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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I work downstairs from all the women in skirts. What a view! I can't wait to go to work every day.
If a woman had made the same ridiculous, insulting comments about women who work outside the home as this woman is making about women who don't, there would be nothing but outrage, and rightly so. Why is it that excoriating and contemptuously snorting at stay-at-home moms is just kind of "interesting" and "provocative," when equally obnoxious rhetoric about moms with outside jobs would be immediately condemned? It seems like a horrible double standard to me. I wish all this nonsense in which women bitch at other women for the choices they've made could just stop, on both sides.
I think one thing that makes Hirshman's arguments so unpalatable (and not really that useful for women, perhaps) is that she seems to be offering up rules for life and work that take no account of individual women's personal wants and needs. I have this strange idea that a given hypothetical woman might not actually *want* to spend her one and only precious life as a law firm partner with no time for a personal life doing work she doesn’t care about. Instead of telling women not to study art, for example, she might suggest that it's great to do what you love, but also to investigate ways that art training can lead to a reasonably well-compensated job. Indeed, there are plenty: galleries and auction houses aren't in business for their health. Working purely for money is a form of dropping out and giving up, too, if we’re really talking about "human flourishing" here. Coming up with creative ways of making a go of it in a field you’re passionate about (and something that allows you to make money on a schedule that actually accommodates human existence) is something that I think women entrepreneurs in particular are especially good at – they’ve had to be. And what’s a retired college professor doing criticizing non-profit work anyway? It’s a tad pot calling the kettle TIAA-CREF.
In most cases, I don't think these non-CEO degree-having women are being oppressed by society's view of who should do the child rearing so much as taking advantage of it. There's nothing wrong with choice and opportunity, and if these choices are not actually choices but are dictated by tradition, then the men are getting a raw deal, too. I wonder how many men would love to be able to work part-time and spend more time with their kids/hobbies/puttering-around-the-house, if they had a CEO/partner wife to maintain the income. In that respect, I agree with some of Hirshman's directives to break the molds and level the playing fields. My anecdotal evidence is that this is already going on in individual families, and that's really the only place where such personal decisions should be made. Isn't it?
not all choices women make are feminist choices. As a drastic example: suicide can be seen as a choice, but it's not a feminist choice, even when committed by women.
The way I read Hirshman (at least her paper) is that IF you want to take a choice that advances the feminist cause, THEN don't take the traditional stay-at-home choice. (Given that you have a choice, that is.)
Conversely, if you have a choice, and you chose the traditional role of staying at home, you are free to do so, but to claim it is a feminist choice would be unjustified.
When I first read Hirshman's article in the American Prospect, which I thought was an incisive critique of sex roles and attitudes toward work among the privileged, what struck me was how uncritical she was of work itself.
Hirshman condemned women who welcome the chance to leave the workplace, marveling at the attitude of a female MBA who didn't understand her male coworkers' worship of money and "the deal." But frankly, as a man, I can't imagine wanting to work in such an environment either. The workplace is nothing to get excited about: The majority of jobs outside the home are repetitious and socially invisible, and many of those jobs (men's especially) are physical as well, just like the housework that Hirshman described in the same terms; while prestige careers in law and business demand a degree of intensity and one-way commitment (employee to company, never vice versa) that would unbalance anyone's life, if one isn't unbalanced already. And as horrified as Hirshman is by educated, privileged women who decide that stay-at-home motherhood is preferable to these soul-consuming jobs, I am by her apparent contempt for "socially meaningful" employment and the desire to attend college for education's sake rather than for the sake of a career. Is it really "bad for society" for women not to crave money and power the way (some) men do? Personally, I think the market economy she extols does a lot more damage to society than the idealism she derides.
Five years ago, fed up with the values and atmosphere of the modern workplace, I'd have leaped at the opportunity to be a stay-at-home spouse. Since then, I've discovered an enthusiasm for teaching and begun a new career in education, and I finally feel like I have a reason to work aside from the paycheck. Perhaps I should be ashamed of this decision, since I've chosen "idealism" over "success," which suggests that I'm not treating work seriously enough. But on the brighter side, I suppose I can be of benefit to a good career-oriented feminist who's looking to marry down. Any takers?
My response to Hirshman's original piece (http://thumbscre.ws/2006/02/linda-hirshman-is-stupid-bitch.html) got by FAR the biggest response I've ever seen on my site. While opinions were pretty divergent about her main point, there seemed to be a pretty broad agreement that the dame could teach a graduate seminar on elitist, narcissistic, inflammatory, divisive rhetoric, not to mention note-perfect self-promotion (unlike ME, lamely self-linking and all).
Since my original posting, I've changed my tune somewhat: a friend of mine very gently, very patiently convinced me that all adults, including women, have an inherent responsibility to themselves, a duty which includes maintaining a potential for income independent of one's spouse/partner. That point, however, is eschewed by Hirshman, perhaps because it's not quite controversial enough.
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