Feminism and self responsibility

[Yellow]

I have been thinking about personal responsibility and feminism, trying to see if they can work together.

I am especially concerned with the bit of feminism that talks about issues like women making less money than men on average. The reasons being part time work, as well as the fact that many women choose to be stay-at-home moms. All of those factors reduce the income average for women altogether. In addition, women mostly work in fields that pay less than male dominated fields. So, the average is lower.

My understanding of these issues is that it all goes back to the advent of industrialization when men started stepping outside of the home to bring home money. The 'home' unit (traditionally speaking) takes up the efforts of two people to make it work; the lady who takes care of the home and the man who brings home the bread. But they only get paid for one person's work. The woman doesn't get any monetary value out of the work that she puts in.

Here the question can be raised about different priorities. For some people, the satisfaction one gets from raising children and making home a happy place could be worth a lot more than what their working counterpart would make. I am not sure if the entire issue melts down to this point.

Ok, the practical implications of all of that on an average woman's life in this era: I see myself working full-time hours to support myself. If I decide to minimize my working hours if/when I decide to have kids, I would expect the father (assuming a nuclear family) to support me and the kids, because I'd be taking on a responsibility that is OURS and not just mine. I would expect myself to support him if he reduces his work to take care of our kids. (I can see how I am seeing money making as a 40h/week kinda thing and that any less wouldn't bring enough money.)

If single parenting is to happen, well then the issue is a tiny bit more complicated.

Is that fair?

In my thinking about this issue, am I taking sufficient responsibility for myself without taking on unrealistic amounts of responsibility? Please also point out any limiting beliefs you see there.

P.S. I wrote this post in a hurry. I have skipped some points/made assumptions, but I hope you get the gist.

[Angela]

I think it doesn't have anything to do with feminism; it's simply an agreement that you and your partner will probably want to make explicit prior to your getting pregnant. Put it in writing.

Personally, I wouldn't have kids unless I was willing to take on 100% responsibility for them. That doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer that their father ALSO take 100% responsibility -- it just means that it's a personal standard for me. I think a lot of parents get into trouble when they have expectations that seem perfectly reasonable to the expector and mean nothing at all to the person of whom it's expected. Things are bound to change over time, but when it comes to money and kids, I'd get it all spelled out -- agreements and consequences -- before anyone is conceived.

[Elrond]

Originally Posted by Yellow

My understanding of these issues is that it all goes back to the advent of industrialization when men started stepping outside of the home to bring home money. The 'home' unit (traditionally speaking) takes up the efforts of two people to make it work; the lady who takes care of the home and the man who brings home the bread. But they only get paid for one person's work. The woman doesn't get any monetary value out of the work that she puts in.

That's what alimony is for.

[ZephyrusX]

Yay! Feminism! *Tasers Elrond in her excitement*

I am especially concerned with the bit of feminism that talks about issues like women making less money than men on average. The reasons being part time work, as well as the fact that many women choose to be stay-at-home moms. All of those factors reduce the income average for women altogether. In addition, women mostly work in fields that pay less than male dominated fields. So, the average is lower.

When scholars and researchers design methodologies meant to ‘capture’ the wage gap between males and females, I’m pretty sure they control for obvious factors, such as part-time employment, paternity leave, differences in work experience. After controlling for such factors, they still find a wage differential between males and females at the professional level. At least, the couple of studies I read did. So you can come to two conclusions. One: the researchers left out significant correlates or Two: Sexism accounts for the wage gap.

My understanding of these issues is that it all goes back to the advent of industrialization when men started stepping outside of the home to bring home money. The 'home' unit (traditionally speaking) takes up the efforts of two people to make it work; the lady who takes care of the home and the man who brings home the bread. But they only get paid for one person's work. The woman doesn't get any monetary value out of the work that she puts in.

You are totally over looking women from lower-socioeconomic classes. The phenomena you just described captures the experiences of middle class women well from a Western perspective.

Ok, the practical implications of all of that on an average woman's life in this era: I see myself working full-time hours to support myself. If I decide to minimize my working hours if/when I decide to have kids, I would expect the father (assuming a nuclear family) to support me and the kids, because I'd be taking on a responsibility that is OURS and not just mine. I would expect myself to support him if he reduces his work to take care of our kids. (I can see how I am seeing money making as a 40h/week kinda thing and that any less wouldn't bring enough money.)

What about paternity leave? And how gender neutral is your state’s parental leave legislation? In Canada, most provincial states provide something like 70% of your income for the first 9 months and then it decreases to 60% for the last 3 months (this is just based on my ‘memory’ - they are not exact numbers). Unless you are from a upper-middle class or your employer provides excellent parental leave benefits, this almost always translates into the woman taking the entirety of the parental leave (since on average, women make less money). Quebec has the most gender neutral parental leave legislation, and accordingly, they also have the highest paternity leave rates in Canada. But to be fair, I think Quebec may have taken it too far. They require that the last three months of parental leave be taken by the second parent, which reduces choice.

Just from my own point of view, I don’t see why a male shouldn’t have to take paternity leave. Placing the burden of parental leave solely upon the female creates problems for women in professional sectors. I heard that if you are a female planning on getting your PhD and tenureship at a university, you had better have your baby before finishing your degree. Otherwise, they don’t like taking on women. Whether or not high proportions of paternity leave overrides this issue is something I’m unclear about. I haven’t done any research on it yet, but it seems like it would work. But just because paternity leave is offered, doesn’t mean that males will take the leave due to stigma and loss of privilege.

My idea of feminism is granting women the social, economic and political means to make meaningful decisions in their lives. But I tend to emphasize economic and political structures because that is where the real contention is. It is meaningless to say that all women have ‘choices’ when they are actually barred from meaningful choices through law and social policy. Having said that, what is your view on paternity leave?

I’ll stop talking now… lol, I don't even know if it answered your question

[Elrond]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

Yay! Feminism! *Tasers Elrond in her excitement*

LOL ouch!

[Cochonette]

Maybe people should be paid for raising children. That's what welfare is for, I suppose. Takes a village to raise a child, right?

[Weena]

Yellow, i know families where the man is partly father at home and one where the man is father at home (as you mentioned, the wife is the main earner).

In my case, I am the stay at home mum. Before being pregnant we both worked full time, and i plan on going back into the work thing when the children start school. It's something we decided based on these factors:

- we both had mums at home and understand the quality of life it gave us.
- I am the one staying at home because his job pays better than i would get paid.
- paying childcare and a maid would cost my entire pay IF not more.
- my husband has the peace of mind of knowing the children are looked after and no left in a cot to cry amongst many other children.

I have participated a bit to our finances with a little home based business and before our two months old daughter was born i used to accept the odd interpreting job in hospitals (interpreting between patients and doctors) which was great and paid nicely, but now with the baby it's not really an option (with just the toddler it was okay, i could have him stay at my husband's work a couple of hours every now and again).

This family situation works for us. My husband is happy to have happy children, a well kept house and beautiful meals when he comes back from work, and often express his gratitude for my work, so i don't feel I'm inferior, but rather we are a team with different roles.

And, Cochonette, in my case, we live on one salary...i don't ask for welfare money and not even sure i would get it if i applied.

Fortunately this is common around here. I know many other couples doing the same, enjoying their children during the first years. In my homeland mothers at home are seen as lesser human beings because they don't "earn" but here it's more family oriented.

[ssandra]

I want to work, and take care of my baby full time (assuming that I will get pregnant of course).

how?

By working mainly from home or taking my baby with me when I go to work (will be my own company of course). For those times that it isn't possible, the child will be with my husband or a babysitter (grand parent, aunt, uncle etc). That will be a few hours a month, at most.

When the child is around 2 I hope I can find a good pre-school here for half days. I think it is important that a child learns to socialize. That would free up half days as well....

[Weena]

Originally Posted by ssandra

I want to work, and take care of my baby full time (assuming that I will get pregnant of course).

how?

By working mainly from home or taking my baby with me when I go to work (will be my own company of course). For those times that it isn't possible, the child will be with my husband or a babysitter (grand parent, aunt, uncle etc). That will be a few hours a month, at most.

When the child is around 2 I hope I can find a good pre-school here for half days. I think it is important that a child learns to socialize. That would free up half days as well....

One of my friends in Belgium owns a shop so she took her bub with her for two years as well. It's very possible to do .

[pyrogen]

Originally Posted by Yellow

I have been thinking about personal responsibility and feminism, trying to see if they can work together.

I am especially concerned with the bit of feminism that talks about issues like women making less money than men on average. The reasons being part time work, as well as the fact that many women choose to be stay-at-home moms. All of those factors reduce the income average for women altogether. In addition, women mostly work in fields that pay less than male dominated fields. So, the average is lower.

My understanding of these issues is that it all goes back to the advent of industrialization when men started stepping outside of the home to bring home money. The 'home' unit (traditionally speaking) takes up the efforts of two people to make it work; the lady who takes care of the home and the man who brings home the bread. But they only get paid for one person's work. The woman doesn't get any monetary value out of the work that she puts in.

Here the question can be raised about different priorities. For some people, the satisfaction one gets from raising children and making home a happy place could be worth a lot more than what their working counterpart would make. I am not sure if the entire issue melts down to this point.

Ok, the practical implications of all of that on an average woman's life in this era: I see myself working full-time hours to support myself. If I decide to minimize my working hours if/when I decide to have kids, I would expect the father (assuming a nuclear family) to support me and the kids, because I'd be taking on a responsibility that is OURS and not just mine. I would expect myself to support him if he reduces his work to take care of our kids. (I can see how I am seeing money making as a 40h/week kinda thing and that any less wouldn't bring enough money.)

If single parenting is to happen, well then the issue is a tiny bit more complicated.

Is that fair?

In my thinking about this issue, am I taking sufficient responsibility for myself without taking on unrealistic amounts of responsibility? Please also point out any limiting beliefs you see there.

P.S. I wrote this post in a hurry. I have skipped some points/made assumptions, but I hope you get the gist.

I'm not seeing what this has to do with feminism, but it's struck me as rather imbalanced that we tend to think of one-income families as "one-income/two-parent" as if the other parent isn't really earning their living.

Another way you can think about one-income/two-parent units, is that instead of two people living on one person's income, it's really the income of two people in the sense that both are, in a sense, employed. One is employed outside the home and one is employed inside the home.

Say the husband (in the old model) is making 50k/year. I'll use that figure because at any higher, you can afford to outsource a lot of domestic work, and it starts to be affordable and economical for both people to work (at which point, the decision falls upon your moral/social beliefs about working mothers vs stay-at-home mothers)... but at 50k or lower, it may start to be cheaper for one person to stay home, especially if they'd otherwise only make around $10-15 an hour. People forget that at lower income levels, it actually costs money for one person to work, because 1) they can't afford to outsource any domestic labor, and 2) it costs money to work!

What you have is not one person making 50k while the other person does nothing. You have one person who works a job outside the home... and is, effectively, outsourcing the domestic labor to another party - their spouse. We don't tend to think of the at-home parent as a paid employee or business partner, but they essentially are.

As for whether or not that's work: we all know that domestic labor is work. To anyone who doesn't know that, try doing all that daily minutia yourself. Just try it. Make your own meals and do your own laundry and clean - REALLY clean, not what most working single people assume passes for clean - your house regularly. There's a reason all the success authors and Steve himself say to outsource as much of that daily busywork as possible. It's exhausting and takes up a LOT of your time, and if it has to be done inhouse, really requires either two people splitting up the tasks or one person doing all of it.

It is far more tiring to do household domestic stuff, cook meals, run errands, and ferry kids around, than it is to sit in a cubicle for eight hours a day. If it weren't, Steve and the other success authors wouldn't be telling us hire out, hire out, hire out. In the traditional model, that is what the husband is doing: he is *hiring out*. He's outsourcing these tasks to the wife.

Ask anyone who's done both, which is the bigger job. I didn't have any appreciation of this until I basically had to run a household for a living, for about a year. Hardest work I've ever done! Moreso than working 12 hours a day in Silicon Valley, plus a 2 hour each way commute!

Most single working people don't do both. We tend to outsource anyway. Lots of us tend to do the "sniff test" with our clothes, let the cleaning slack off a bit, and we eat out a lot.

As for me, my own ideal is to have some kind of business, and to make money. I like making money and having things to do that stimulate my mind, which frankly, household drudgery doesn't. Which I'd prefer, anyway, kids or no kids. But if I had kids, I definitely would be outsourcing a lot and putting those lost hours into something more productive.

I don't feel it'd make me a worse parent to hire out a lot of the domestic labor and errand running and use Safeway.com for the groceries. I didn't feel my mother loved me less based on whether or not she cleaned up the house. I noticed if she bandaged my boo-boos... not if she cleaned the bathroom.

Originally Posted by Angela

I think it doesn't have anything to do with feminism; it's simply an agreement that you and your partner will probably want to make explicit prior to your getting pregnant. Put it in writing.

Personally, I wouldn't have kids unless I was willing to take on 100% responsibility for them. That doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer that their father ALSO take 100% responsibility -- it just means that it's a personal standard for me. I think a lot of parents get into trouble when they have expectations that seem perfectly reasonable to the expector and mean nothing at all to the person of whom it's expected. Things are bound to change over time, but when it comes to money and kids, I'd get it all spelled out -- agreements and consequences -- before anyone is conceived.

This seems very, very sensible.

[Lionman]

I think Feminisim should be called Masculinism instead.

Testosterone produces certain behavioural characteristics and estrogen produces different behavioural characteristics. The qualities are more apparent in high doses, showing purity of the characteristics in the extremes.

Feminism encourages the testosterone type behaviour opposed to the qualities estrogen produces. Therefore, I've always thought it should be called Masculanism.

If you look at female bodybuilders who take male hormones, not only do they get big muscles, a deeper voice and facial hair that they have to shave off, but their behaviour changes a lot as well; taking on "classical" masculine behaviours.

I think feminism has done some great things, but a lot of it looks down upon estrogen type characteristic behaviours, making it seem bad to be a certain kind of woman.

[pyrogen]

Originally Posted by Lionman

I think Feminisim should be called Masculinism instead.

Testosterone produces certain behavioural characteristics and estrogen produces different behavioural characteristics. The qualities are more apparent in high doses, showing purity of the characteristics in the extremes.

Feminism encourages the testosterone type behaviour opposed to the qualities estrogen produces. Therefore, I've always thought it should be called Masculanism.

If you look at female bodybuilders who take male hormones, not only do they get big muscles, a deeper voice and facial hair that they have to shave off, but their behaviour changes a lot as well; taking on "classical" masculine behaviours.

I think feminism has done some great things, but a lot of it looks down upon estrogen type characteristic behaviours, making it seem bad to be a certain kind of woman.

Good point, but I almost wonder if it should be called androgynism. The same people tend to discourage normal male behavior in *men*. And much of the point seems to be to insist that "we're all the same, yay!".

I'm referring to recent trends in feminism, not to the first and second wave equity feminism which were more about economic and legal rights... which I don't think are in dispute with anyone here.

[Lionman]

I personally think the androgenous phase comes before people begin to embrace their natural polarity in a better way than before. Life seems more passionate when you have that kind of magnetism.

My 2 pence

[pyrogen]

Originally Posted by Lionman

I personally think the androgenous phase comes before people begin to embrace their natural polarity in a better way than before. Life seems more passionate when you have that kind of magnetism.

My 2 pence

I agree. Then it's a dance. Not a war. And dancing is *fun*.

[Lionman]

Originally Posted by pyrogen

... dancing is *fun*.

Hell yeah

[Criseyde]

I'm confused as to what this has to do with feminism -- do you feel pressured to abdicate responsibility, or to shoulder it?

[Elrond]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

When scholars and researchers design methodologies meant to ‘capture’ the wage gap between males and females, I’m pretty sure they control for obvious factors, such as part-time employment, paternity leave, differences in work experience. After controlling for such factors, they still find a wage differential between males and females at the professional level. At least, the couple of studies I read did. So you can come to two conclusions. One: the researchers left out significant correlates or Two: Sexism accounts for the wage gap.

Probably the most politically used study, the one that found that women earn something like 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes, was used for full time workers. So it didn't take into account all the factors that would distill it to a level where one can more precisely judge if there is any discrimination going on. This hasn't stopped politicians and lobbyists to misuse the statistic and use it as "evidence" that there is discrimination going on. That's politics. Nevermind what the researchers intent was. Maybe it was simply to find out how much women and men make relative to each other. It doesn't stop others from misusing them.

Carrie Lukas - A Bargain At 77 Cents To a Dollar - washingtonpost.com

A study that would try to prove any discrimination or absense of it would have to be very rigourus in taking account for all the factors that influences someones pay. Maybe you have found some that do.

[ssandra]

Originally Posted by Elrond

Carrie Lukas - A Bargain At 77 Cents To a Dollar - washingtonpost.com

Tnx for the article. Interesting read

[Elrond]

Originally Posted by ssandra

Tnx for the article. Interesting read

You're welcome.

[Elrond]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

What about paternity leave? And how gender neutral is your state’s parental leave legislation? In Canada, most provincial states provide something like 70% of your income for the first 9 months and then it decreases to 60% for the last 3 months (this is just based on my ‘memory’ - they are not exact numbers). Unless you are from a upper-middle class or your employer provides excellent parental leave benefits, this almost always translates into the woman taking the entirety of the parental leave (since on average, women make less money).

Of course this 'hurts' men too, since staying home with the kids as opposed to working outside the home isn't inherently better or worse.

Assuming no significant workplace discrimination either way, women can try to earn more if they wish to work outside the home in the future.

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

Quebec has the most gender neutral parental leave legislation, and accordingly, they also have the highest paternity leave rates in Canada. But to be fair, I think Quebec may have taken it too far. They require that the last three months of parental leave be taken by the second parent, which reduces choice.

Just from my own point of view, I don’t see why a male shouldn’t have to take paternity leave.

Aren't you contradicting yourself? You say that Quebec law reduces choice, but then you say that don't see any reason why men shouldn't have to take paternity leave. Anyway I don't want the government dictating who should take parental leave and how long they should take it.

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

Placing the burden of parental leave solely upon the female creates problems for women in professional sectors. I heard that if you are a female planning on getting your PhD and tenureship at a university, you had better have your baby before finishing your degree. Otherwise, they don’t like taking on women. Whether or not high proportions of paternity leave overrides this issue is something I’m unclear about. I haven’t done any research on it yet, but it seems like it would work. But just because paternity leave is offered, doesn’t mean that males will take the leave due to stigma and loss of privilege.

Yeah, loss of 'privilige' to work outside the home. But as I've said, whether this is a privilige as opposed to being a homemaker is subjective.

[Liz Caitlin]

Nothing wrong with anything you just said. If I had kids, I would want to be home with them the first couple of years, and I would want my partner to support our family financially during that time. We would probably save up a bit BEFORE we had kids, but yeah, I want to be a full-time mom when the children are little. Luckily my boyfriend agrees with me on this.

If identifying as a feminist is important to you - and even if it's not - feminism is about CHOICE. We no longer only have the option to depend on men for financial security, which is great, but it doesn't mean we can't if we choose to, and that's also great. Do what makes you happy!

[Liz Caitlin]

Originally Posted by Lionman

I personally think the androgenous phase comes before people begin to embrace their natural polarity in a better way than before. Life seems more passionate when you have that kind of magnetism.

My 2 pence

Could not agree more. I don't want an equal, I want someone whose ways are ever so slightly mysterious to me even though we're mostly on the same page...