One cannot live in Sweden without being drawn into serious discussions about feminist issues. As a dilligent student that I am, I started to document myself about these theories and found them relevant not only for women but for all the marginalized groups (and yes, I do agree with the post-modernist assumption that everything expresses a power relationship).
Listen to this: "if a group is kept out of something for long enough, it is overwhelmingly likely that activities of that sort will develop in a way unsuited to the excluded group." (Janet Radcliffe-Richards). Nothing can be truer than this, I think, and it does not refer only to the incompatibility between the current design of the work market with child-rearing; it is a great strategy to make the marginal group not only excluded, but un-necessary in the kind of positions that the dominant group reserved for itself.
And even a more radical position, I am not sure that I completely agree with it but it must be largely true: "virtually every quality that distinguishes men from women is affirmatively compensated in this society. Men's physiology defines most sports, their needs define auto and health insurance coverage, their socially-designed biographies define work place expectations and successful career patterns, their perspectives and concerns define quality in scholarship, their experiences and obsessions define merit, their objectification of life defines art, their military service defines citizenship, their presence defines family, their inability to get along with each other - their wars and rulerships - define history, their image defines god, and their genitals define sex." (Catherine MacKinnon).
About Me
- Anamaria
- Identity is a multifaceted, changing concept, so what I put here today may be very different from how I would feel tomorrow... But let me see, what are the "universals" that can say something about me... Hmmm... I seem to remain eternally associated with the university life style, in one capacity or another... I appreciate humor, irony and wit... And I hope to possess at least in some small proportion the above mentioned qualities of the mind, checked by a good measure of self-criticism.
9 comments:
Maybe we should think what created this inequality between men and women. A conspiracy of men against women, or maybe evolution? I think it's rather the later than the former. In some species the male is dominant, in others the female. It's not somebody's fault this happens. As humans evolved their society this tendency was incorporated into it.
Now, feminism has in my view two branches: one that consider men the enemy (oppressor) of the women, and would like a kind of war or revenge against them (although war is a manly concept according to the second quote :), and another that would like to see more equality in our society, which I agree to.
We will never achieve perfect equality though, we are phisiologically different at the end of the day.
What you say I guess is that feminism tries to offer two different solutions to the inequality problem, one more radical than the other. But the bottom line remains that men have tilted the balance in their favor for too long and even if equality is an *ideal* at least we can strive to achieve it.
Differences do not have to imply inequality, do they?
It depends what you mean by (in)equality. In mathematics "different" means "not equal" :)
For example, should we aim to achieve a 50%-50% split between men and women in every profession? Some say that girls are told from childhood that some professions are not right for them, and others are. I agree that in some cases there is a bias towards a man centric society in doing this, but not in every case. Let's assume this man centric society bias would not exist: what would be the work force distribution in this case? 50%-50% everywhere? I would say no. Does anybody know the answer? No.
Now let's say we try hard to eliminate this bias in children's education. How do we measure our progress?
Or let's take my profession, computer science, where there is a great imbalance between men and women practicing it. Assuming there is no bias in education, do you think the proportion would be 50%-50%? Could be other (natural?, social?) factors that explain this imbalance, appart from the bias in education?
You mathematicians and computer scientists!!
Definitely in my (social science-y) view, equality does not mean having 50% - 50%, not at all, it means having the least amount of bias in the way the society works. For example, let's take a typical male job: firefighters. They say that there are so few women in this profession because they are too weak or too small to manage the job-specific equipment. But who build the equipment in the first place? For whom was thid equipment built? Men built it for men, of course! If the equipment would be designed differently, then the inherent discrimination would disappear. And don't say that large and heavy equipment is *needed*, because in Japan, where men are smaller, the firefighting equipment is also smaller but nonetheless efficient.
Oh, and in terms of the educational bias, I think that indeed it is partly responsible for the distinction male - female professions. I don't think that the physiological differences between the sexes extend to the way they think or conceptualize relity. Women are capable of doing abstract work, just as men are capable of being sensitive and poetic. It is just that families and the society at large directs children towards different professions according to their sex, because of the "custom".
And this is what must change.
I agree on the firefighters example.
On the differences between sexes topic, I saw various studies (usually reported on BBC, so I guess thier not just crap) coming from neuroscience area regarding differences between men and women. I don't assume all are accurate, or significant, and I didn't investigate this issue further, but I wouldn't rule out that some differences might be significant in certain situations regarding our discussion of inequality vs just different.
I do NOT agree on the firefighters example.
Of course your point about the equipment is totally correct and of course it's nonsense, that the work would be too hard, too dangerous or whatever for women, but I'm nearly 100% sure, that there are just not as many women who WANT to do this job as there are men who want to, which is pretty much the same as with 'computer science' and many other professions.
Again, we can ask WHY don't women want to become firefighters (as it is quite clear why they would not want to be computer engineers, right? ;-) ) Maybe it is because they have been trained since early childhood to become teachers and nurses and play with dolls not with trucks.
Why is it always that women are nurses but not doctors, they are stewardesses and not pilots etc etc etc?
Just to prove that there are exceptions nevertheless, I am very proud to say that recently I flew for the first time (and God knows I have been flying a lot) with a woman captain. I was so happy and proud she did a good job!
There was some kind of experiment in Germany in the 70s by the so called '68-generation' who let their children grow up in large communities, influencing them as less as possible in their behavior. It was expected that boys and girls would grow into more equal roles by doing so.
The opposite was the case: the boys always gained superiority, 'ruling' over the girls, which accepted this right from the beginning. So it turned out to be absolutely natural that men (want to) rule over women.
Don't get me wrong. I think that's even more a reason for emancipation. It's one of these things which distinguishes us from our animal ancestors.
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