I think I'll go on a vacation from pen-l tomorrow. I actually had something I had to do today.
me:
> you've got to admit that "western" capitalist countries have allowed > _some_ women to be in power (to be as bad as men). Some state > governors in the US have been women, as have some senators and CEOs. > In my cursory understanding of the issue, the US is doing much better > than Japan on this count (which of course is only one dimension of the > issue).
Yoshie:
Well, there has not been any female head of state in the USA, but all three countries of the subcontinent -- Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, two of which are predominantly Muslim and all of which are homosocial societies -- have.
right.
Outside the Nordic countries, women's representation in parliaments in the OECD nations isn't a whole lot better than the rest, especially when we take serious economic and/or political problems that plague the rest and relative absence of them in the OECD nations into account:
why exclude the Nordic countries? If they can do it, why not we? me:
> I dunno. It seems there are _more_ women on LBO-talk than on pen-l > (which is what I said above).
Yoshie:
PEN-l is, after all, a progressive ECONOMISTS network, and men and women are still socialized to think that economics is a male thing to do.
I hope that's changing. My department is currently 30% female (and rising). Two-thirds of our recent new hires were women. (of course the neoclassical ideology is largely masculine in style.)
It's still probably a whole lot more male-dominated discipline than, say, English, anthropology, and so on. Besides, PEN-l is more Marxist than LBO-talk in subscriber demographics, and, alas, the more to the Left you travel, the fewer women you see!
if that's true, it's something to be fought.
> but pen-l itself has abolutely no power. Men who comprise them enjoy gender privilege, a form of social power, such as the privilege to assume that they can speak louder than women, lecture women about feminism, etc. even when they know nothing about the subject!
I really know nothing about feminism _per se_ (except that there are a large number of splits and debates). Beyond being the expression of women's collective needs, it's an abstraction. But I do know that no-one can claim rights without a fight. by the way, how does one "speak louder" on-line? I know it's possible to TYPE ALL IN CAPS but that simply closes people's eyes.
It's too late. Most feminist women have given up on Marxism in the USA.
and they've embraced liberalism? isn't that the general trend, even ignoring the sins of the Marxist Males? me:
> are personal insults useful? how? Women have the right to point out problem behavior on the part of men, except men here don't support it unless it is exercised by women in Iran!
prove it. does this apply to _all_ men? It seems to me that you come to this kind of conclusion because most men (and maybe some women?) interpret your stuff as defending the government of Iran. Yoshie:
> > It should be obvious that I'm talking mainly about possibilities, > > unless I specifically state that there will be automatic changes.
me:
> I kept on bringing up obstacles to these possibilities and you seemed > to ignore my points.
Yoshie:
What makes you assume that I am ignorant of them?
you had lots of chances to bring them up, but you didn't. BTW, I choose words carefully. I didn't say "ignorant." I said "ignored." me:
> No, I don't think that women's entry into the paid labor force is > primarily a result of women's own struggle. Usually, it's like Rosie > the Riveter: with so many of the men off at war and excess demand for > workers developing domestically, the US government pulled the women in > (and then tossed out when the war ended). In many cases in poorer > countries (and in the US in an earlier era), women (especially younger > ones) are brought into waged employment because (male) employers see > them as more docile than men (while their families let them go because > commercialization of agriculture implies that they desperately need > the money). The state and employers' needs are pull factors; women's needs and desires are push factors.
right, but in traditional patriarchal organizations, there was a long period of relative balance between patriarchal power and female (and young male) revolt. It was a long enough period of balance that people often don't remember things being different. But then capitalist and/or the state come in and break the balance. -- Jim Devine / "But the wage of sin don't adjust for inflation. It's a buyer's market when you sell your soul." -- Jeffery Foucault, "Ghost Repeater."
