My new Dollars and Sense cartoon is up!
D&S editor Amy Gluckman writes:
Women who came of age 20 or 30 years ago in the United States may be forgiven our surprise that the whole work-home-motherhood thing continues to be so fraught. Surely by now, many thought, women would not be sweating it—at least no more than men do. Wrong! The media can take some of the credit, for, among other things, continuing to play up the alleged mommy wars between “working” and “stay-at-home” moms. At a more basic level, many people (well, men) still seem to think homemaking and raising kids is basically a “Ten-Year Nap”—the (tongue-in-cheek, we hope) title of a current bestselling novel on the subject.
There’s also some interesting stuff about what happened to Japanese divorces when the laws about pension allocations to ex-spouses changed, but you’ll have to click through to read that. :-)
The art is good. But your comics are are usually more funny. This one is more of an illustrated rant.
And you can’t see why the employer would favor the man in this comic? Businesses are not social programs designed to make people’s lives easier. They are there to make money and accomplish a mission. The normal mission being, make more money. This comic pretty much sums up most arguments I have ever heard AGAINST the pay gap. Women, and people in general, make CHOICES that lead to them making less money. That is not a consipiracy, it is the way the business world works.
To be clear, the employer doesn’t evidence a preference for the man per se. But he does prefer the employee that will put in 50-hr weeks and won’t be distracted by caring for other family members. If that employee is going to have a family, then that employee will also need someone else to administer that family. That “someone else” could be the mother, the father, a nanny/butler/personal assistant, or whomever. The employer hasn’t made that decision.
Thus, I see no gender discrimination in the employer’s demands (assuming that a 50-hr work week is a bona fide occupational requirement). Rather, the gender discrimination arises outside of the employer’s demands. The employer merely refuses to make accommodation to it.
I don’t think it is meant to show that the employer is discriminating by gender per se, I think it is meant to show two males, huddled (wink) knowingly in a male privilege moment, assured by society’s expectations that the woman in the family will do all of the family labor for free. Say what you want about the corporation (aka employer’s) sociopathic singular motive of profit, people need to care for families. The discrimination here is that both the men assume that the woman will do it so the man is freed up for his career. The woman gets fed up and figures she may be more financially stable (and/or happier) if she just works for herself.
ed – It’s how the business world works in some countries, not everywhere. And it works that way (where it does) because workers traditionally have had someone at home taking care of all that “domestic” stuff. It’s not a viable system without that person, and if large numbers of the people who used to fill that role are unwilling to do so anymore, the system will have to change.
Is it my imagination or does the woman in this cartoon look like the one in the last cartoon Amp posted?
And really, the guy’s a wimp. 50 hours a week? That’s nothing. Women routinely work longer hours and take care of the kids or parents and keep the house clean. That’s why you shouldn’t hire men: not because they’re jerks and bigots*, but because they’re weak.
*Disclaimer: Of course not all men are jerks or bigots. But all men have male privilege and that makes them act badly at times. Especially if they deny that they have privilege. Rant continues as per usual from here.
jd, in some countries families live together in a more extended fashion; it’s not just mom and dad and the kids, it’s also gramma and grandpa, etc. In such a case, both Mom and Dad could have paid employment and the others at home can help with child care. But that’s not particulary common here in the U.S. And yes, the men in the cartoon presume that this is the wife’s role, but overall that’s not the presumption.
But the more interesting part of this is just how broadly applicable people think this situation is. How many couples with kids do you know who don’t both work? Now, granted, I work and have always worked in a white-collar job. But given that the boss here is wearing a shirt and tie and the prospective employee is wearing a sportcoat and tie I’m presuming that this is a white-collar environment. In every such environment I’ve worked in the employer has a much different attitude towards their employees than this. They expect that the employee’s spouse works. They expect that accomodations will have to be made for the employee’s family.
The wife in this cartoon asks the men “Oh, come on! What is this, 1958?” Good question. But I’d direct it at the readers of the cartoon as well. Just how prevalent do you think this is these days?
Not all that common RonF, but the default assumption is that the brunt of the household work mentioned in the comic will be allocated to the wife, whether she works or not.
Dunno.
I know two young mothers who are in their post-med school residencies. They work long, weird hours. And they both have husbands with flexible schedules. One of these moms is going into an especially prized, highly demanding field. She is considering taking a “fellowship” that would consist of supervising other post med-school residents – not because it would be a learning experience or otherwise especially gratifying, but because she wants to have another kid and needs a less-demanding period in her professional life in which to do so.
I think the husband, who is treating his wife like a maid, is being a MUCH bigger asshole here than the employer is.
The employer’s sexist comment at the end is obviously unreasonable. But the general attitude of wanting employees to perform maximal work at minimal cost is not inherently sexist. (it can be functionally sexist because of the practical response, however.)
Perhaps if the husband had agreed with the wife instead of dropping her like a sack of bricks, they’d both have gotten a better job.
Theoretically you could take panels #3 and 4 and replace them with ones from your last cartoon, where the husband complains that his wife doesn’t make enough money, or that she’s not trying hard enough to get a job.
I don’t think most of the commenters are really getting it. This to me is an apt illustration of how women are **systematically** kept out of the work force. The point is not whether the employer has sexist intentions; the point is the sexist results.
RonF – I agree that this isn’t a universal scenario. That was what I was saying to Ed – that this vision of how the business world operates is specific to certain countries at certain times and relies on the assumption that there is someone at home (wife, extended family, whomever) to take care of everything else. Places where that’s not the case often have a different business model. That change is starting to happen here too – the creation of flex time is one example of how. (now if only it would happen faster)
How many of you guys hire and fire? I am solely responsible for hiring in my
department. I influence other hires, but there are some positions on which I
make the choice. Here is my full hiring history with my present employer.
1996 – The outside consulting firm is replaced by the IT department, yours truly (M0:F0)
1997 – I steal a male order desk person (M1) from a sales warehouse (M:1, F0)
1998 – I steal a female clerk (F1) from engineering (M1:F1)
1999 – I steal a female clerk (F2) from accounts payable, start training her as a supervisor. (M1,F2*)
2000 – The supervisor-in-training (F2) father falls sick, she quits, in a rush, without notice, to take care of him (M1,F1)
1999 – I hire a male high school dropout (M2), start training him as a supervisor (M2*:F1)
2001 – Company grows like crazy, we start installing a new ERP package. I hire a male ERP specialist (M3), and a female database programmer (F3). (M3**,F2*)
2001 – The ERP package is configured, I hire a female data entry clerk (F4). (M3**,F3*)
2002 – The ERP specialist (M3) job is done, he tries to start another project but there is a recession, he leaves for greener pastures. (M2*,F3*)
2002 – The data entry clerk (F4) job is done. I attempt to train her and keep her, but her husband is absolutely against her working overtime or weekends. I give her a two digit raise, but after her new first paycheck, she quits without explanation or notice. (M2*,F2*)
2002 – My second in command (M2) quits for a higher paying job. He gives me a month’s notice, more than he has promised, and help trains (F1) to do a large part of his duties (M1,F2**)
2003 – (F1) gets married. She tells me that she cannot work overtime or babysit the server farm on weekends. She keeps her salary, but not her position. (M1,F2*)
2003 – I hire a female with a CS degree (F5). She starts as my second. (M1,F3**)
2004 – F1, F3, and F5 take maternity leave in the space of four months. For two weeks, all three are on leave. (M1:F0) We survive, they come back. (M1:F3**)
2004 – While I was shorthanded, I used the help of a clerk (F6) from Accounts Payable. As the new mothers come back, she keeps handling a lot of IT stuff. At some point we just move her into our area. (M1:F4**)
2004 – F5 gets a second or third DUI, a 10K fine, and has her unpaid car impounded… a single mother with about 50K salary, she cannot deal with it. She disappear out of state. No officer, I cannot tell you where she went. (M1:F3*)
2005 – I hire a male CS student (M4) He starts as my second. (M2*,F3*)
2006 – The database gal (F3) husband makes it big in real estate. She quits to take care of the kids. She gives ample notice, and trains (F1) and (F6) to handle parts of her job (M2*,F2)
2006 – I hire a clerk (M5) to handle some of the extra work. (M3*,F2)
2007 – My second (M4) graduates, and after a two months notice, quits to start his own company. (M2,F2)
2007 – I hire a man (M6) who got disenchanted with his previous occupation, and start training him as my second. (M3*,F2)
2008 – After being trained by (F1) and me for an year, (F6) gets a 25% raise, and a new position. (M3*,F2*)
2008 – (F6) goes home, and on the next day goes over my head to tell the owner that she thinks she sold herself short and wants higher pay. The owner fires her. (M3*, F1)
Thus did my tiny department go from 80% female to 75% male. I insist that sexism had nothing to do with it. F1 is the youngest, and without a high school diploma makes more than a few of our engineers. I’d gladly hand her any responsibility. She does not want any, she will not pull overtime, and she will not work weekends.
But note the pattern. Not one man has objected to overtime and weird schedules. Not one man left without giving ample notice. In contrast, with one exception, the women have left with at best a few day notice, and without training a replacement. And in all cases but the last, they did so because they needed to take care of their family, in one way or another. And I cannot blame them… I even envy them a bit (mostly because I have no kids) But looking from the point of view of the owner, I can see why she keeps joking with me about sticking to men from now on.
Now, I am not saying that I would not hire another woman, because I am interviewing mostly women right now. But I have to consciously remind myself of my own rules against judging people as part of a group.
…
And by the way, as a company, if we exclude the sales force, we employ more women than men. We have a single, much mocked man in our accounting departments, and the women are a majority in the less physically demanding jobs on the floor. Our robotic cell and boxing line operators are mostly female. R&D is 50/50. The casting and polishing departments are exclusively male, but these are horrible jobs.
And still, we have only three women in positions of authority (four with the owner) – AP, AR, and Engineering’s department heads. Guess what, these are the three department that keep banking hours, and whose heads are never called at 3am to drive their ass to one of the plants because some shit hit the fan and a shift is sitting idle. Is this a sign of male chauvinism, or is it a case of women avoiding this kind of job? Keep in mind, this is a family owned business owned and ran by a woman.
EDIT: I used * to mark males or females in my department who had a position with responsibility over other people.
I hired and fired in one position. This was for IT positions; LAN and WAN communications and router and switch management. I hired 5 people. They were all male. Whenever I had a position open and advertised for candidates, I overwhelmingly got resumes from males – I’m talking 95:5. I did bring a couple of the few women applicants in to interview, but they didn’t have the qualifications both from an absolute level and from a relative (compared to the other applicants) level. The VP of my department was female, as were the other team leaders in software development (which was overwhelmingly female). They never had a problem with my hiring practices, and the VP who had approval over all my hiring only ever said one thing to me, and that was when I hired a black guy. Her comment there was “You better make sure he’s a good fit, because minorities are real hard to fire,” which I thought was lovely. [/sarc]
He lasted one week, and then I got a call from HR saying I had to fire him because his drug test came back positive for cocaine. Hospitals are funny about their staff testing positive for narcotics (at least, if they’re not doctors). Normally you get the drug test back before a new staff member starts, but I was so enthusiastic about his qualifications that I had pressed HR to start him right away. In his comments to me as I walked him out the door (and walked to his car without a security escort to get back the tool case) he copped to the cocaine use – “It was just weekends”. That was not a fun day for me, but even less for him ….
Interesting that excluding sales jobs makes your job census MORE male. When I worked for a major medical device company they deliberately hired young women as sales reps. The theory was that doctors are mostly male, and they’d be more likely to find time to talk to a young woman than a guy. This was back in the 80’s.
jd, my company just went though some layoffs. They have also decided to economize by closing some floors in a building we own with an eye towards sub-leasing them to an outside company. In order to free up some space, they actually assigned certain people to work from home. It is now not unusual while in a conference call with the customer and other company staff to hear kids and/or a dog in the background while the call is going on.
I employ a number of people as work-at-home contractors. About 70 to 80 percent of the people that I end up working with long-term are women; the majority of them are, from what I gather, people who need flexible part-time work that doesn’t require them to work a set schedule. There don’t seem to be very many of those jobs around; the fact that I am one of the people offering those kinds of jobs has meant that getting qualified new workers is a matter of opening the door and then shutting it when the room is full enough. (Find the market hole and exploit the crap out of it, that’s my strategery.)
Peter, three comments.
1. Opening a comment on a feminist blog with ‘guys’ is dumb.
2. I really enjoyed reading your comment. It was pretty interesting.
3. That said, the plural of ‘anecdote’ isn’t ‘data’ and I don’t know as it has any broader meaning.
You don’t see any sexism in F2 having to quit, or in F4’s family situation?
hf,
I don’t think there was any sexism in f2 quiting without notice or taking time to train her replacement. Given the circumstances I wouldn’t blame her but than I’m not the person who had to work extra hours (probably for free) dealing with her unfinished work.
f4’s situation seems similar to one of my co-workers. He passed up a promotion because he didn’t want the travel or hours. Wanted to spend time with his family. From what he said at work his wife had a lot to do with his decision.
I know several people that have turned down overseas assignments because their spouses said no way. (both male and female) there was recently a very ‘good’ position that went to a friend of mine. It involves insane hours, stress, and simultaneous responsibilities in Detroit, Germany, Kansas, and China. She kept her house in Detroit and has an apartment in each of the other places. Yesterday she couldn’t say where she’s spent the most time over the last year. She’s single and rarely dates. But I guess that level of ‘freedom’ is what you need for that sort of job. If she’s successful she’ll be promoted to manager in another 12 months, and be well positioned for promotion beyond that.
On a related note, John McCain skipped the vote, and doesn’t support, a bill that would promote pay equity for women because he believes women don’t need equal pay protection, just “more education and training.” Despite that the Supreme Court case, the Ledbetter case, that triggered this bill was about serious and sustained pay inequity that the plaintiff had no way of knowing about until after the deadline for filing an EEOC complaint had passed.
(I won’t mention that last week he called his wife a “trollop” and a “c*nt” for the egregioius crime of teasing him about his hair thinning a little on top.)
I respectfully disagree with the implicit sentiment amongst some of the “guys” here that there’s no institutionalized sexism left in corporate America. The government’s reluctance to seriously address the issue currently supports this climate, and our leaders regularly trivialize it.
In addition, while, yes, women make “choices” to care for their families, and many find this role to have its own rewards (although rarely financial rewards, and women pay for this in the form of lowered retirement savings, etc.) Yet those choices are made in a climate of expectation that this is what women WILL do, which has a shaping power on both genders.
Men can more readily opt out of direct care and fob it onto their wives and sisters; some men who might want to be more involved in family also feel pressured not to focus on family. Many feel more pressure to focus more energy on wage earning, which the climate allows them to be fairly certain will be rewarded, if they are white and reasonably well educated.
Women, meanwhile, regularly feel serious internal and external pressure to opt out or opt to scale back in order to focus on direct care, and, in this current situation where excellent child care and mandated paid family leave is seriously lacking, women may very well sense that focusing on wage earning probably won’t pay off that well in the long-run anyway and may damage their loved ones.
Being aware of those pressures, Petar, as well as reminding yourself not to judge people as part of a group, would be a good idea, I think–although I realize it won’t make your job necessarily any easier.
I think something missing from this and the consideration of the earlier cartoon is the base reality that in today’s economy, it is just about an economic necessity that both parties in a relationship hold down jobs, particularly if there is family to support. But if there is family, unless you make oodles of money (together) you either need other family to help watch them (grandparents raise the kids) or at least one person needs flexibility in working to get the kids after school or day care – and sometimes this even requires at least some flexibility from both jobs.
My wife makes double what I do. I am limited to taking jobs that allow me to drop off and pick up our children from day care and that also allow me to take days off frequently if they are sick or otherwise need to stay home. Sometimes my wife can stay home, but generally, I’m the one who does so.
But I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing anything – I enjoy spending time with my children. I like not having to work all the time. Contrast that with my wife who has been in her profession longer (I switched careers) and who constantly feels the pressure of being the main breadwinner – she can’t change jobs and she could never change careers because she’d not make nearly enough money to support us (me and our two children) now. So she’s basically trapped. And she complains about this frequently – not that she doesn’t enjoy her work, though sometimes she hates it – but that she has no choice. She’s the one high up on the pedestal and she can’t get down.
Which is why I find it fascinating to read the responses in this and the other cartoon thread about how wonderful the man has it on the pedestal when in my case, my wife is on it and I’m the one standing way below her, with the kids, and I’d not trade positions with her for anything.
I like having a life outside of work and taking care of my children and spending time with them. I think the ideal would actually be for both of us to work light hours and have flexibile schedules that would allow us to be home with the children more. Truly, if you wan’t a high powered career with lots of hours, you really shouldn’t be having a family – if you are a man or a woman – because though you may make the big bacon, you’ll never be there for your kids, and if you aren’t, what’s the point? My wife, though she often works long hours, is almost always home at night (though sometimes late) and on the weekends and she spends plenty of time with our kids.
I see the commentators as exhibiting classic symptoms of “the grass is always greener.” Those who identify with the woman as being underprivileged for not being on the pedestal and the man as being privileged for being on it don’t seem to understand at all the downside of being on it. They don’t understand that privilege is not some binary thing that either you have it or you don’t, it is a patchwork of attributes that may or may not be relevant depending on the individual and it can go both ways. For instance, if the man on the pedestal doesn’t want to be there, but the woman who is not actually does want to stay home with the kids, then she is the privileged one over the man. Those who always want to say men are “soaked in privilege” over women will entirely miss that basic fact.
Petar: I second what Joe said. However, I have a hard time believing that the women who you hired quit without notice out of sheer perversity or lack of interest in the job. (With one possible exception, later.)
F2 probably wouldn’t have quit if she’d been “M2”, because he would have had a wife who would have done so, regardless to the damage to her career. And F2’s career clearly did take damage. The next time she tries to get a job with another “Petar” he’ll refuse to hire her because she’s not “serious.”
F4 probably quit because her husband forced or coerced her into quitting. Anyone who refuses to allow another person, spouse or no, to go where she wants to or do what she wants to do is an abuser. I hope nothing dramatic happened to F4, but I wouldn’t be particularly surprised to find that she died of injuries inflicted by her husband. Or maybe she’s still alive and just dealing with a control freak.
F1 worries me too. How does getting married prevent one from working overtime? Unless she was using her husband as an excuse, which is possible, this doesn’t sound like a good situation either.
Nothing much to be done about maternity leave, but did it really take you by surprise? Most women take maternity leave only in the last month or so of pregnancy. Surely you noticed something happening before then. Why didn’t you use the time to prepare for the upcoming lack of these three employees? (Assuming that they didn’t all take maternity leave early in pregnancy due to complications, in which case I’d call it an act of god on a par with suddenly losing 3 male or female employees due to an earthquake or flu epidemic.)
F5: What a jerk. Sorry, I have little sympathy for people who drive while impaired. I’m sure her life was hard and she may have been genetically prone to alcoholism, but still, DUIs are little short of murder attempts that didn’t quite come off in my opinion.
F6: Annoyed as you probably are at her for going over your head, you can hardly blame her for lack of notice when she was fired. I don’t know about the particular situation here, but on average, women do make less than men and negotiate their salaries less aggressively so women like F6 are probably correct in saying that they sold themselves short.
M6: How much notice did he give before quitting the job he was “disenchanted” with? Did you hesitate to hire him? People who become disenchanted with one job might become disenchanted with a second. He could be a higher risk for quitting without notice.
my wife ‘refused’ to let me go to china for a one month assignment. She said that it would be too hard for her and our family and that she’d be very unhappy both in general and with me if I did it. This was in response to my telling her about the opportunity and asking what she thought. I told my boss that I was passing because my wife said no. I don’t really feel very abused. Happy actually, this is far better than not knowing how she felt and upsetting her for a one month trip to a factory in china.
Joe: Your wife told you that she would rather you not go on a particular trip when you asked her opinion. This is different from her forbidding you to work any overtime or go on any business trips, without your asking her opinion at all. Maybe I am misinterpreting F4’s situation or she is using her husband as an excuse for not doing something she doesn’t want to do. It’s possible. But the situation described in which her husband is totally against her doing part of her job, sounds abusive to me.
Diane, I think we’re both making some assumptions about what happened when F4 told her husband.
My read, fwiw, is that F4 was being trained for a new job that would involve mandatory overtime and weekend work and that her husband is NOT happy about the situation so she quits. It doesn’t really tell us what their situation is. He could be a violent drunk or he could be a stay at home dad that hates the idea of having even less help around the house. As a gamblin’ man I’ll say that both are unlikely but the violent drunk was the better wager. (I think my best bet is that his is the primary income and he doesn’t want her career to affect their life together so he really wants her to keep her current schedule. The fact that she quit hints that they didn’t need her income to survive but I’m making a lot of assumptions now.)
I guess my point is that many of the people I know and work with take their families into account when they make career decisions, IF they can afford to. It’s not uncommon to hear that so and so took (or passed on) a particular position because it was better for their family.
DisgustedBeyondBelief – um, no, there’s a pretty good empirical test of which side the grass is greener on, in this case.
Q1: Is there a woman-led, woman-centred organised mass movement that seeks to grant women the privilege of getting out of the house and working in the same jobs, for the same pay, that men have always had access to?
Q2: Is there a man-led, man-centred organised mass movement that seeks to grant men the privilege to stay home or take a part-time job, and spend more time with their children?
I rest my case.
I’m not even going near the sexism in other comments here; it’s far too close to home. In my teens I was forced, for six years, to put my time and energy into caring for a house and for a younger child while said child’s father had his 50-hour week and nice fat paycheck (none of which was spent on childcare or a cleaner, for some mysterious reason). Fine, keep up with the bullshit attempts to pretend that the situation in the cartoon is not representative of real and horrific sexism – I mean, it’s only women’s lives we’re talking about, right? And fuck it, I’m going to have that 50-hour week, thanks. A month in China would be nice too, whether my husband likes it or not.
> F2 probably wouldn’t have quit if she’d been “M2″, because he would have
> had a wife who would have done so, regardless to the damage to her career.
> And F2’s career clearly did take damage.
She was single, and she think she had only sisters. And she never asked for references, I lost touch with her. Her career did absolutely take damage, because she was on her way to get a history as a system administrator, while she only had a high school diploma.
> The next time she tries to get a job with another “Petar” he’ll refuse to hire
> her because she’s not “serious.”
Yes, I always try to learn what’s behind holes in employment history. Sometimes, it is jail time. Taking time to care for a parent is completely different, if one has the brains to say “I spent the time I had reading IT books, and doing a bit of programming” and the ability to make me believe it, I’ll be very likely offer the job. But of course, the salary will be lower, because it’s my employer that pays me, and he expect me to work in his interests.
> Nothing much to be done about maternity leave, but did it really
> take you by surprise? Most women take maternity leave only in the
> last month or so of pregnancy. Surely you noticed something happening
> before then. Why didn’t you use the time to prepare for the upcoming
> lack of these three employees?
Do you seriously think that two people can do the work of five without preparation? I wish I was working in such conditions :-) By the way, F5 did not tell me, until I asked her “Hey, don’t kill me, but are you pregnant?” because I could not think of a way to learn that would make me look less of an idiot.
Of course, I knew it was coming, and of course we prepared. I just hate training temps, so I chose to take as much upon myself as I could, and have F6 do everything she could learn to do in the months I had to prepare. M1 raked the maximum overtime allowed by law, and was earning vacation hours in the time he was working over that. I’m salaried, so I had to just tough it out.
> F4 probably quit because her husband forced or coerced her into
> quitting. Anyone who refuses to allow another person, spouse or no,
> to go where she wants to or do what she wants to do is an abuser.
I’d never seen the guy, I knew nothing of their relationship, and she did not volunteer much. I felt that I had no business trying to convince her of what she should do. I know I find it insulting when people try to advise me when they only have a smattering of the relevant information. “Is there anything I can do, and I do meant this” is far as I go without encouragement.
> I don’t know about the particular situation here, but on average,
> women do make less than men and negotiate their salaries less
> aggressively so women like F6 are probably correct in saying that
> they sold themselves short.
I know I have never gotten a 25% raise myself without bouncing between employers, and in manufacturing, such a thing is quite unusual. She knew that we had invested a lot in her training, she asked for a round number, and I decided not to haggle. But after the paperwork has been signed, filed, and approved by the owner, the time to negotiate is past. Do you think that the owner’s decision to fire her should have been influenced by the fact that they were both women, and many women are underpaid? All I know is that the owner instructed me and F1 to transfer any calls checking references to her. There’s been more than one :-(
> M6: How much notice did he give before quitting the job he was
> “disenchanted” with?
The minimum required. I did talk to him about it, and I decided to hire him. Trust me, I have worried about it. But one makes decisions and lives with them.
> Petar: I second what Joe said.
If this is about anecdotes and data I disagree. It’s not good data, it is not sufficient data, it is neither representative, statistical, nor a great many other things, but data it is. My personal experience comprises a great part of the data I use to make decisions. Of course, if it were all I use, I’d be unarguably a fool.
Speaking of fools, if it is about opening with ‘Guys’, you are correct. Among my friends, ‘guys’ is gender neutral, sometimes used by women about women. Still, I should have known not to use it. No offense was meant.
If I were pregnant…well, I’d abort, but if I got pregnant in 15 years time and was in a good place to keep it (and if the nature of sexism in the workplace had not changed in that time), I’d do much the same thing. Pregnancy and motherhood is THE main driver of the pay gap, no contest. (including employers who suspect all women between the ages of 30 and 50 of desiring pregnancy and motherhood over and above a career whether they do or don’t [edit: that’s not aimed at you personally – it’s just something a lot of employers do, either actively or accidentally]). The only thing I’d’ve done different from her is send you a formal letter on the subject as soon as you’d figured it out, so if you fired me I’d have a stronger anti-discrimination case against you.
I’m sure it looks rude to you, but you don’t have to defend yourself from sexism every working day.
Nice of you to care about other people.
That’s a great point I hadn’t seen before. About the only refutation I can see would boil down to PHMT.
(I agree with your point btw. There’s just something about the cartoon that’s bugging me. I wish I could put my finger on it.)
Oh, PHMT is definitely true – it occurred to me as I was typing that comment that there is a movement that has been known to address men’s need for a family life, and to ask for equal parental leave after a child’s birth…and that movement is feminism. Given all the other social movements that have been largely led by and centred on men, it’s weird that this subject has been left to the women’s movement.
As for China – it’s only a month and early in our relationship we got used to being apart for long periods of time. He’d deal. He’d just be hella jealous.
We have small kids, if one of us isn’t there in the evening the other one is pretty much trapped. Given the situation a Month isn’t a small imposition.
“F1 worries me too. How does getting married prevent one from working overtime? Unless she was using her husband as an excuse, which is possible, this doesn’t sound like a good situation either.”
During all my time working (5 years out of about 9 since graduating high school), I’ve been asked many times to do overtime, especially in my last job. I only accepted once. I refused every other time. My boss even knew before asking me most of the time in the end. And he still liked me as an employee. After I quit (I gave 2 weeks notice), they offered to rehire me.
Why?
My free time is more important to me than my paycheck. Getting more responsabilities is just a burden to me. It means I’m more unreplaceable, and as thus, if there’s overtime I’m stuck doing it.
Petar, having a husband who used to work in IT, I would bet an eyebrow that sexism had a lot more to do with your decisions, and your employers’, than you think.
My husband has worked at numerous IT companies where they would swear up and down they don’t discriminate; who cares if you pee standing up as long as you write good code, that sort of thing. But in reality, there are attitudes (not always conscious) that make it clear to women they’re not welcome.
One is the “4 a.m. rule” that I’m sure you’re familiar with: when we’re in the pre-release death march, do I want to work with this person at 4 a.m.? And while that does weed out technically-competent jerks, it also weeds out the “different”. We are more comfortable with people like us.
There’s also the different social expectations. A woman who seems to put any priority on her family is far more likely to get mentally slotted as a “mommy” who is not serious about his job, as opposed to a dad who is clearly being a good dad above and beyond what’s expected. (Unless, of course, he seems to be doing so at the behest of his wife. My spouse once begged off a spontaneous beer outing to be home with his kids and was told “Jesus, who wears the pants in your family?” But nobody questioned his commitment to work.)
Thene – I had to look up PHMT because I wasn’t familiar with that acronymn. And when I first saw your comment, asking about A and B, it made me think that things are actually better for women, not men. Women have a movement to open up their options from just childcare to careers OR childcare, their choice. If you are correct that men don’t have a movement to open up their own options, that means that women are privileged over men in that regard – not only would they be limited to their traditional gender role, but there’d be no organization championing men to change that.
And feminism is NOT the movement to help men. Feminism is about promoting and increasing the options and choices for women, not men. At the same time, I’ve seen feminists ridicule and demean men who would focus on breaking traditional gender roles for men, classifying them all as “MRAs” and then dismissing them.
I’m sorry, I simply would not trust a movement focused on women to really look out for men’s interests. Just like I’m sure you would not trust a movement that focused on men to look out for women’s interests. PHMT is, simply put, bullshit – though that’s mostly because the whole “patriarchy” construct is a misnomer. Traditional gender roles (and people being locked into them) is what the problem is. Feminism has helped women get free of them. There really is no movement to help men get free of them (though some have managed to to varying degrees of success anyway). And no, feminism really won’t, because that is not its focus. Just like feminism won’t really do anything about racism. Not that it should – its focus is on women, not race. And that is fine. One can certainly work on both, but a movement needs to focus. (And of course, not that being anti-racist isn’t important – it is just a different movement that will handle it). Trying to claim a movement really will tackle everything is just asking for trouble (witness the recent dustup over feminism and race recently). But I’m not going to touch that whole thing with a ten foot pole.
See, this is the first time one of Amp’s cartoons has made me angry – simply because the guy seems *enthusiastic* about dumping his home-life workload onto his wife.
Personally, I positively dread asking my wife to take on any more responsibilities around the house. I hate overtime. I like spending time with my son. But you know what? My job occaisionally demands a crunch, so I suck it up to do it for my family.
And comics like that are the thanks I get.
Really? The only people I’ve seen ridicule and demean men in non-traditional roles are…other men. I guess maybe they could have been feminist men.
Doubt you would know, though, since you think that feminism can’t possibly help men in any way–men and women’s interests, in your view, being a zero-sum game, and if men aren’t on top 100% of the time then women are “privileged”.
I’m not at all surprised you’re a law student in Michigan, DBB.
I’m not a law student – I’m a lawyer, though it has only been a few years since I graduated. And why are you not surprised about the Michigan part? Is it because the Michigan Supreme Court is dominated by a majority of right-wing ideologues that are all further to the right than the entire US Supreme Court and who are steadily eviscerating the law, remaking it in their own extreme right-wing image?
And it isn’t that I don’t expect that feminism could possibly help men – it is that any such help would be entirely incidental and accidental – not exactly the sort of thing one would want to get behind as the answer to helping men break out of their traditional gender roles. I’m sure a movement focused on men breaking out of their gender roles would also have great benefits for women – but just how fast do you think I’d get slapped down if I tried to say that a movement for women then is unncesssary because MHMT and then said that there is already a movement to help women break out of their gender roles – it is called Maleinism (or something like it…) Would women really be particularly impressed by that? Somehow, I’m thinking, no.
Personally, I think a movement focused on breaking traditional gender roles REGARDLESS of gender, not about just men or just women, would be ideal. And no, that movement is not Feminism, sorry, for all the reasons I’ve already explained. Not that Feminism isn’t needed or wouldn’t continue, it is simply something different. It is for and about and for the benefit of women. Any benefits that accrue to anyone else are merely incidental.
This analysis seems to assume that the mother, but not the father, bears responsibility for caring for the kid. I’m curious about the foundation for that assumption.
Families have existed for a long time. Family law has existed for a long time. I’d be curious if anyone knew of a legal case of child neglect/child endangerment in a two-career household where the kids are left at home, get into trouble, and the mom but not the dad is accused of the neglect. (As far as I can tell, “child neglect” cases involve only poor moms in single-parent households, or parents with addiction problems.)
While I haven’t found any such case, I did stumble across the web site of the Center for WorkLife Law. The Center is documenting an emerging theory for job discrimination litigation:
The Center’s director is Joan C. Williams, professor at Hastings College of the Law and author of THE POLITICS OF TIME IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION, 4 University of Saint Thomas Law Journal 379 (Spring ‘07), regarding the gender disparities that arise in law firms that bill on the basis of numbers of hours worked. Chalked full of gender disparities stats; haven’t found a spot where you can read it for free on the web, though.
Hard to say.
“Ideal” in the sense that it would ignore the existence of sexism and gender inequality, so nobody has to discuss any uncomfortable privilege.
You would never (I dearly hope) hear somebody proclaim that anti-racist groups really ought to just focus on getting rid of racial stereotypes, rather than addressing the groups most affected by racism, as if white people suffered just as much.
And DBB, the Michigan comment was probably a little unfair; but that’s where I went to law school, and it got very tiring to constantly listen to male classmates whine about affirmative action and how privileged women really are and how tough it is to be a white guy, etc., particularly when they turn around five seconds later to brag about how their dad’s golf buddy is a judge and so they’ve got a good in for a summer clerkship.
JESUS! Another lawyer?
I seem to recall Amp taking a roll call on this site and discovering a dearth of theists. Too bad Amp didn’t ask how many lawyers are present.
Mythago, instead of limiting comments to non-racists, why not restrict comments exclusively to religiously-observant non-lawyers and see who is left to comment?
I seem to recall Amp taking a roll call on this site and discovering a dearth of theists. Too bad Amp didn’t ask how many lawyers are present.
No theists, many lawyers…are you suggesting we may have ended up in hell and never noticed it? Well, if so, at least the company’s good.
mythago, I agree with DBB that a separate men’s movement is needed, and it has nothing to do with men’s and women’s interests being a zero sum game. (A few of them are, but these are decidedly in the minority.) It’s because saying that a separate men’s movement isn’t needed because feminism acknowledges men’s concerns is like saying feminism isn’t needed because liberalism in general acknowledges women’s concerns. It isn’t a question of acknowledging or addressing, it’s a question of prioritizing.
Edited to delete comment. Mixed up threads.
There are theists here. Not many, but some.
“theists” and “lawyers” are not mutually exclusive sets. That said, think carefully about lawyer-whining. We have very long memories, to the chagrin of some folks who suddenly have a need for information about neighbor disputes or what to do when they get a bad traffic ticket. Just sayin’.
sylphhead – nowhere did I say “a separate men’s movement isn’t needed”. (Please see Hugo Schwyzer’s blog, where he often discusses men’s movements that go beyond the usual MRA zero-sum games.) What I did say is that DBB is, indeed, positing feminism as something that cannot help men in any way. Suggesting that feminism does, indeed, help men neither states nor implies that an additional men’s movement is a bad thing.
Mythago – I actually didn’t see the Michigan comment as unfair, mostly because I see the Michigan Supreme Court as exactly as I described it – it is also a disgrace for the very public, juvenille fight between some of the Justices that shows up now even in the opinions.
And I can tell you, I am also annoyed when I hear white males complain how hard they have it or that affirmative action is so terrible or how privileged women are – the difference is I also am equally annoyed to hear people whine about how privileged men are and so on in the other direction – not that some people don’t have it much better or worse than others, but because I think that everyone has advantages and disadvantages, and I’d rather deal with that individually than make blanket statements based on race or gender that might not hold up for individuals – to me, blanket statments based on race or gender, in any direction, fall into the realm of racism and sexism. I chose not to draw conclusions about a person based on their race or their gender – I prefer to find out who they really are, what their true advantages and disadvantages in life have been for them, and deal with them as an individual. Or, in lawyer-jargon, I deal with the facts of the case and do so on a case-by-case basis. If you find out someone is a white male and you don’t know anything else about them, to call them “privileged” is racist, sexist, and just plain ignorant. You don’t know them. Particularly if you only see them though text on a computer, you really know nothing about them. They could be in a wheelchair. They could have grown up horribly poor, disabled. They could have faced discrimination for being obese, for being ugly, for a general lack of social skills, or something else entirely. In short, there’s no way to know how “privileged” someone is without really knowing them as a person as opposed to just as a handful of demographics. Compared to some people, I’m privileged. Compared to others, those others are privileged over me. But without knowing an awful lot about every person in a comparison, the term is really meaningless. The “all other things being equal” argument doesn’t change this – because all other things are never equal – everyone is a unique individual. And other factors you know nothing about may make that “all other things being equal but X-factor” X-factor irrelevant. Ok, that’s a big tangent.
And where did I say that one would not have to deal with gender inequalities – that would be the whole point of breaking people out of traditional gender roles – once those roles are no longer bound to their respective genders (and those genders are no longer bound to those roles) then pretty much by definition you will have eliminated gender inequalities. That’s the whole point – eliminating gender inequalities, which exist based on traditional gender roles. My whole point was that a movement dedicated to promoting women is only going to deal with one half of the equation – sure, because of the nature of there being two genders, there is some effect that benefits men, but that is an afterthought, a side-effect. Feminism is simply not interested in advancing the interests of men who wish to break out of their own traditional gender roles. Or, in the popular nomenclature, as it is often pointed out in feminist threads on feminist sites: “It’s not about the menz.” So no use trying to pretend it is.
And really think about what you said about racism – if no racial stereotypes existed, could racism even exist? (Not that I’m advocating what you suggest in the first place – there is a big difference between steretotypes and traditional roles – stereotypes are often based on ignorance and have no reflection of the actual reality at all – traditional gender roles are real, and are ruthlessly enforced societally as “this is the role you must take because of your gender”. They are related – but not the same. Assuming a woman is stay-at-home because she’s a woman is a steretotype. Making it far easier for a woman to do so (and expecting that she do so) and making it far harder for a man to do so is about enforcing the traditional gender roles. (Or to make it clearer – it is a stereotype that all african american men just want to take away for themselves white women – it isn’t true, and it is an ugly slur playing on racist fears – but despite that, society doesn’t enforce and expect that african american men actually do that (and punish them for failing to do so).
And if all of this comment is inelegant and you think I’m a dunderhead, then just know that I agree with slyphhead’s comment, who said things much less verbosely (and thus much more concisely). I’m operating on little sleep – I’m living the single parent life for three days as my wife is in Florida for a professional conferense – so I have a two-year old and a two-month old and work… and I’m about ready to shoot myself…
Though I thought I did make myself pretty clear initially that I wasn’t saying that Feminism can’t help men in any way, simply that where it does so, it is incidental to feminism’s goals. And so it is just plain false to say that there is a movement out there already to break men from their traditional gender roles and that its called “feminism” – I see that said all the time (or its equivalent), and I just needed to call bs on that.
As far as lawyers go – the old saying is, everyone hates all lawyers until they need one. And better to have lawyers than to solve disputes the old fashioned way… (much less blood…)
No, of course not. And I certainly wish to apologize if I implied that we hadn’t noticed it.
Religiously observant non-lawyer checking in. You will all now LEAVE MY THREAD TO ME!!!
I suspect the reason feminism “doesn’t help men” is more a function of the help men actually need, as opposed to the help many men want.
Many men want help having or retaining power. Men NEED help understanding that if everyone is fighting to be on the top of the pile, a lot of men are still going to be on the bottom of the pile, and therefore it’s better to work for a society in which everyone, including the people towards the bottom of the pile, has a rewarding and meaningful life.
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Which is, again, a way of turning the discourse on its head: you can’t talk about sexism or racism without being sexist or racist. It’s a nice way to tut-tut about social ills without acknowledging that those ills affect anyone disproportionately, let alone (God forbid) looking at whether its benefits or drawbacks fall unequally.
If you know that I’m white, you certainly know that in America, I get a certain amount of privilege based on my race. The fact that I may also have disadvantages based on, say, my social class, doesn’t erase that fact.
As a lawyer, you’re capable of making more subtle and complicated arguments than you do–if you wanted to.
One side effect of politicizing any given subject that I consider negative is that it becomes a race to claim the spot of the virtuous victim – which isn’t bad in and of itself, because in real life there are many actual virtuous victims and oppressive systems. But it forces everyone to focus on the negative (that’s my Dr. Phil moment) and all the injustices they suffer, and it doesn’t take long for the latter to slip into exaggeration or the recesses of their own imagination. I find a strong correlation between the political junkies I personally know, who have all the big name blogs bookmarked on their browsers, and having a victimized attitude toward life in general. Nothing good can come from the latter. What would be ideal would be a politically passionate society, that can take collective action to rectify inequalities and mete out justice, without becoming a pack of angry political junkies.
What I have absolutely no patience for are the powerful feigning as the powerless, the advantaged crying about their disadvantages. They combine the worst of both worlds – embodying both the oppressive systems that victimize real life people, and the eternal victim mindset. I disagree with traditional philosophical conservatism. I actively detest modern movement conservatism.
Okay, my misreading.
But aren’t some blanket statements necessary, as a function of language? I can understand not taking blanket statements too far, but not using them at all would destroy public discourse, the very act of which accepts people’s feelings getting a bit hurt through language. The alternative is having no public discourse on anything and everyone being hurt through more substantive terms.
Hmm. I’d say it couldn’t, but it depends on how you parse the definition of “racism”. Without stereotypes – which is really the wrong word for this, the more proper one is racial norms, see “model minority” thread for a detailed commentary by me on this subject – institutional racism would die, though personal prejudices may linger. Institutional racism seeks to justify itself through “rational” means, where being “rational” reduces to adherence to stereotypes, and without them, it would crumble from lack of support.
If you’re presupposing that you know what men need more than we do, than that is unfathomably arrogant.
Perhaps, but who has the power in a given situation is open to subjective opinion. If a man wants a men’s movement to reinstate traditional breadwinner roles, then yes, it’s about reasserting power. If a man wants a men’s movement to promote father’s rights, then it’s a lot more dicey. Father’s rights can be about retaining power, but it doesn’t have to be.
It seems fairly apparent that, given the sex imbalance of power in this country, a movement which purported to bring things toward gender neutrality would fairly focus on the relative advancement of women over men.
Change requires differential treatment. If you’re just helping women and men equally (by which I define “giving them equal resources and attention”) than it is not going to do a lot to change the imbalance. Since that movement would be problematic, I imagine that any gender neutral movement would actually end up having skewed practices.
So I think the real distinction between said hypothetical “gender neutral” movement and feminism is NOT whether it focuses primarily on women, because both of them would do that. “Helping men equally across the board” would simply fail to acheive any substantive change.
The question is whether it
-focuses on helping men as part of its mission, even though it will help them less often;
-does not focus on, but does not attempt to avoid, helping men; or
-actively avoids helping men.
From what I understand of feminism and feminists, they tend to be in one of the latter two categories, with most of them (thankfully, at least to me) in the middle rather than on the bottom. But in any case I think that feminism is obviously not about helping men, it’s about helping women. Which is as it should be.
How many people here are lawyers, anyway?