So the American Prospect very eloquently spells out the double standard that still exists in regards to women, families and jobs. Basically, while legislative environments have made discrimination based on gender more difficult, Linda Hirshman argues that the idea of the traditional family, with the stay-at-home mom, is still too pervasive for women to do anything but internalize it and use that image to guide their career decision-making from as early as college.
An awful lot of this resonated with me. For one thing, both of the two job interviews I had for my new job in January were conducted with women, so at least in this particular department in the big bad world of tech, the gender-odds are biased in my favour–the same as last time.
Being Canadian and reading an American journalist, I can forgive the article for focusing solely on elite, status-laden, high-paying jobs–the fact that women value jobs that they care about rather than just money is, to me, not so much a critique that can be levelled against women as it is a fault with the American corporate machine driven by men, in general. Why’s that? Because the American economic system, though it may do a lot of great things for the American people, tends to ground an awful lot of people under its boot heel too–for instance:
- people in developing countries;
- the environment both within and outside of its own borders;
- immigrant labour; and
- the poverty-stricken within America itself.
Is this the kind of work that only big strong men can do? I think this is the only kind of work that big strong heartless white men feel comfortable doing on a daily basis (though I will cede that given the chance, there are a great number of men in other places in the world who would have absolutely no scruples about doing it too, so I’m not making this cultural, really). Can I slip in here too that I’m cautiously optimistic that this can change? Because I am.
The part that hurts (because I’ve noticed it being true within my own life) is this part:
How to avoid this kind of rut? You can either find a spouse with less social power than you or find one with an ideological commitment to gender equality. Taking the easier path first, marry down. Don’t think of this as brutally strategic. If you are devoted to your career goals and would like a man who will support that, you’re just doing what men throughout the ages have done: placing a safe bet.
I’m looking at you, my last two relationships. As I told the person who interviewed me a couple of days ago, I’ve noticed that I have yet to find someone who is also ambitious, hard-working, and, to quote a song by The Wet Spots, “agree[s] that human rights abuses are unfair.” I don’t think that’s what I’m looking for anyway–I’m enough these things to make me absolutely sick of me. (I’ll wait until I’m 22 or 23 to whittle that down into an Ideal Man text file with which I can intimidate all my prospects.)
And so I wonder how inevitable this is. I can’t imagine having two professionals in a relationship either though (but maybe that’s just because I’ve only seen, from quite a distance, a few examples of it in my life ever). I’m not even thinking of kids yet (as I pointed out to someone just yesterday, I really think I’m entitled to this lack of foresight as a part of being only a hairsbreadth into my 21st year). It does indicate, judging from the conclusions made above, that I am in the market for a stay-at-home dad. Let’s leave that off the personal ad, shall we?
I do however, take issue with the way this article equates money with social influence through work. I think that this completely discounts the autonomy that people have to effect social change through institutions that do not pay well (i.e. outside of elite political lobbying and corporations). Perhaps within the American system this is true; but I take as my idol someone like Vancouver Green School Trustee Andrea Reimer (who, I was devastated to discover, was defeated in the election last week)–someone who made a tangible difference, doing good, honest work and was able to have a kid at the same time, slight as it may be to the big players. Let it be writ large that I am aiming for the second option.
I’d be interested to see how this situation has played out in countries say in Europe; or whether things like this can be seen to play out in international non-governmental organizations, which don’t get a lot of cred in the American scheme, because that’s where I’ve always seen my long-term goals taking me.
I do not think that the only way to make a good income and to be a mother is to become a Mary Kay consultant (sorry Katie) . I think that it requires unbelievable amounts of strength, ingenuity, planning and probably a decent measure of luck–and that, my friends, is the real sexism. Not so much that men are not told that their personal goals must conflict with their career goals; but that this assumption is implicit and manifests in the choices they make for spouses. Is it a matter of hitching up our office slacks and getting girls to stoop to the same game? For now, I say no.
