The Sexism of Economics.

@Teena phil,

Teena wrote:

Perhaps a woman can attempt to be both. I hear some women complain about having a career & taking care of home & kids. Perhaps thats the price though, a woman still has certain instincts, certain responsibilities that she cant fully let go of.

Taking care of the home and the kids is a full time responsibility, it's practically a career by itself. That's why a lot of women complain about having to do both, because trust me one career is more than enough. I do concede that it seems to be the natural order of things for the woman to care for the children. However that being said I would like to point out two other very important things.

1. As you've said Teena the woman has the right to make her own choices over family vs career. Just because it's natural for her to take care of the home and the kids doesn't mean that's what she ought to do. She ought to make up her own mind about what she wants to do with her life just like the rest of us. So I commend you Teena for bringing up that distinction.

2. When a couple gets married and has kids (I'm assuming this is a presumed precurser to this thread) the relationship doesn't magically shift from two people to one person - it's still a two person relationship. Being a couple (for the sake of this argument and this thread I'll just focus on being a married couple) is to at least some degree like being on a team, though personally I find no difference in the two at all. Just as with any team the second it turns into a one "man" show (by "man" I'm referring to mankind which also includes women) the team is no longer performing at its best. Teams perform their best when all members contribute. In the case of married couples I believe that if the woman is juggling a career and taking care of the home, then the man should be doing the same. Any given task becomes a lot easier on everybody when in this case both partners share part of the load, rather than it all being dumped on one person, which unfortunately winds up being the woman in many cases. To put it simpler, when the two commit their lives to eachother in marriage, the man and the woman are both in it together. It's precisely in light of this that tending to the home and the family should never be the sole responsibility of one person, but it should be of both people.

0 Replies

@Aristoddler,

Aristoddler wrote:

Marking any question as unimportant is never a wise move, in my experience.

Kids calling 911 on their parents is simply a side effect of the first action in this chain of events.

In period B, there was a lot of change going on. yes.
The VietNam war was not the lynch pin in the machine though. War is part of history, and never in history before has war in any country caused such a drastic change in the base functions of society.
WWII affected the world much more than `Nam, but it did not have anywhere near the impact on society as a whole as you suggest the influence of the hippies and `Nam may have had on the family unit.
Women's Liberation started before 1920, with the Suffrage starting much earlier than that, even. So the liberation movement was already in full swing by 1950...since Woodrow Wilson established the 19th amendment back in 1920.
Since Luther King was a spokesperson for the civil rights movement, I can understand what you're saying here. However, his focus was on colour of skin, not gender. He helped America discover a lot about itself in the `60's but still I cannot understand how his accomplishments would be of comparable note to the influx of people in the workplace that I mentioned.

If there are 100 jobs, and 100 couples with 200 kids:
Jobs = J
Couples = M+W (man + woman)
Kids = K
then:
J=1/4 of M+W+K
if M+W>J, then K=Starving because inflation goes up while minimum wage balances out due to the fact that there are 2x as many workers as there are jobs.

Q #1. Many, many things too far numerous to mention in this post.
Q #2. a) yes. To what extent is the answer I'm looking for though.
Q #2. b) yes. But to what extent has this been a contributing factor?
Q #3. Because the time spent away from home has caused a gap in the communications between parents and children. Therefore they have less to talk about, so they spend less available time together.

I think the questions are a little vague, and this is becoming a very detailed discussion which I am enjoying immensely. Since I have yet to find a sparring partner on this topic to date, it is also something that I am hoping others will jump into soon.

First of all; sorry for my late reply but i barely had any time on my hands to visit the forum due to something called life; many many many (bad) things can happen in a short period of time. I only reply to your post now for it was the discussion that was going on at the moment, i will reply to others in a separate post.

Your reply "Marking any question as unimportant is never a wise move, in my experience." is true in all forms, but as we are still human we still are prone to failures like omitting questions.

What puzzles me is that you say " Kids calling 911 on their parents is simply a side effect of the first action in this chain of events." which is an answer to your own question from the topic question, why did you ask the question if you already knew the answer. Of course the answer is right for the reason that it indeed is a side effect that sadly has not been taken seriously and taken care of.

The fact that i talked about household appliance in particular is because at that time it marked a big change. In this day and age the luxury items like the PlayStation 3 and HD-TV's mark changed in families. We were both right but we took two different approaches; you looking in the present and i in the past.

World War II has had an enormous impact in society for Europe, and it still has today. For Americans like you it did not have much impact on society and in your view of the question it does not really matter that much, but for me as a European it does matter.

Vietnam, the hippies and Martin Luther King might or might not have had such an impact on society, but they did change things. We can't deny the fact that that period has changed the world, and with it society. I never say society completely changed, but it did change and it will be changing forever. Your kids will raise their kids different than you for the simple fact that they did not grew up with the same things you did.

The whole workforce argument is true, but it's simple economics; If i have 1 job and 20 people for the job I will pick the best one, the other 19 just have to improve themselves. Woman entering the workforce did indeed make things somewhat tougher for us man, but really what's the problem with a little competition?

Families and Society changed trough the fact that times change, more woman entering the workforce and emancipation becoming wider and wider. Woman entering the workforce changed families but probably not to the extent you are talking about.

I do find this tread to become a little big and confusing, might be good to reformulate some of the answers given and start from that point again.

0 Replies

@Aristoddler,

Aristoddler;9817 wrote:

But then the women's liberation movement came into full effect and the job pool became congested. Men could no longer simply leave school and get a career. There was now competition in the work force from the women.

It doesn't really make sense because the job market isn't of a fixed size, which became more congested as women entered.

The women's liberation movement did nothing to improve the situation of women. In fact they made it worse. It did not bring improvements, it only took credit for them. That can be shown with data.
The rate at which women were in leading positions improved after the womens rights movement, that's accurate. But the feminists don't tell you what was before that, because that would destroy their premise. Those indicators were higher in the 20's and 30's than in the 60's.
This shows that the improvements happened because of capitalism (the "Roaring Twenties", after US government spending was cut in half) and not because of the work of feminist activists and government mandates. This both discredits the theory that women are held back by sexism, and that feminism did anything to relieve it.
What did happen for the rates to go down? Women had more children, what we call the baby boomer generation. That meant that more women were at home with other priorities than their career. When women started to have fewer children again, they got into leading positions again. Which happened to be the time of the feminist movement.

There is similar statistical proof that discredits the theory that left-wing social activism caused the improvements in the situation of black in the united states.

0 Replies

@Aristoddler,

Aristoddler;9817 wrote:

It would be ignorant for me to say that women should stay in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.

Obviously.

And there is no but to this statement.
That being said...

In 1950's America, life was a little simpler than it is now. This of course is for many, many reasons.
The biggest material differences between now and then are of course
the electronic age, the age of communications and the motor vehicle industry.
Electronics have gone from a mono-stereo record player and radio, to blu-ray discs and the Xbox 360. Communications have gone from a dozen families sharing a party line on a rotary dial phone system, to every dog and his fleas having a cell phone with full colour video conferencing. Transportation has gone from the `57 Bel Air to the Hybrid car that runs on a nuclear cell battery.
Amazing, but not what this topic is about...directly.

On a more important note.
The family unit was much stronger then, than it is now.
Moms were moms, and dads were dads. The world was simple.
Moms had a solid career once they started their family, with taking care of the kids until they were old enough to go to school. They had the home to take care of, with chores that consumed much of their time. They also had the family's emotional dealings to take care of.
Moms in those times were emotional caregivers who kissed scraped knees better, and lashed out with the wooden spoon when needed to keep the kids from harming themselves or others. Moms took care of many things that the Dads could not, because the dads were working for the food to be on the table.

The Dads were the disciplinary force that kids respected.
Dads would go to work at a job that, if they were lucky, they could easily keep for the time they graduated school until the time they retired.

During this time the economy was not only stable, but growing in the aftermath of two world wars and the Korean War.

But then the women's liberation movement came into full effect and the job pool became congested. Men could no longer simply leave school and get a career. There was now competition in the work force from the women.
Unfortunately, the women were no longer in the home as often to be those emotional caregivers.
Without these emotional caregivers, the kids would grow up with nannies, daycare workers, and babysitters. The 1980's was a time where the term "latchkey kids" came into play, and talk shows approached the subject that because so many moms were in the workforce, that kids would come home from school and let themselves into their homes with the keys they had on strings tied around their necks. (I'm sure some of you have experienced this first-hand as I did) These kids would throw something in the microwave to reheat, and tend to themselves until their parents came home...sometimes after bedtime even.
Of course kids left to their own devices do not eat properly, do their homework, or clean up after themselves.

The crime rate in youth related crimes escalated to all-time highs in the 1990's and continues to rise still.
So does the rate of career moms, and the rate of childcare facilities that are so full that their waiting lists are over 6 months in many places.
So does the rate of unemployment.

This was the conversation that a group of us at work had a few times, and it seems to be ongoing for some reason.
The question at hand is: Has the fact that women left the home to enter the work force on such a large scale damaged the economy as well as caused such a rift in the family unit that kids now call 911 on their parents for spanking them?

This is not a sexist topic, this is a question of has event A affected events B and C. Gender has nothing to do with it. If the woman goes to work and the man stays home to take over all those roles the woman formerly had in the 1950's, then would it have stayed the same as it was back then?

Two things: First, you seem to have ideas about the 1950's from watching TV shows like Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver. You might want to look for statistical information about what people were actually doing. Government census information might be a place to start.

Second, you seem to be committing the fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc. You could just as well have complained that the cause of problems was technology rather than the women's movement, or the space race, or any other thing that happened between the early 1950's and now. So, why did you pick on the feminist movement of the latter half of the twentieth century to blame for the problems of the world? It makes one wonder about your initial disclaimer.

0 Replies

The Sexism of Economics.

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know