For 35 years, BBC correspondent Michael Buerk has exuded the calm voice of authority and professionalism in the face of international strife and crisis. His vivid, humane and intelligent dispatches from some of the defining events of our time have won him every major award in TV journalism. His account of the ravages of famine in Ethiopia touched the hearts of the nation and inspired the original Band Aid concerts.
Now, as the chairman of Radio 4′s debate programme The Moral Maze, Buerk’s role is to personify the voice of reason amid conflicting views. But his own judgment was called into question last week after he argued in a TV programme, to be shown on Tuesday, that the world is now dominated by women.
His claim sparked a storm of criticism. He was derided as a ‘poor, miserable old bat’ and heard his theory rubbished as ‘plain dumb’ or the ramblings of a man of a certain age.
But Buerk, 59, is far from a stereotypical sexist. He was brought up by his mother after she discovered his father, a Canadian officer she married during the War, was a bigamist and serial liar. He has been happily married for 37 years and the acknowledgement in his autobiography pays tribute to a long list of women who have been important in his life.
He claims he has been misquoted in the dozens of articles attacking his views. So here he sets the record straight . . .
It has taken the best part of five million years, but it finally happened in less than a single generation – certainly within my adult lifetime. For the first time in human history, women are on top.
They don’t have all the most powerful jobs – yet. They don’t run everything, directly, but they don’t have to. The point is we suddenly live in a women’s world, played according to women’s rules.
Women’s supposed virtues are everywhere triumphant in the contest of values.
To be a woman and, therefore, by definition caring, nurturing, co-operative, pacific, adaptable and in touch with your emotions, is the acceptable side of being human.
Being male, in any traditional sense, is unacceptable. Traditional male virtues aren’t just unfashionable; they are dysfunctional.
Stoicism, reticence, courage and singlemindedness are signs of emotional immaturity these days. Strength is mere brutishness now it is no longer necessary.
Young men seem to have just two choices: to go with the flow and become ‘new men’, ie quasi-women, or play up to the current critique of masculinity and be ‘lads’, behaving badly and reinforcing the new stereotype.
Either way, being a man, in the way previous generations understood it, is now hopelessly out of date. No matter that men, and male qualities, have driven humanity to its present pre-eminence on the planet, invented and developed almost everything that matters, created nearly all the art that is sublime (OK, OK, and most of the misery in the world).
Male humans are in danger of being as redundant as male bees. More so; even drones at least have a purpose in impregnating the queen.
Men are no longer essential even for fertilisation. Perhaps it is just as well.
Sperm counts are falling so fast (2.6 per cent a year) that today’s young men are only half as fertile as their grandfathers were in their prime.
In our stable, relatively peaceful, 21st Century society, man is not needed as a protector. In a welfare state, where most women work, he is not needed as breadwinner.
With sperm banks, IVF, same-sex marriages, he is not even biologically necessary any more.
And, as we all seem to be agreed, he is messy, potentially violent, emotionally stunted and a general all-round nuisance – so what’s the point of him?
It is pretty obvious how man has lost his dominion. For 100,000 generations, his strength, aggression and singlemindedness were essential for survival, let alone progress.
Biology confined women to a subordinate role, albeit one that held humanity together and often involved most of the work.
Civilisation didn’t change that. Neither did the Industrial Revolution, though machines steadily made physical strength irrelevant. Two world wars drew women into the workplace.
Then the workplace itself changed. Manufacturing went into steep and continuing decline. Miners, steelworkers and shipbuilders were no longer needed.
The new jobs in the service industries are much more suited to women.
Dexterity is more important now than strength.
We have an economy that needs nifty clerks, admin skills and a flair for doing several things at once (‘multitasking’ in today’s inelegant jargon).
The workplace is now supposed to be consensual rather than competitive and the qualities that are in demand – flexibility, efficiency, team-working – seem to favour women who have been, and in some cases still are, cheaper.
Female employment has risen by a fifth since the early Seventies; male employment has fallen by the same amount.
The result has been a decline in the social status of men, particularly in what used to be known as the working class (significantly, a description now rarely used), as traditional blue-collar jobs disappear and men lose their role as sole financial provider.
This is a disaster for men. With their more minor biological and nurturing role, they are defined – and define themselves – by what they do and by the responsibilities they shoulder. We have, let’s face it, a more fragile sense of self.
Women have taken over large areas of the workplace. My industry, the media, is a good example.
The BBC I joined was a man’s world.
When I left the Ten O’Clock News a year or so ago, all the positions of real power, where the decisions are made about what we see and hear, were held by women. The director-general was a man but the controllers of BBC1, BBC2 and Radio 4, the core of the corporation, were all women.
Their bosses, the managing directors of television and radio were, and are, both women. The director of news is now a woman and throughout the corporation, the middle managers are overwhelmingly female.
The culture has changed, often for the better. The organisation is more responsive, arguably more caring, sometimes more efficient. There’s less of the stag-like male rivalry these days but my impression is that competitiveness is now internal rather than external: manoeuvring inside the organisation is more important than putting one over on ITV or Channel 4.
There is, perhaps, less appetite for risk than in the past. Repetitive and – to this unreconstructed male anyway – tedious ‘lifestyle’ programmes have squeezed current affairs and documentaries out of the schedules.
It is the same in all the broadcasting groups and in many newspapers, where hard news long ago lost the battle with celebrity gossip and vapid opinionising.
If I have to read another column by a thirty-something woman who thinks she is having history’s first baby, I will buy a season ticket for Millwall and give up entirely.
Women now set the agenda, in the media and elsewhere. Even in politics and big business, where the commanding heights are still held by men, the agenda is being feminised. These are touchy-feely times when a successful politician like Tony Blair needs to share and care and emote; empathy is warm and good, rationality cold and bad.
It doesn’t matter that women have yet to take over the boardroom. With 80 per cent of buying decisions now made by women they have, as one MD said to me, ‘big business’s nuts in the wringer’.
Women have bars aimed at them (All Bar One), cars aimed at them (Ford Ka). The entire retail world, even the city landscape itself, has been remodelled to suit them.
Manliness is out. Androgyny is in.
Men have been turned into ‘ metrosexuals’, preening, moisturiser addicts.
Male heroes, once lions of empire, explorers or Battle of Britain pilots, are now camp TV presenters or wet footballers. Oddly, the only place where men are permitted to display caricature macho maleness is the kitchen.
Meanwhile, women are becoming more like men. When I was courting (how quaint that sounds now), girls used to dance round their handbags and hope to be noticed.
Now clubs are full of predatory young women often drunker than the lads. I was filming in a club recently and had not been so frightened since I stopped working in war zones.
More 15-year-old girls drink alcohol than boys of the same age. One in four juvenile crimes is now committed by a girl.
More than a third of the victims of reported domestic violence are now men and the experts think the real proportion may be far higher because of the greater shame involved in a man acknowledging he has been beaten up by a woman.
Much of this may just be passing fashion. The feminisation of society may well bring more benefits than disadvantages, even for men. We may all learn to love moisturiser.
The real issue, to my mind, is the future of the family.
Women run the risk of confusing equality with independence.
Equality, though a slippery concept, is desirable.
Now women can control their biology with reliable contraception and can find jobs in a workplace where their skills are valued, women are equal and that will inevitably have to be acknowledged in the few areas of life where it is not already.
Independence on the other hand, the kind of independence from men advocated by the more radical gender feminists, is an illusion, and a dangerous one.
We are becoming a nation of singleparent families. Increasingly this is through choice, women’s choice not men’s, rather than unfortunate circumstance.
For more than a decade, lone mothers who have never married have outnumbered divorced mothers. From sink estates in Liverpool to chic suburbs in North London, women are deciding to have children without men (other than for fleeting fertilisation duties, of course).
It is not so much that women are taking over both the traditional sexual roles, it is a denial that sexual differences exist; equality is being confused with sameness.
This is not independence. The reality for many women is swapping dependencies – relying on the State for welfare or child care, rather than on the father.
I know a lot of single mothers who do an extraordinary job. I was the child of a single mother at a time, and in a place, when this was a shameful novelty, rather than a lifestyle choice, and am glad that prejudice is in the past.
But perhaps that is why I think the traditional family is the ideal.
I know what it is like not to have a father around. I think boys, and girls, need a male, as well as female, reference point in the home to get their bearings on life.
Much of the gender revolution may have been long overdue and may be good for all of us. But if it squeezes fathers out of families it will have consequences we will all live to regret.
Don’t Get Me Started, by Michael Buerk, will be shown on Five at 7.15pm on Tuesday.
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