can teach the technology. Programming decides the limitations, the possibilities. It’s all within the variables and commands behind the curtain.

Maybe you don’t mind all this. If you want to be directed by technology and those who have mastered it, that’s fine. But don’t expect any semblance of equality any time soon. If you want to direct technology however, if you want to be at the forefront of this revolution and define what life will look like, you need to code.

“Gender imbalance materially impacts innovation,” VC Brad Feld told me in a recent interview. “Over the next twenty years, the only way we’ll have enough software engineers working on hard problems is to get more women involved. In addition, I believe that mixed gender teams are more effective at driving innovation and, especially when you consider many of the products being created impact our every day lives, it’s clearly a major inhibitor not to have women involved in the creation of these products.”

No kidding. Why is innovation, that which influences everything else, still ruled by young white males? If the new literacy is programming, women are just as behind as ever. “We lose sight of the fact that the programming—the code itself—is the place from which the most significant innovations emerge,” argues Rushkoff.

Feminism has run stagnant with modern young women, but I have its rallying cry for the new century: program your life. Don’t let others do it for you. Women will not find equality by giving themselves credit or solving workplace flexibility. Even when we do everything right, we still fail women. But today, the web allows such low barriers to entry that anyone can control our future. Let’s hope anyone includes more than a few women.

And choice sounded good until hitting the reality of biology.

Feminist back-tracking all the way to mainstream 60 Minutes and others inundated female consciousness with some alarming counsel:  career women risk infertility, miscarriage and general unhappiness. So don’t wait; there is a deadline for “having it all.”

It was a lose-lose situation. Choose a career and risk having a family, or choose a family and risk having a career. The biological clock guaranteed you couldn’t have both. Many women tried – and failed – to sneak marriage in at just the right moment to have a career without kids for a few years, but not too late that the fertility window closed. It turned out only women of privilege could pull that off, and only through the latest scientific advancements.

Despite reality, choice brought about certain expectations. Women were expected to fill the same categories as men. If men shot guns and went to war, women should not only be able to do the same, but with the same performance. Women could hold public office or play sports or fix houses just as well as men.

None of that happened in large numbers however. After 30 years, women today aren’t represented in positions where men have traditionally held power, and still can’t close the salary gap. Faced with such disheartening realities, scientists, journalists, and feminists decided the reason wasn’t because discrimination and difference are still rampant (apparently, society is too evolved for such a notion), but rather that men and women are different.

The differences extend far beyond having a penis or a vagina, and supposedly prove that women simply aren’t interested or wired to thrive in traditionally male-dominated areas like say, math.

Brain scans show that women aren’t good at math so women will never be engineers, technologists, or scientists. Women are too empathetic to be CEOs. Women aren’t competitive enough to be in start-ups. Career blogger Penelope Trunk exemplifies the prevailing attitude in a recent post: “It’s outdated to think there are no differences between men and women. And once we accept there are differences, we need to study them instead of downplay them.”

Trunk goes on to make the argument (with brain scan images and all) that “we can say, with a decent amount of certainty, that the average girl is as good at math as the average boy,” because of decades of data.

Author Cordelia Fine argues in her methodical and myth-busting book Delusions of Gender, that “[those] who argue that there are hardwired differences between the sexes that account for the gender status quo often like to position themselves as courageous knights of truth, who brave the stifling ideology of political correctness,” but these claims made by so-called experts are “simply coating old-fashioned stereotypes with a veneer of scientific credibility.”

And that veneer is easily cracked. The things that hold women back aren’t biologically wired, but socially and culturally ingrained. Fine methodically turns popular science on its head to punch a giant hole in neurosexism.

“Although it’s not yet clear what it is, exactly, about neuroscience that is so persuasive, it’s been found that people find scientific arguments more compelling when accompanied by an image showing brain activation rather than, say, a bar graph showing the same information,” reports Fine.

It turns out white versus gray matter in the brain is a relatively useless determination of what creates gender difference. The real cause is something that’s much easier to understand, but harder to accept – we create it, every day.

Gender is socially constructed to the point that simply asking a person to mark whether they are male or female, or having a person write their name, will prime their behavior and actions, and affect how they achieve on tests and in life.

Most data will show men test better than women in math. But when women are tested on their math ability and told that “despite testing on thousands of students, no gender difference has ever been found,” they “outperform every other group – including both groups of men. In other words, the standard presentation of a test seemed to suppress women’s ability, but when the same test was presented to women as equally hard for men and women, it ‘unleashed their mathematics potential,’” reports Fine.

Trunk isn’t alone in propagating neuro-falsehoods, however. We’re now told that to walk into a classroom or workplace without knowledge of how the brain works (and how certain abilities are biologically pre-determined) is actually detrimental in terms of treating both genders equally.

Well-loved VC Fred Wilson recently posted an interview with his wife Joanne Wilson in which she argued gender difference starts “from the time you come out of the womb. Boys gravitate towards blocks. Girls gravitate to the dolls. That’s a generalization but in general, its true. I look at my own kids – my son, gamer extraordinaire. My daughters used to play those games but then they lost interest.”

Wilson is wrong on both accounts – as a result of gender priming and salience, gender difference starts far before a child exits the womb.

“Women who knew the sex of their unborn baby described the movements of sons and daughters differently,” reports Fine. “All were ‘active,’ but male activity was more likely to be described as ‘vigorous’ and ‘strong.’ Female activity, by contrast, was described in gentler terms: ‘Not violent, not excessively energetic, not terribly active were used for females.’”

And the gravitation for young girls and boys towards certain types of toys is not because of a biologically ingrained or wired reason, but because children start learning the gender ropes early on. Fine reports: “As they approach their second birthday, children are already starting to pick up the rudiments of gender stereotyping.”

It is no mistake that having not achieved equality by choice, or through the impossible success of “having it all,” that women are now being told that they are just born that way (as women) with all the rules and limitations the gender entails.  It is no mistake these supposed biologically ingrained differences are too large to surmount. It is no mistake that while consciously reported beliefs are modern, progressive and indicative of an enlightened and evolved society that unconscious actions and behaviors are remarkably reactionary and indicative of the large discrimination, difference and inequality that still exist.

It is no mistake gender is one of the most salient social constructions. And it is no mistake the construct consistently fails women.

Arrington’s counter-point, an article in the Wall Street Journal, is equally insidious. The Journal reports that Mediaite founder Rachel Sklar “co-founded a group called ‘Change the Ratio’ to shine a light on women in entrepreneurial roles, and to address the dearth of women at start-ups” and goes on to report that technology investor Fred Wilson said “the industry needs catalysts to spark a virtuous circle of more successful women-led tech start-ups leading to more women in tech start-ups.”

Wilson pledges to “write about successful women entrepreneurs and prod conference hosts to include women on panels. ‘Little things like that will make a big difference,’” he says.

Arrington, Skylar, Wilson, and the many, many other opinions in an uproar about this are really arguing the same thing:  we need more exposure and awareness around women and tech. Their points of differentiation center on how much exposure will actually move the needle and create an acceptable number of women in tech. But how much or how little is irrelevant.

Women don’t need exposure. We need strategy. We need equality.

Interviewing women and inviting women to conferences and reporting on women-founded start-ups and creating women-focused events and so on and so forth might make everyone feel a bit better and be politically correct, but does little to actually support women.  These obvious proof points make it easy for Arrington and Wilson and Sklar to say, “Look! I’m doing my part!”

But women are less likely to advance in their careers despite all this “support.” And that’s because they’re not actively sponsored the way men are, the Harvard Business Review reports. “Many women explain how mentoring relationships have helped them understand themselves, their preferred styles of operating, and ways they might need to change as they move up the leadership pipeline.”

Arrington’s ideas are a good example of such encouragement; he argues that women may be too nurturing and risk averse for tech and alludes that changing that behavior is the key to more start-up companies founded by women.

“By contrast, men tell stories about how their bosses and informal mentors have helped them plan their moves and take charge in new roles, in addition to endorsing their authority publicly,” the study says. Men develop a special kind of relationship with other men that goes “beyond giving feedback and advice” and instead has men using their influence to advocate and ensure the success of male friends.

The rules of the old boys club have already been passed down to the young boys and without the key, women have somehow garnered special attention and kid glove treatment. But we need more than well-meaning supporters and intentions.

Just let us play the game on the same field.

To Michael Arrington’s credit, his walk seems to outpace the talk of Fred Wilson and Rachel Sklar. But watching the pendulum swing between who to blame neglects the obvious: equality isn’t about keeping score. That’s what business is for.

See you in the club.

Start-Up Games.

The right to be a woman, in the finest sense, relies on such confidence.

My two-piece bathing suit beguiles a certain flirtatious composure (it’s got polka dots), and at 5’8” (okay, 5’7” and a half) and 130 lbs, I wear it well. According to my original Illinois driver’s license, that identifying information hasn’t changed for ten years. I still weigh the same as I did in high school, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think I feel fat.

When I look at pictures of myself, I can see rationally that I am skinny, that I look skinny. That I am healthy, and I look healthy. That I am beautiful, and I look beautiful. Rationally, these are all facts that can be written and entered into evidence.

Quite irrationally, I can tell you that the daily struggle of being a woman is that my stomach expands when I eat, my thighs are big and my hips are large. I also worry about the backs of my arms, the portion of my leg directly underneath my butt, and the meeting place of my neck to the space underneath my chin.

Necessary qualifiers: I have an active lifestyle, I love to cook, I love to eat, I don’t read so-called women’s magazines and I usually love my biggest “flaws” – my thin lips, pale skin, imperfect nose and uneven eyebrows, thin fingernails, fine hair, big feet, small breasts, large rear. I’ve been known to run errands without make-up.

But I am looking in the mirror more often lately. Ryan says this to me, over Christmas vacation, while we sit in a high-rise condo that has a mirror on every wall and round every corner. There are a lot of mirrors here, I reply, but I know what he is talking about. He is worried about me, he says.

I don’t wonder at air-brushed models but the pre-teen girl walking down the street in West Palm Beach, dressed with too many inches exposed on her sapling thighs. Or the girls at the Philly wedding whose legs are the size of my arms and whose arms are the size of my wrists. Is this sickness? Disease? Good genes?

A couple mornings later, I spend too much time getting dressed considering I work for a start-up with a casual dress code. I dress up because I like to. I try not to stand out too much from my colleagues who wear jeans and sweatshirts by wearing a cotton t-shirt fabric scarf, or nice boots over leggings. I wear a lot of casual dresses with tights. I try to match the VPs (all men), but since there are no women executives, it’s difficult to know if I’ve got it right.

I could go on.

And then, on any given day, I read about why there are fewer women CEOs, that women are better CEOs, that women are less promising as candidates for promotion, that surgeons can now relocate fat from your thigh to your chest, that kids see housework as a women’s domain, just 4% of venture capital goes to women, wives earn more than their husbands, and just being a woman is a pre-existing condition in healthcare.

I find the truth somewhere, not in the piling up of research, like clothes discarded on my floor, but in accounts from real-life women, between the lines in their interviews, bluntly stated in their ethos, and shared and protected among friends.

“The truth is,” Joanne Lipman says, a former deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal and founding editor in chief of Condé Nast Portfolio magazine, “women haven’t come nearly as far as we would have predicted 25 years ago. Somewhere along the line, especially in recent years, progress for women has stalled. And attitudes have taken a giant leap backward.”

Ever since Carol Bartz became CEO of Yahoo, I’ve been watching her closely. I love that she’s a woman leading a tech company, I love that she’s outspoken, and despite all her detractors, I think she’s going to do amazing things for Yahoo. Every interview she does is awesome, and I particularly liked these quotes from a recent piece in the New York Times:

When people come to me and say, “I can’t work for so-and-so anymore,” I say, “Well, what have you learned from so-and-so?” People want to take a bad situation and say, “Oh, it’s bad.” No, no. You have to deal with what you’re dealt. Otherwise you’re going to run from something and not to something. And you should never run from something.

–

I grew up in the Midwest. My mom died when I was 8, so my grandmother raised my brother and me. She had a great sense of humor, and she never really let things get to her. My favorite story is when we were on a farm in Wisconsin; I would have probably been 13. There was a snake up in the rafter of the machine shed. And we ran and said, “Grandma, there’s a snake.” And she came out and she knocked it down with a shovel, chopped its head off and said, “You could have done that.” And, you know, that’s the tone she set. Just get it done. Just do it. Pick yourself up. Move on. Laugh.

–

Via the New York Times.

In some more research related to my post on feeling pressure to marry early, Pew Demographics reveals some fascinating statistics in their infographic on marriage and divorce. For starters, the numbers back up my assertion that Midwest women marry earlier; a Wisconsin’s woman median age of first marriage at 26 is a full two years earlier than a New York’s woman median age of first marriage at 28.

And in another intriguing twist, it seems that the rate of divorce seems to increase in States where couples marry sooner and is lower in States where couples hold off a couple years, with some interesting exceptions.

Pew Infographic via GOOD.

There’s a lot of pressure to settle down, never mind the fact that I don’t feel anywhere near ready to have children. And while I can imagine my life with Ryan, I don’t see the rush. With previous boyfriends, things could have ended at any moment. Now I have time.

In the Midwest, however, I do not. Twenty-six years of age is starting to get old and the female role models to dispel such rumors are few and far between. I can’t, in fact, think of a single woman in Madison that I look up to and follow for her career. Perhaps because the women I know in leadership roles exemplify negative stereotypes, and perhaps because there are simply more men than women leading business here.

It’s difficult, yes. When I graduated college and entered the real world, I had no idea how difficult it would be. Even in the start-up world, women are barely a consideration. When it comes to founding successful companies, apparently old guys rule. Young guys have a shot too. But women aren’t even part of the equation.

And while I love my job and am lucky to have been given opportunities I wasn’t afforded in previous positions, the patterns, however unintentional, are still there. It’s predominately male in our office and women are predictably relegated to the customer service and marketing departments.

The same pattern is propagated throughout society. For instance, Nisha Chittal reports on a study from Media Matters for America that shows on average, Sunday Morning show guests are 80 percent male (on shows like Chris Matthews, Fox News Sunday, Face the Nation, and Meet the Press).

And yet women do seem to make great strides career-wise. Ernst & Young went so far as to say that the world needs more female bosses. “Investing in women to drive economic growth is not simply about morality or fairness. It’s about honing a competitive edge,” Ernst & Young chairman and CEO Lou Pagnutti said. “Women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India.”

But the Midwest seems to be particularly fond of holding onto the old formula of success for women: meet, marry, opt-out. This is purely anecdotal of course. The newest Census study shows it’s actually a myth that privileged, well-educated women are opting-out. Even when broken down by geographic location, the Midwest has drastically more married couples with children and both parents in the labor force, compared to say, California or New York (see page 15 in the report).

Which makes me think we’re not telling the right stories.

I recently broke down to Ryan, “I don’t want to be like the young couples we sit with at weddings or the rich ones we meet at events. Their eyes are so vacant. So disappointed. They’re stunned or seemingly regretful. It scares me.”

“Rebecca,” he replied, “do you think we’re anything like those couples?”

I sniffled and agreed, maybe he was right. But I need women to be stronger role models and more outspoken – whatever path they choose. I don’t want to be afraid of motherhood. And I don’t want to be afraid of missed opportunity either.

There are some enthralling stories about the beautiful complexity that is marriage and motherhood. But these stories just don’t exist about being a woman in the workplace. We need to start telling those. Now. Not just recognizing powerful career women, say on a list or with an award, but telling the stories that infuse society. I need to hear more stories with women that inform my consciousness each morning. And I need to hear them right here in Wisconsin.

Evolution from an industrial to a knowledge economy realizes the day of Hercules – known for strength, dominance, and authority – as fleeting. “Men could become losers in a global economy that values mental power over might,” Business Week argues. The age of force is over.

Issues of dependence and independence, dominance and subordination are largely irrelevant to how emerging young women see themselves, Harvard psychologist Dan Kindlon argues in his book Alpha Girls. “Generation Y is the first generation that is reaping the full benefits of the women’s movement,” he says. “Women corporate leaders blend feminine qualities of leadership with classic male traits.”

Gen Y women have both masculinity and feminity, developing as the best of both worlds. We balance the typically female feeling part of ourselves with the typically male thinking parts. We are powerful hybrids integrating “the intuitive and rational, the tender and hardheaded, the self-sacrificing and self-serving.”

We utilize a “transformational approach that focuses on building a team. The team approach is less hierarchal than the traditional business model. A girl’s primary goal is not to win but to maintain relationships,” Kindlon says.

The way of the alpha girl is the rallying cry for Generation Y. We disdain complex rules and authoritarian structures.

In contrast, men and boys “base their reasoning on how established rules or laws should be applied, rather than on the feelings of those affected by their decisions,” Kindlon reports. “Male children learn to put winning ahead of personal relationships or growth, to feel comfortable with rules, boundaries, and procedures.”

Men and boys with such personality types are not naturally in tune with other people’s feelings, a key to success in the new economy. Leadership that marshals and directs is often observed by young women as part of the dinosaur age.

Gen Y women will lead the new generation to positive and meaningful change. The ascent of women in the workforce will be unprecedented in history, and promises to have far-reaching implications.

We already see more women than men attaining bachelor’s degrees. In 2005, nearly 59 percent of undergraduates were granted to women. By 2050, it is projected that the degree gap will grow drastically.

Jobs are no different. Business Week reports, that “from last November through this April, American women aged 20 and up gained nearly 300,000 jobs, and American men lost nearly 700,000 jobs.” Research also shows that women who are in management make companies more profitable, even among the Fortune 500.

Roles traditionally filled by men – that of lawyers, doctors and managers – are seeing an influx of women. Other male-dominated industries such as manufacturing and construction seem to be perpetually in downturn, while women are found concentrated in upcoming and thriving industries such as education and healthcare.

As men are being hemorrhaged in blue-collar, white-collar, and gold-collar jobs, young women are picking up the slack, becoming both the providers and the glue for families.

The new economy is largely dominated by young women who have unique skills, not by men who have been taught to follow the rules.

“Men are less suited than women to the knowledge economy, which rewards supposedly female traits such as sensitivity, intuition, and a willingness to collaborate,” reports Peter Coy in Business Week. “Men have tended to do better in the hierarchies, following orders and relying on positional power.”

Young men then, seemingly devoid of the meaning and opportunities that once defined them, are left in a prolonged state of adolescence. And this limbo doesn’t bring out the best in young men, columnist Kay Hymowitz argues.

“Men feel threatened by female empowerment,” Hymowitz states in one theory, “and in their anxiety, they cling to outdated roles.”

Today’s young men are “following the line of Peter Pan, ‘I don’t want to grow up.’” Hymowitz argues. “Plus, who needs commitment when there is a fantasy football team league to dominate, the possibility that a gaming product better than the Xbox 360 could be on the horizon, and your live-in girlfriend will have sex with you whenever you want?”

Young men today “suffer from a proverbial fear of commitment,” and this may be the biggest problem – “a tendency to avoid not just marriage but any deep attachments,” leading to a life that is as empty of passion as it is of responsibility, Hymowitz says. For the contemporary guy, it’s “easy to fill your days without actually doing anything.”

The solution? Not a new career, but marriage. Marriage, she says, turns boys into men.

Kindlon agrees. Married men are more successful in work, getting promoted more often and receiving higher performance appraisals than single men. Married men are much less likely to engage in risky behaviors such as drinking heavily, driving dangerously, or using drugs. They are more likely to work regularly, help others more, and volunteer more. Married men also have better immune systems, and are half as likely not to commit suicide.

But women don’t need men like they need us.

“Marriage is generally more beneficial to men than women,” Kindlon reports. “Research found that women who stayed single in their lives seemed to have good mental health, while men who stayed single all their lives did not. Choosing to be single seems to be good for women but not so good for men.”

Role reversal.

This post also published at Brazen Careerist. 18 more comments, opinions and viewpoints there.