Posted on 05/28/2002 7:17:49 PM PDT by The Giant Apricots
"You better watch what you say, or they'll be calling you a radical…" — Supertramp's Logical Song
In the past, women ruled the home, taking primary responsibility for raising the children.
In that same past, men ruled the workplace. Every workplace. Without exception.
Two distinct spheres, each ruled by one sex.
Some seek a return of that past, wanting women completely out of the workforce. This is based upon the premise that these roles, women as caregivers and nothing else, and men as providers and nothing else, were best for society in the first place.
That premise is infinitely arguable. I'd argue strongly against it with every fibre of my being.
The same contingents contend that society has become imbalanced since women entered the workforce as degreed professionals.
That much is true. Society has become imbalanced since women entered the workforce as degreed professionals.
However, their answer to that imbalance is to endorse the paradigm of women as caregivers and nothing else; of men as providers and nothing else.
That is the wrong answer.
The college-and-career sphere must be equally open to both men and women, and really should be pursued by both men and women.
The expansion of one's learning, and education, and opportunity to achieve a degree in a particular field of expertise should never be limited by a person's biological sex.
No academic or career field should be dominated by women, as some are. No academic or career field should be dominated by men, as some are. Such domination, such imbalance, probably indicates insufficient affirmative outreach.
Intelligence, work ethic, and the ability to learn are the most important qualities of both college students and career professionals.
These qualities are not specific or exclusive to women.
These qualities are not specific or exclusive to men.
Thus, every field of academic pursuit should not only be equally open to women and men alike, but where significant imbalances occur within a given department, affirmative outreach should be proactively initiated.
Ditto for every career.
It is a good thing for career fields to be diversified between women and men. There should be no presumptions of "well, women are better at…" or "well, men are better at…"
Either such presumption attaches to both biological sexes the erroneous fallacy that capability and character, in a given area of endeavor, are innate to one biological sex over the other.
That is a foundation of racism: the belief that capability and character are determined by a person's physicality. It is the path of least resistance, the easiest way to go. In pop-culture parlance, it's "Neanderthal Sociology".
"Neanderthal Sociology" allows people of all chromosomal combinations to look at someone else and say, "They are of Color X. Therefor they are good at (stereotypical list A) and have the following failings of character (stereotypical list B)".
"Neanderthal Sociology" also allows some folks (male and female alike) to presume capability and character by biological sex.
And thus to prescribe certain roles to each, and to proscribe each from certain other roles.
It's almost amazingly retrogressive.
And as their knuckles drag upon the ground, reality remains…
Reality is extremely simple: people should, as individuals, pursue the career-and-family paths in life that they are, as individuals, good at. The sole qualifier upon such a pursuit is that no one else's equal rights, especially the rights to have and protect life, should be abrogated on the basis of gestational age, developmental stage, biological sex, race, or ethnicity in the course of that pursuit.
The conscription of roles by biological sex, exactly the same as conscription by race, is evidentiary exemplification of the need of some, on both sides of the political aisle, to avoid reality.
Reality is that people should do what they are good at.
So, given that meritocratic paradigm, why does this article acknowledge that, "society has become imbalanced since women entered the workforce as degreed professionals"?
Because in effect, the arrangement of "women as caregivers and nothing else, and men as providers and nothing else" meant one coin on either side of the scale.
The insurgence of women into college and careers put two coins on one side of the scale…
…while leaving only one coin on the other.
The answer to the imbalance is not a disclusion of women from college and careers, as some claim.
Not in part, not in fraction, not at all.
Quite the opposite.
The answer to the imbalance is to put two coins on the OTHER side of the scale.
Men are still not equally represented in parenting. That is their second coin, their real source of balance in life. And by extension, the re-inclusion and equal representation of fathers in families is the single greatest need of a society in tremendous need of being re-balanced.
And so, fathers must be treated equally by society, en route to parity.
That includes pop culture: when a movie or television program indicates that most men aren't valuable as fathers, these portrayals should be pro-actively rebuffed.
Two recent examples come from mainstream companies J.C. Penney and Sears.
J.C. Penney's ad, for a "One-Day Sale", has a father asking his child, "Where's your mother?" The image moves on to happy shoppers at a J.C. Penney, while the voice-over chirps "Don't worry dads, it's just one day" — as though fathers could not, before this knuckle-dragging worldview, be capable of running things on their own for more than one day. Mainstream sexism…
The Sears commercial is almost identical: it shows a father with his two daughters at a restaurant.
"Where's mom?", they plaintively say. The father asks one if she'd like a burger; she replies, "Dad! I'm a vegetarian". Then the voiceover comes on and says no problem: the Sears Sale is only on for a few days.
The clear message, like in the J.C. Penney commercial, is that dads are less competent parents. This is part-and-parcel of a systemic devaluation of fathers as caregivers.
The re-valuation of fathers as caregivers is critical to the health of society.
And all of that should be defined by YOU?
The fact is, there should be gender-neutral standards...and then if certain areas of life wind up with more women or with more men, due to the decisions of those individual women and men, so be it. No social engineering from the right or the left needed. But both the right and the left do deny reality when they look down upon a stay-at-home dad doing a perfectly good job, calling him a "Mr. Mom", or when they look down upon a female construction worker who is doing a perfectly good job, calling her "butch" or "a dyke" just because of her occupation. Many psuedointellectual conservatives are obsessed with "traditional" roles. Let people do what they are good at. No affirmative action, but no affirmative presumptions of gender-based lesser ability in any given area of life either!
The fact that men and women are different doesn't imply that anyone gets to become the gender difference dictator. What lead you to such a bizarre supposition?
Get off your high horse.
Regards.
What a weird and oversimplified stereotype to comment on. My wife picks up spiders and puts them outside so they'll take care of the pesky flying insects. My grandmother used to gross me out by killing huge bugs by swatting them with her open hand then picking them up to put them in the trash.
OTOH, there was a single lady who moved in up the trail from us who called 911 to get a spider out of her bathroom. They killed the spider after they were done treating her for hyperventalation. She wasn't "professing" anything, she was terrified. She moved out a few months later.... the country wasn't her cup of tea.
Perhaps I was too frivilous in my responce but I tend to giggle when the war between the sexes comes up as a topic.
Women have always held power, just as have men.Historically rigid roles did not weigh so heavily on the elite of any past society, they had leisure to discover personal preferences and the means to indulge them. The vast majority of the rest of humanity were locked in a day to day struggle for survival.
Once mankind discovered technology and mass produced it, traditional male/female roles became an "object of scorn" or the "only right way" to people of both sexes who were confused by their new freedoms and choices. Several generations of western civilization were/are so confused they seem to seek excuses to explain their lack of confidence in the personal choices they have made regarding their "role" as a man or woman.
.As a woman, I see this most clearly in the "Mommy wars " .Women feel either guilt or superiority,based on envy or scorn, of another womans freely chosen lifestyle.It is sometimes hard for us humans to just try to do the best we can,without a defined set of expectations to measure our success.
I see some hope in the next generation that both men and women will feel comfortable in their own skins, whether they choose a more traditional role or a variation.
Throughout this post I am speaking of heterosexual,relatively normal men and women.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.