Girls will be girls, I guess.There's a word to describe Hirschman's argument here. I think the word is "wrong," since it's based on a faulty premise:
Men are losing jobs at far greater rates than women as the industries they dominate, such as manufacturing, construction, and investment services, are hardest hit by the downturn. Some 1.1 million fewer men are working in the United States than there were a year ago, according to the Labor Department. By contrast, 12,000 more women are working.
This gender gap is the product of both the nature of the current recession and the long-term shift in the US economy from making goods, traditionally the province of men, to providing services, in which women play much larger roles, economists said. For example, men account for 70 percent of workers in manufacturing, which shed more than 500,000 jobs over the past year. Healthcare, in which nearly 80 percent of the workers are women, added more than 400,000 jobs.
"As the recession broadens, the gap between men and women is going to close somewhat," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "But right now, the sectors that are really getting pounded are intensely male."
Click here for more background information on the data provided above.
Now, maybe this is unfair -- maybe more women have entered the labor force, and therefore their unemployment rate has risen as fast as men.
Nope, that's not it. Monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Hirschman's assumpton is a flat-out falsehood. Immediately prior to the start of the recession (November 2007), the unemployment rate for men was 4.7%; the rate for women was 4.6%. As of November 2008, the unemployment rate for men has increased to 7.2%, while the unemployment rate for women has only risen to 6%.
So, to sum up: there is no way to spin this data to support the assumption that drives Hirschman's op-ed.
Drezner asks for suggestions as to how Hirshmann could have gotten it so totally, bizarrely, utterly, I-know-why-don't-I-save-time-by-blow-drying-my-hair-in-the-shower? wrong. If you figure it out, please do let me know.
We could, perhaps, employ men to dig holes and then fill them again, and employ women to knit scarves and then unravel them.
Oh - I forgot - the taxes/debt required to "create" these make-work schemes actually has a cost - in terms of destroying productive jobs elsewhere in the economy. Does Hirschmann have an analysis of the differential gender impact of the taxation/debt?
Hirschmannomics:
"Women represent almost half the work force — not exactly a marginal special interest group. By adding a program for jobs in libraries, schools and children’s programs, the new administration can create jobs for them, too."
Failing to read the latest data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics before posting could be accidental incompetence. Failing to read
the article at issue, which says "as the current downturn has worsened, their traditionally lower unemployment rate has actually risen just as fast as men’s" could be a coincidence of two instances of journalistic incompetence. But characterizing a fellow commentator, whether one agrees or not, as
"totally, bizarrely, utterly, I-know-why-don't-I-save-time-by-blow-drying-my-hair-in-the-shower? wrong" is totally, bizarrely, utterly juvenile, inappropriate, probably sexist and, oh yes, why don't I save time by blow drying my hair in the shower wrong.
Here is the data from the November report of the BLS, available to anyone with a click of the mouse, showing the female unemployment rate rising as the downturn worsened, and, coincidentally, the jobs stimulus rose to the top of the political pile as the salient issue.
Since extracting information from printed sources does not seem to be your strong suit, allow me to summarize the data:
From October to November 2008, men's and women's unemployment rate rose .2. From September, 2008 to November, 2008, which was when the downturn worsened, men's unemployment rate rose .4 and women's .6.
Table A. Major indicators of labor market activity, seasonally adjusted
(Numbers in thousands)
_______________________________________________________________________________
| | |
| Quarterly | |
| averages | Monthly data | Oct.-
Category |_________________|__________________________| Nov.
| | | | | | change
| II | III | Sept. | Oct. | Nov. |
| 2008 | 2008 | 2008 | 2008 | 2008 |
_________________________|________|________|________|________|________|________
|
HOUSEHOLD DATA | Labor force status
|_____________________________________________________
| | | | | |
Civilian labor force ....| 154,294| 154,730| 154,732| 155,038| 154,616| -422
Employment ............| 146,089| 145,517| 145,255| 144,958| 144,285| -673
Unemployment ..........| 8,204| 9,213| 9,477| 10,080| 10,331| 251
Not in labor force ......| 79,117| 79,381| 79,628| 79,575| 80,212| 637
|________|________|________|________|________|________
|
| Unemployment rates
|_____________________________________________________
| | | | | |
All workers .............| 5.3| 6.0| 6.1| 6.5| 6.7| 0.2
Adult men .............| 4.9| 5.7| 6.1| 6.3| 6.5| .2
Adult women ...........| 4.6| 4.9| 4.9| 5.3| 5.5| .2
Oh, and when you post your apology, you might start with Journalism 101 and spell my name correctly.
Ms. Hirshman, your picking out of a pile of evidence to the contrary one piece of data that you clearly believe allowed you to pen a silly, misguided and politically-driven op-ed is what makes you exactly what Ms. McArdle accused you of being.
Can't you get anything right? "Hirshmann" from your blog post. "Hirshman" is the right spelling. Drezner made a different, but equally disrespectful and inattentive mistake.
As to the rest, when did the Atlantic turn into a locker room?
when did the Atlantic turn into a locker room?
Right about the time they enabled open comments without registration, thereby allowing literally anyone to be Megan McArdle.
While I am enjoying the catfight, I am more than a little bewildered as to what, exactly, is being argued.
Ms. Hirshman, just what is the point of "publishing" (more like cut-and-pasting) the data in a completely unreadable format? Do you not see the "Preview" button below the comment textbox?
You wrote:
> From October to November 2008, men's and women's unemployment rate rose .2. From September, 2008 to November, 2008, which was when the downturn worsened, men's unemployment rate rose .4 and women's .6.
The two time frames overlap. Apparently in Sept. women's unemployment rose faster than men's; in October they were identical. What exactly am I supposed to infer from such a limited data set?
Ms. McArdle: What does your phrase "So eat a dick" mean? How does your lapsed veganism come into play? If the phrase refers to fellatio, do I infer that vegans spit and don't swallow?
I hate to say it, but I agree with Hirshman when she asks "[W]hen did the Atlantic turn into a locker room?"
Ms. Hirshman-
It may be possible that women's unemployment is going up, but this doesn't mean that the lost jobs are in the sectors you point to as needing stimulus, such as teaching and social work. The whole point of using infrastructure work as a stimulus is that we actually need to do infrastructure work, with problems like Minnesota bridge collapse making the news.
Where do you get the idea that there's a particular demand for teachers and (especially) social workers, aside from the usual constant yelling of the teacher's unions and unsubstantiated calls for reducing class sizes?
I hate to say it, but I agree with Hirshman when she asks "[W]hen did the Atlantic turn into a locker room?"
Right about the time they enabled open comments without registration, thereby allowing literally anyone to be Megan McArdle.
Wow, the claws are out. (Not - repeat NOT - sexist. Obama use that term to refer to Hillary Clinton, so therefore by definition it can only have good and pure connotations.)
In any case, Hirschmann seems to be hanging an awful lot on the phrase "as the current downturn has worsened", which according to her limits the analysis to what has happened since September. I don't know why we care only about what has ccurred since September, though, since the recession began in January.
The Minnesota bridge collapse was not a neglected infrastructure story. It was an engineering error -- made in the sixties, which was supposedly this nation's golden age.
Ironically, the bridge broke on that particular day because the bridge was laden with heavy construction equipment and pavement materials on that day. If we had really been neglecting our infrastructure the bridge wouldn't have collapsed that day.
-dk
(insert Larry Summers joke about women and mathematics here)
Perhaps you should think why you thought it was not me posting
That would be simple: the two alleged Megan McArdle postings are completely, totally out of character. Nothing to do with what "nice girls" say, more to do with what our gracious hostess says, and has been saying for the nearly 7 years I've been reading her. Also, they have weird punctuation problems. So unless both she and her computer are roaringly drunk, you're an imposter.
Personally, I think LMaJ's old clone is annoyed that he rarely posts any more and is looking for someone else to impersonate.
Let's see.....as a woman, I'm struggling to see why the hell unemployment for women should not be rising as fast as unemployment for men? Is Hirschmann suggesting that women are more entitled to jobs than men? These women who claim to fight on behalf of women in order to "end sexism" are in fact very sexist themselves.
Also, her stimulus plan is curious (curious beyond the general idiocy of a stimulus plan). I would rather open a vein than work in any of the professions she claims are in need of stimulus to "cure" female unemployment. I guess women like me don't count because we can compete with men in male dominated professions. It's not only men who perpetuate stereotypes about women - it's feminazis like Hirschmann too.
ROFL
"eat a dick..."
ROFL
What makes me think it's not Megan posting is the way you're escaping your punctuation as if you're typing in PERL or something. I don't recall seeing Megan do that before so it seems like a tell. Then again, I don't really know and don't really care - Just the thought of anyone telling her to "eat a dick" made me laugh so hard I cried... Just the ten-year-old in me I guess.
And Linda,
The data is out there just like Drezner said. If you look at the chart going all the way back what the wonks claim to be the start of the recession - November 2007 - Men's unemployment over that period has risen to 7.2 percent while women lag behind at 6.
Why would you ask that we look at only a subset of the data?
MOAR!
I suppose that could an obscure culinary reference to spotted dick, which would be in character.
You've always been so urbane and kind to me Rob, the only spotted dick I'd want is yours.
But no, sadly, the "eat a dick" was projection; being vegan means you remove pork from your culinary and social life.
Cherry-picking data is poor form.
And I'm not going to assume any of those Megan McArdles in the comments are the one true real one until there's confirmation in a post, rather than a comment.
It's too easy to fake (this is why registration is good for comments; just not for reading) identity, and I don't pretend to know Megan well enough to say for sure she'd never say "eat a dick" or use a \ in front of her 's for no obvious reason (or maybe it's an artifact of something else?).
If Hirshman can be fooled by the "eat a dick" Megan McArdle, it doesn't exactly make me any more likely to credit her analyses.
Unmediated comments could certainly turn a place into a locker room. It did seem a little peculiar, but the uncontroversially McCardle original posting was not exactly a model of professional courtesy or even rational argument.
On the merits, it's one thing to argue that a piece about a plan developed in the last month and heavily promoted as a response to the November jobs report should, instead of using the November jobs report, use a year old jobs report. That contention is probably wrong, but I would not say dryer in the shower wrong. But it's quite another thing to argue that a piece about a plan developed in the last month and heavily promoted as a response to the November jobs report, which uses the data from the last three months, including November, is dryer in the shower wrong. That's not argument; it's internet attack politics, signifying nothing. Now that Drezner's blog is back up, I can see that the original post McCardle pumped up is not anything like that intemperate, although it's a little odd to see someone who tries to catch a little of the billions for women called a "sexist."
Let's see.....as a woman, I'm struggling to see why the hell unemployment for women should not be rising as fast as unemployment for men? Is Hirschmann suggesting that women are more entitled to jobs than men?
Kat, as far as I can tell, Hirshman believes that the purpose of the package is to subsidise job creation, and that most of the jobs it would subsidise are in fields where most of the employees are men. Thus, the subsidy would benefit more men than women.
So she wants to spread the pork between the sexes.
She also claims that spending money on social workers would too stimulate the economy.
Personally, I suspect that she is a lot like many of us: arguments and facts that support things we want, such as giving money to interests groups we like, leap into our vision, but arguments and facts that oppose things we want are bashful, and quietly slip out of our sight.
it's a little odd to see someone who tries to catch a little of the billions for women called a "sexist."
Why is that odd? If you're specifically and intentionally promoting the interests of women at the expense of men, how is that less sexist than promoting the interests of men over women?
More to the point, assuming the stimulus package is actually working as a stimulus, and not simply as a jobs program, the exact fields in which the original jobs are created is only marginally relevant - the cash will spread rapidly through the economy.
As has been discussed here before, infrastructure spending (however high the return) is a poor choice for stimulus for that reason; it takes too long to actually start spending the money because the first year is spent mailing around bids and filing environmental impact statements.
although it's a little odd to see someone who tries to catch a little of the billions for women called a "sexist."
And there in a phrase is exactly what's wrong with stimulus packages. It rapidly ceases to be about economic stimulus and becomes making sure I get my piece of the pie.
And that's exactly the reason you're being called sexist. You're not concerned about the efficacy of the stimulus plan; you're concerned about the sex of the recipient. What word better describes your attitude than sexist?
Apologies, Ms. Hirshman; someone is impersonating me. I've deleted their comments and banned them. I'm also sorry I misspelled your name. Though I must point out, you're misspelling my name, which you will find correctly spelled in large letters at the top of the blog.
As for the data, you're cherry picking. Three months of data is too short, and certainly not the only concern of economists.
Ms. Hirshman's repaying one "Hirshmann" with two "McCardle"s is too neat to be accident. Can't we all just agree that typos happen and get over it? (I say, speaking as someone all three of whose names are routinely misspelled, though usually not at the same time.)
As long as Ms. Hirshman is reading this thread, though, my question on reading her op-ed was why we ought to assume that people employed in the "New New Deal" would be doing the work they were already trained to do. Did the WPA and the CCC work that way?
That most construction workers now are men doesn't at all imply that most unemployed men will be trained construction workers. The WPA idea, as I understand it, was that there was always useful work soneone could do, trained or not. Why shouldn't women as well as men work on infrastructure? I grant you that most of us won't do it as well, or like it as well, as the average man would, but, on the plus side, there'd be a lot more women with skills formerly considered "masculine" at the end of it.
And certainly better this than "Golly, we need more jobs for women too, so let's create more slots for social workers!"
I came for the financial analysis, but I'm staying for the internet drama and 6th grade back-biting that make this blog worth reading. I can always get quality analysis from Krugman's blog.
Apology accepted. As I do not normally read this site, I have no idea what the norms are. Regardless, it was childish of me to misspell your name. I always hate it that people do it to me, but I would not have landed on it, but for the intemperate tone of your post. "Blower in the shower wrong?" "Girls will be girls?" Not only did I have ample data to back up WHAT I SAID (as the downturn worsened) and what I was talking about, which was a jobs program no one even imagined before the downturn worsened in September, but, as Drezner points out, the year- long data also showed a big rise in female unemployment, though not as big as the rise in the male unemployment. So even if I were forced to use the year data for a piece about a month old proposal, I would still be justified in arguing that the response to the data should not be directed to (around) 90% male jobs. Even focussing on the first nine months rather than the current three months, the male u't did not go up nine times as much as the female rate.
I cannot help but think that the level of the rhetoric was vastly disproportionate to a debate about using three current months vs. prior nine months of data. So I wonder what is really going on?
MM: I've deleted their comments and banned them.
Did you miss one?
"Posted by Megan McArdle | December 9, 2008 12:52 PM"
I enjoy the back-and-forth about cherry-picking data. The image of cherry-picking seems exactly right for how data are (always, inevitably) used.
Drezner is down right now so I don't have access to his full post. The data that are relevant for Dan are from the Boston Globe piece, which notes: "Some 1.1 million fewer men are working in the United States than there were a year ago, according to the Labor Department. By contrast, 12,000 more women are working." He also finds relevant the BLS data that notes that a year ago "the unemployment rate for men was 4.7%; the rate for women was 4.6%" while "as of November 2008, the unemployment rate for men has increased to 7.2%, while the unemployment rate for women has only risen to 6%." I assume that these are also the number Megan is concerned with. Since both are concerned with debunking Ms. Hirshman's premise - that in the economic downturn women are losing jobs about as quickly as men are - these data suit them.
If I were Ms. Hirshman I would not have cherry-picked the September-December numbers. Instead, to make the case for "stimulus equity" I would do things like comparing median income, comparing opportunities for top positions across different fields, and so on. I might throw in something about the lingering historical legacy of the oppression of women. I would also make the case for a stimulus package to improve educational structure and the other "human capital" areas she's interested in quite separately from concerns about equity, since it seems like a good idea to invest in these areas rather than concentrating only on construction, highways, and the like.
So there are two-and-a-half arguments which I think are quite separable:
1. The inevitability of massive government spending in reaction to the economic downturn should both pay attention the concerns of men and women...
(a)...and in addition provide an opportunity to create more economic opportunities for women, a goal which...
2. ...might fall quite in line with the need to invest in human capital infrastructure, because knowledge is good and even better when it prepares young people for the kinds of jobs that will be in demand in the future.
(Apologies for horrible spelling and grammar. Must be the locker-room-atmosphere. :p )
Ms. Hirshman, your name like mine is difficult to spell and has several acceptable spellings. People will always get it wrong for the rest of your life. Do try to find a way to cope.
I'm still dealing with your assumption that women are more entitled (or that, indeed, ANYONE is entitled) to jobs. The whole idea of stimulus is wrong because it stimulates nothing but the sort of money grabbing something for nothing behaviour that you are proudly advocating and because doesn't actually spur economic growth.
You disadvantage women by perpetuating the idea that there are female and male jobs. Certainly there are jobs in which females are a larger percentage of workers, but I see no reason to benefit women who can't compete in higher paying jobs traditionally held by men by stealing from women who can. Let's face it, since the jobs you want to create won't naturally be created because the demand for them does not exist (or you wouldn't have to use the force of government go create them), the taxpayer will have to be robbed to employ them. Your whole premise that women must somehow be treated differently because of their sex is repulsive - and sexist. Maybe you're not a hair dryer in the shower stupid. Perhaps you're just a plain thief.
very interesting, Aldous. I think you should blog this, as the discussion is finally getting going. I assume that is why the right wing blogs are so intemperate in what you accurately call dueling choice of statistics. (Drezner has already gone from groundless to cherry picking.) This is not a substantive discussion they want to see held.
As I said on Drezner's blog, which is down again, I did not "cherry pick" the data. I used the unemployment statistics for the period that gave rise to the program I was criticizing. Not only would I not do it, the Times fact checkers would not have allowed it, and for you Hobbesians in the audience, I did not need to do it. The year long data Drezner prefers to pick are more than adequate to support my argument, as they do not reflect a 9:1 male to female unemployment rise, while the program creates roughly one traditionally male job for every female job.
The year long data Drezner prefers to pick are more than adequate to support my argument, as they do not reflect a 9:1 male to female unemployment rise
OK, but here's the reason you're being called sexist: who cares? If the stimulus package is intended to help the economy, then it should do what is necessary to help our economy, whether traditionally male, traditionally female, or traditionally somewhat ambiguous. If we need more drag shows to get things going, fine, we should pay for more drag queens, but if we need more secretaries, then we should pay for more secretaries, and the drag queens should be left to sort themselves out.
You're being called a sexist because you're harping on a fundamentally irrelevant point. Unless, of course, you have some evidence that Congress is deliberately trying to screw over women, in which case you might have an argument that they're the sexists and you're just being properly neutral.
Linda,
What's going on is that people are dismayed at the vacuousness of your argument. Ideology is necessary, but there is seemingly no amount of data you won't wade against to make the point that we should be "doing more" for women. You are quite clearly incapable of drawing any other conclusions, regardless of the data, due to your ideological viewpoint. I am pretty astonished that this poor an argument came from a former Braindeis professor and got in the NYT to boot.
The fact that you admit to DELIBERATELY mis-spelling Megan's name, and managed to call about 3 people sexist in this short thread - well it doesn't say much for your ability to persuade through rational arguments. Very much the campus feminist, then.
But, Ms. Hirshman, let me ask again: Why should we assume that jobs created for stimulus purposes are going to go to people who did the same sort of work before they were unemployed? Should they? Need they?
Obviously we are not going to retrain a crowd of ex-librarians and ex-social workers into green-technology engineers overnight. But there is tons of low-skill manual work that needs doing, and could be done by people of either sex. ("School repair"? How many women can't be taught how to paint, replace windows, sheetrock, basic plumbing, &c.? Have we forgotten how Rosie came to rivet?)
The other thing about infrastructure projects vs. the kind of employment you envision for women, of course, is that while once you build something, it's built, and ongoing maintenance doesn't require anything like the manpower of constructing it in the first place. "Human capital building," OTOH, never stops so if we start doing it at the level you want, and the economy eventually improves, do we stop "stimulating" it? Or are the "stimulus" jobs you favor meant to be permanent, slump or no slump?
Rob Lyman writes: You're being called a sexist because you're harping on a fundamentally irrelevant point. Unless, of course, you have some evidence that Congress is deliberately trying to screw over women, in which case you might have an argument that they're the sexists and you're just being properly neutral.
So I don't know about sexism, and maybe the concept has been inflated to the point that its use is counter-productive. And I'm sure some of you are using it in a tongue-in-cheek manner (I'm confident that's true about Dan Drezner, at least).
But what I think I know is that at least some feminists and fellow-travelers are going to point to structural power that disadvantages women even in the absence of intentional individual behavior. The same structural power that lands a disproportionate number of women working as menial laborers or in more informal occupations where job security is lower and the opportunities for abuse higher (not to say that there are no men who have menial occupations either). The same structural power that, in nominally equal partnerships, tends to privilege the man's career over the woman's. And so on.
Of course all of that isn't going to be undone by what Drezner jokingly termed a "gender bailout" a few days ago. The point is that in the act of (unintentionally) directing fiscal stimulus into male-intensive sectors the government risks reproducing the structural inequality that still faces women everywhere. Understanding this and purposively directing money at other areas (those Hirshman suggests, e.g., as well as sectors that aren't obviously male or female intensive) would have the added benefit of investing in a future that isn't just made out of interstate highways and understaffed-but-modern school buildings. (OK, so that last phrase wasn't serious but you get the idea.)
Obviously we're not going to agree on this; the real premises that McArdle (and Drezner) and many readers here can't accept are any of the following:
1. The government should intervene in the economy for the sake of social justice.
2. Women suffer, on average, greater injustice than men.
3. The market should be subordinate to social practices and human needs; it is simply an instrument for shaping the society that we want.
and so on... obviously these are real differences and no amount of rational persuasion is going to force agreement. Especially not on the internet.
Interestingly, data (cherry-picked or not) is given for just about every claim (increased female unemployment, female participation in the workforce, women's percentages of various occupations, the increased demand for library services in Philadelphia, New Yorker's lower greenhouse gas emissions, etc.) except the stimulative effect of subsidizing "women's work". The closest thing is this assertion "jobs for women can be created by concentrating on professions that build the most important infrastructure — human capital."
Now, in some circumstances this is true. There's good return on (some forms of) education. But I question whether, for example, social work is economically productive. Not to say it's unnecessary, but I'd be curious to see any data that shows social work to be economically net negative; I suspect it isn't. I strongly suspect it wouldn't be if you added a lot more social workers. I'd expect the law of diminishing returns to come into play. I think elementary teachers and library workers would look much the same.
If we're talking about an economic stimulus package, that's the claim that needs to be backed with more than assertion: That increasing the number of these female dominated jobs will have a stimulative effect above and beyond the basic employment (we could just send checks out otherwise). I find it interesting that this claim, seemingly the core of your argument, was the only one that was unsupported by data.
Of course, if you just want your interest group to get their piece of the pie, then any stimulative effect is irrelevant. Your article strongly suggests you're motivated by the latter.
Sexism isn't quite the right word, I agree. But "privileging a particular and quite narrow view of social 'justice' over other considerations" is kinda clunky.
And you should add to your list of conflicts the belief in "structual power in the absence of intentional individual behavior." If the husband's career is taking precedence over the wife's, or if mom has taken part-time menial work to allow her free time with the kids, those are both intentional individual decisions which could be rectified by individual choices, not impersonal "structural" issues.
:) Couldn't slide the most controversial premise past you, could I?
If the husband's career is taking precedence over the wife's, or if mom has taken part-time menial work to allow her free time with the kids, those are both intentional individual decisions which could be rectified by individual choices, not impersonal "structural" issues.
Of course we'll disagree, but: why can't it be both?
Why isn't sexism the right word? Why is it only the correct word when women levy it against someone else when arguing that they are being purposely and specifically hurt by society or a company because of their gender? Why is working specifically in favour of my gender not also sexism? If sexism is not acting based solely on gender, then where are we getting our random definitions?
I see Linda has explicitly divided the world into "male" and "female" jobs. I suggest to her that motherhood is a female job and women can employ themselves this way as much as they want. That's a job that simply can't be taken away from us. And thanks for setting women back a few decades when female jobs were secretarial and male jobs were anything interesting that paid well, Linda.
Either gender is relevant to a job or it's not. Feminists have long argued that it's not relevant. Now that it's convenient, they seem to be screaming that it is. Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
It can't be both because I reject the notion that there is some vaporous fog of discrimination floating out there independent of what individuals themselves do. There has to be an actual person who fails to hire, fails to give a raise, or argues that his career is really more important, or (on the other side) decides that time with the kids is more fun than time at the office. The fog can't do that by itself.
(As a corollary, I frankly don't care what happens to groups of people as long as individuals are treated fairly; if "women" earn less than "men," I don't care, as long as any particular woman earns the same as her male colleagues similarly situated).
I also think that, when it comes to a family, people are perfectly entitled to make whatever choice suits them best. If a man wishes to marry a women who will stay home and raise his kids, that's no more sexist or wrong than if he doesn't want to have kids at all, or wants to marry a high-earning executive so he can pursue his futile dream of becoming a novelist. As long as he's honest about it, his prospective brides can decide if he fits their vision of a good life.
Now, clearly culture influences these decisions quite a bit. But I would also reject the notion that there is some easily identified perfect culture toward which we should strive (although some cultures are certainly better than others) or, if we posit the existence of a perfect culture, that this hypothetical perfect culture is perfectly androgynous in all respects.
Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
I believe that many married men will recognize this style of argument. :)
But what I think I know is that at least some feminists and fellow-travelers are going to point to structural power that disadvantages women even in the absence of intentional individual behavior.
Aldous,
Why stop the argument at women? There are structural power and disadvantages based on intelligence and beauty, among other things. Perhaps we should allocate as many money management jobs to people with IQ's of 86 or force companies to use models who are visually unappealing? But would you pay for an ad campaign that won't sell your product or trust an idiot with your money?
The basic social justice argument is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Since women are structurally designed to have children, they choose to take time off to have and raise children. They also choose to work less to be with their families when they do return to work. Thus, they make less money. Those women decide in favour of their career instead of children aren't similarly hampered. As an employer, the woman distracted by her family's needs is less productive and less valuable to me. Why should I pay her more than the woman who is more productive and why does she deserve a job more than a man who is more productive?
Jobs are jobs. In the male dominated industry of finance (and in the most male dominated part of it), I've never seen a job labeled as "male" and "female". If the jobs that are created as a result of this stimulus package are more traditionally male, then women can make them more female by applying for them.
that this hypothetical perfect culture is perfectly androgynous in all respects.
Oh, that sounds like fun. Almost as much fun as being a librarian because it's a "female" job.
A more perfect world would be a world in which feminism were defined as women making decisions for themselves instead having decisions forced on them by society, government and labelers like Linda.
Is this investment in "human capital" going to address the gender inequality in our universities and colleges? Given that major predictor for financial security in life is having a BA and given that we need a better trained and more productive workforce to compete in world markets, shouldn't this be a centerpiece of such a social justice oriented stimulus?
Oh, wait. More BAs awarded to women now. Oops.
Oh, and before you jump on me as some knuckle-dragging sexist pig: I went on the Daddy track for 4 years, working half-time in my engineering job to help raise my daughter - since my wife makes a lot more than I do. But then, she and I don't measure our self worth by how much money we make or who does the most chores at home or any of those measures.
Rob:
1. It can't be both because I reject the notion that there is some vaporous fog of discrimination floating out there independent of what individuals themselves do. There has to be an actual person who fails to hire, fails to give a raise, or argues that his career is really more important, or (on the other side) decides that time with the kids is more fun than time at the office.
2.Now, clearly culture influences these decisions quite a bit. But I would also reject the notion that there is some easily identified perfect culture toward which we should strive (although some cultures are certainly better than others)
I'm not sure you can maintain both of these positions. Culture is exactly the kind of thing I mean by social structure, and if it influences the identities and interests of individuals then that is how it exerts "power." I personally think there's more to it than that, but if you're willing to admit this much (and I am certainly willing to admit that somewhere at the bottom of things there's a human being acting) then maybe we're not in such disagreement. This is why I implied that maybe it can "be both."
I do enjoy your dismissive rendering of "social structure" as "fog" though; it's not an image I've seen deployed much.
Kat: I think you and Rob agree. I'm not sure why you are trying to pick up an argument with him.
I'm not sure you can maintain both of these positions.
Simple: culture influences individual decisions, but the decisions themselves remain individual. If you want to be a rich female lawyer or corporate exec, that choice is available to you today (of course, it was not at one time). If you want to stay at home with the kids and perfect your Crock-Pot technique, that choice is also available. Culture will influence which you pick (and therefore how many women pick what), but it remains an individual decision in each case. There's no reason for us to fuss over how many people pick what so long as people have the power to choose for themselves.
Hmm, I'm not sure we're going to get anywhere on this. But thanks for keeping things reasonable.
Well, I did say it was an irreconcilable difference.
Rob, I've found that there will always be those who apparently believe that 'culture' can somehow be divorced from actual individual 'people' making individual decisions in a group arena.
They also apparently believe that 'culture' is somehow prior to 'people' and is superordinate to the individuals who make up the 'people'. I've occasionally challenged such believers to show me a 'culture' that existed in the absence of people, but they just change the subject.
This controversy fills my heart with great joy. Every race/sex/gender grievance monger (I am looking at you Hirshman) will be working just as hard as he can to undermine Obama’s stimulus plan. We have not yet heard from the tree huggers who will hate it even more. There seems to be a possibility that the plan will not pass before the recession has ended. Perhaps we won’t wast another $500B in a futile effort to get out of a problem we created by borrowing and spending by more borrowing and spending.
I'm not picking a fight with Rob. I was just being sarcastic.
The male/female argument is tiresome. An androgynous society sounds about as ideal as a communist society. Cultural norms arise out of certain unchangeable realities - biology, for instance. Biologically, women are designed to go through the arduous and dangerous process of bearing children. Taking time out of their career to do so makes them less valuable employees than men. To make themselves more valuable, they have to forgo children. To gross up the incomes of women who take time out for childbirth by law, we would have to overpay women. They simply won't be hired - which is the problem in countries that try to equalize women and men in that way. Female unemployment actually increases substantially. We could direct women to lower paying jobs (as Hirshman is implicitly doing) where time out is not as detrimental to the organization they work for. However, then we can't complain about male/female pay discrepancies. I guess we could entertain ridiculous notions like trying to remake biology so that men can also bear children so that we may be truly equal and androgynous, but feminized men is not my idea of sexy and I think most women would agree.
The woman who decides to stay home and bear children does so because she is the only one of the two sexes who can. That's not culture - that's biology.
Whiny women like Hirshman who fashion themselves great champions of "women's rights" (whatever that means) actually hurt women. Every time I went on a job interview, it was assumed that I would get pregnant at some point, require a lot of time off and I would sue if they tried to replace me with someone who was actually capable of sticking around to do the job and wasn't distracted. Now, I have to make the same assumption as an employer because I've seen enough of those fears realized. Anti-discrimination laws are meant to prevent exactly that sort of employer behaviour. Instead, they exacerbate it. In trying to "fix" the unfixable cultural norms we re-enforce them. As a result, women continue to be pushed into low paying jobs.
"Fortunately, jobs for women can be created by concentrating on professions that build the most important infrastructure — human capital. In 2007, women were 83 percent of social workers, 94 percent of child care workers, 74 percent of education, training and library workers (including 98 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers and 92 percent of teachers’ assistants). "
Teaching? Seriously? You think money should go to hire more FEMALE teachers? Sexist much?
If anything any money going to hire teacher should be targeted at hiring only male teachers to redress the glaring gender imbalance in that field, at least if you care anything about the children and the malign effects of having such a disproportionate numebr of women in the field. Think of the children.
If a concern for social justice carries any weight in these hiring decisions, there should be a nationwide moratorium on the hiring of any women at all as teachers until parity is achieved.
"Hirshman" is the right spelling.
Das ist analphabetisch quatsch. "Hirschmann" ist die rechte buchstabierung.