But bearing that in mind, I want to relate a story that occurred in a recent Elder Law class. Elder Law essentially means law for old people. I am sure my professor's heart is breaking into a million pieces with that definition since we spent the better part of an entire lecture breaking down just what Elder Law really was, but come on... at its core. Elder Law = Law for old people.
Anyway, we were discussing the social security system and how disbursement works related to various factors such as who you were married to, how long you were married, whether you ever worked in your life time, how to define the period of time that encompasses work, etc.
Now quick recap of social security in case you are unfamiliar. The idea is that you are sort of providing a safety net for yourself in the future by paying into a pot of money now. It's essentially a kind of retirement insurance that you qualify for once you are 65 years of age. And while there may be quite a few criticisms of this system, I was rather impressed with the provisions that it made for women, especially women that may not have had occasion to work outside of the home. Social security came as part of the New Deal Reform that FDR instituted following/during the Great Depression as a result of the destitution that so many (including the elderly) faced.
Anyway, this is all just great background for the real point of this post. My teacher asked about why some of these provisions would have been made with various special provisions for women. A rather exuberant fellow female classmate offered the confident suggestion that it probably had to do with the fact that women didn't work previous to the Great Depression and that due to the lack of contraception they were just baby factories kept at home to produce. CAN I TELL YOU RIGHT NOW, THIS IS ONE OF MY GREATEST ANNOYANCES IN LIFE BUT PARTICULARLY IN MY SCHOOL LIFE.
The annoyance is 2 fold:
1. Being uninformed about the actual history of women ( i.e. the incredible amount that they were working in industries outside the home like dye factories (Les Miserables anyone?) for example and/or the fact that for many the home was the place of business due to family owned shops or farms, that industrialization and labor laws took work from an all the time at home affair to an away from home 9-5 affair).
2. Reducing the bearing and rearing of children as inconsequential and somehow less important than a job outside the home.
I was very glad to hear my professor disagree with her, but I was very bothered to hear how pervasive these two misunderstandings were/are regarding women. (You should be proud to know that I actually DID OPEN MY MOUTH on this one and mention the bit regarding home being the place of business pre-industrialization.)
So, let me just tell you. I am passionate about women and women's issues/plights/rights etc. HOWEVER, I am equally passionate about men and men's issues/plights/rights etc. as it pertains to the relationship between the two and the family. I am not in favor of a separate but equal approach to the gender divide but neither am I the least bit comfortable with the 'one size fits all' view of gender and gender roles. I am a 'STAKE MY LIFE ON IT' BELIEVER that men and women are different AND that both are valuable and necessary components of any truly functioning society. SO, there must be parity between the sexes. Parity meaning that differences exist but that there is equality in the differences i.e. men and women in all realms of society working together using their different perspectives to come to a more reasoned conclusion than any one person could or any single gendered group could.
In our society, this is a very difficult concept to grasp because we are so conditioned to think that if a difference exists there must be an inherent order: see separate but equal above. A difference means that one will be stronger/wealthier/smarter/better/freer than the other weaker/poorer/dumber/worse/tied-down alternative, but I contend that doesn't have to be. So welcome to my first great pondering passion: how to make others see PARITY and share my zeal enough to infuse our society with it. I should very much like to make my influence felt through parity.
What do you think of this readers? What are your great pondering passions? What do you think about the genders and how they are getting on these days?
Great post.
ReplyDeleteI listened to a podcast recently where they discussed what the future holds and one person suggested that society is already moving towards androgyny and will probably continue to do so over time. So I agree with your thoughts about gender distinctions. I think the olympics are a great example of highlighting that there's distinctions to men and women that no one can really stamp out. And why would we want to? To have strengths is--like you said--"valuable and necessary," so it's sad that we want to pretend they don't exist, as if that is the answer to equality. I can see why some may think androgyny might be a way of solving the social disparities, but I think it's like you said--we've been conditioned. We need to fight the conditioning in our own brains.
You're awesome.
Thanks Col. You are so kind, and I agree that furthering the divide isn't going to be the way to close it as it appears some people are apt to do. Thank you for your comment. What article were you reading just out of curiosity? I would love to read it myself.
DeleteThis is something I have thought a lot about. I have taken various women's studies classes and am just generally passionate about equality and women's rights. First of all, I think people forget that the stay at home mom is somewhat of a new concept. Women, like you write, in many societies worked in the fields and farms and then eventually in factories and such. Despite this fact, women have traditionally been reduced down to their sexual organs and reproduction. Now, I believe women should be proud of their ability to bear children, for various reasons this is an incredible thing. The problem arises when society treats women like this is their one and only point in the world. Bearing and raising children should never be something women are expected to do simply because they have the biology capable of doing so. Unfortunately, many societies have had this thought and have perpetuated this idea. Which is why currently we have the "mommy wars" and we have women who feel guilty no matter what choices they make regarding family and career. Part of this is making sure men feel comfortable with making the choice to stay at home with children and that it becomes socially acceptable for them to do so.
ReplyDeleteSo, I agree, it needs to be stated that women have made many great contributions from the beginning of time. But, it is important to realize the hardships women have had to overcome because of how society has treated women. Yes, they have worked, but at the same time, they were also subjected to the idea that their main purpose in life was to get pregnant and have children. I think that is what the lady in your class was going for.
Where we need to come to in our society is an understanding that women can bear children and that this is a wonderful, amazing thing, but, it is not the only thing to a woman. Women are capable of anything and should be allowed the freedom to make the choices best for their lives. Never should women be made to believe that if they don't have children, their lives are somehow illegitimate.
Another thought is the sex vs. gender idea. Gender is essentially a socially constructed idea while sex is a biological trait. As a society, we have assigned certain roles to different sexes, which are made up and have nothing to do with biology, and this is where the problems occur. So, a woman who is more masculine gets made fun of because she differs from socially constructed gender norms. Women must shave their legs because as a society, we have determined that this is what it means to be a woman. We need to change this mindset so that we can choose to be whoever we want to be without the fear of being weird or abnormal. We shouldn’t have to conform to socially constructed gender norms.
In terms of a society and country accepting mothers as valuable, we partially need to look at maternity and paternity leave. Currently, the United States is one of only a handful countries in the world without paid parental leave. The other countries are Swaziland and Papa New Guinea. All other industrialized countries have some form of paid parental leave. How can we say we value families and parents when we can’t provide for them this right? Another thing to look at is whether a country provides free or reduced cost child care. This is something that lessens the burdens on families, specifically single mothers and increases a child’s chance for success. So, in our country, who is valued? Parents? CEOs of banks? The answer is pretty clear. It may seem like I am going off on a crazy tangent here (and maybe I am), but the actions and laws in a society effect the overall attitudes and norms of a society. So, these two simple actions have a big influence on how parents and families and treated in a society.
Anyways, hopefully this is clear and relevant and hopefully I didn’t go too far off of your original comment. I really appreciate you bringing this topic up, it is a difficult one to discuss but it is necessary.
I really like a lot of what you have said here. I particularly like the portion where you discuss the actions and laws in a society effecting the overall attitudes and norms of a society. I did a lot of work with in in my undergrad. I worked on the woman stats project. If you would like to check it out it's at http://womanstats.org. Anyway, one of the projects that I had was looking at the discrepancy between laws and practice in various countries. It was fascinating to see what countries had agreed to or signed to and in reality how conditions were there. I mean from most of the UN reports, you would think that the Congo and other countries like that were vacation spots for women :-) I was of course saddened to see that the US struggles in many of these areas too, particularly domestic violence. One of the findings that our research had though, was that changing the family structure as in changing how a husband viewed his wife or a wife her husband so that democracy was being practiced in the home was the single most effective change to a society's structure. I remember how amazing this seemed to me. Change the home, change the country, change the world. But it is also exciting that for many of these issues, change will occur more quickly when the right begins being taught and exercised in the home versus waiting of the society to be forced to change by the government. I think that a combo pack of those two is obviously awesome, but what you were saying about family and society really seemed to be in this same vein.
DeleteIt is true that women have had some really enormous struggles, and women have been reduced to only what they can produce, I suppose I was just bothered that in supposedly advocating for these women, my classmate also only reduced them to that, by only mentioning that contribution. Does that make sense? Like I know that she brought it up because that idea bothered her, but by refusing to see other things that women did at the time, I kind of felt like she was contributing to that idea, despite her tone of disapproval for such a practice.
And I agree that women shouldn't feel an obligation to have children, but I also think that there is a fairly prominent idea now that having children at all will cause a woman to never be a man's equal. This idea saddens me too. I can understand the rationale. Women and men don't earn the same for the same work, and women with children on average earn even less than a woman does that does not have children. So I can see the risk that children present in the career avenue, but I think that the solution often taken now is to avoid this discrimination by just not engaging in the practice. Unfortunately, as you mention, this then sniffles women from using that incredible ability to have children. Since you mention that you have utopian ideals, I suppose I will mention one of my own, and that is that rather than always trying to get women to the "level of men" in industry that we re-evaluate and try to improve the level for everyone, because making a single man with no obligations except work as the ideal for which we are trying to get all working people to achieve obviously creates some serious issues in practice. Instead, wouldn't it be better to consider women with children, men with children as the ideal. You know? I think things are improving in this respect, but I wonder how much of it is that people have caved to societal norms and how much of it is society improving. I would guess a bit of both. (How's that for a tangent? I guess I am pretty good at tangents too.)
Anyway, though I prefer talking and thinking about this, I better start listening in class today. Thanks for your comment. I am really enjoying our discussions.
Are you going to watch the Half the Sky Documentary this coming week?
Okay, I am super excited about the woman stats project, I just briefly went to the site, and will look more closely later, but I can already tell it is an awesome project! Great job! Also, what you bring up is really interesting and I totally agree. I read a book called, "Rich, Free, and Miserable: The Failure of Success in America" by a sociologist named John Brueggemann. He talks about the breakdown of the family and how that has contributed to many of our problems in society and has contributed to a lack of morals. This is even more interesting when you consider that sociologists usually don't touch this subject because "morals" has been turned into a religious word. He doesn't use it in the religious sense but instead speaks to rudeness and lack of meaningful relationships. He highlights that since families are no longer a priority, society has gone down a negative path.
ReplyDeleteI know I didn't make it clear but I do agree that women with children should not be put at any disadvantage and should not be held back in any way. That goes for men too. Men should be able to choose to stay at home, or choose to work. So should women. Women should be able to make the choice best for themselves and their family. If that means staying home, great. If that means working part time or full time in a career other than taking care of their children, they should be supported. I guess that's what I was getting at with the parental leave and reduced cost child care. Just because a woman gets pregnant, it does not mean she should be pushed out of her job. She should be able to do her work, have the baby, take the time necessary and then go back to work without fear of punishment or firing. I remember a stat from school that when a woman had children, it looked bad to the employer, yet if a man had children, it looked good. There is a huge disconnect there that is really unfortunate.
I am definitely going to check out Half the Sky. It sounds amazing!