Letters to the Editor
-
One issue about women in the work force
The only argument one can make for the work place being a worse place with women in it, is that the larger labor pool (men and women as opposed to just women) driving down the price for labor.
It's hard to find real evidence to support this claim, but it is an argument one can and does make, though it is more commonly used against immigrants than women (female immigrants of course being the worst for your economy, by this line of thinking).
The other place of course, where working women (or more specifically the expansion of women's opportunity) is in the "traditionally" female fields.
When scientists could only be science teachers, we as a nation rose technologically...now that are science teachers are only those with a passion for the field, and those scientists not good enough to get a job in a lab, our technology theoretically suffers.
Think about it, the countries on the rise in the east, all have much stronger social mores regarding a woman's place, and this helps their education system.
I am joking of course, what limited loss we have in women teachers and qualified nurses we have more than made up with advances made by female scientists and doctors.
No what the article misses is that, women weren't supposed to change the work world upon entering it, any more than immigrants or any other group has or could.
In a capitalist society we are all the masters of our own human capital which we trade for wealth. The more we trade of our human capital the more personal wealth we create. Therefore, the more wealth that exists in a society the more people will trade on themselves to aquire a piece of said wealth. That is the system, the only system that works in our society. If we weren't capitalist, if we were a centrally managed economy, someone might designate time for labour and time for self fullfillment, in that environment however, the state may decide that women are better suited to more traditional roles, which doesn't solve the problem really. In as far as it is beneficial to our customers (our employers) work life balance is encouraged in our system, but in the end it is our own desire for profit that motivates the American work ethic.
We work ourselves to death, because we wish to have a more affluent life. So long as the system allows for the accumulation of personal wealth, said accumulation will always cause people to work harder for more.
-
All American women DO is attack men-- the convenient catchall excuse.
Parson Jim
No one here has attacked "men" once. Re-read the posts and get a grip! Bad divorce?
Attacking men is IMPLICIT to EVERYTHING American women say and do that involves men on some level.
Men are no longer fooled that it is otherwise.
-
Self-reinforcing
Perhaps it is both women and men's fault. For instance, me and my wife don't have kids yet and are both still in graduate school. A couple of semesters ago she switched schools midsemester and had to take the spring semester off. With her home, I found that I was more punctual about going home in the 5 to 6pm range. Now it's back to 7 to 8pm when I head home. My assumption is that with someone at home around 5pm, whether it's wife, kids or any combination of those, I'd be heading home earlier.
So what's the overall effect? If you are single or married-both-working-no-kids, you end up working longer hours. This can happen even if the entire workforce is separated by gender. Workplaces are competitive and so these longer-working folks put an upward pressure on the time people with kids spend at work. So right now, both me and my wife are making the working day longer for everyone.
It seems like the real solution is for everyone to simply close the office and turn out the lights at 5pm. I only wish I could force myself to do that.
-
But first, a quibble!
This is not a Boston Globe editorial, and it is not an article. It is an op-ed piece. It was not written by any of their regular columnists, but by an outside columnist. So it in no way represents any sort of official opinion, nor is it a case of "the man" trying to assign blame to women or feminism.
I read the piece, and I disagreed with the thrust of it. However...
There is the law of supply and demand. With more women in the work force, there is greater labor supply, therefore downward pressure on wages, for all workers. If half the workforce, of whichever sex, stayed home for the next year to take care of their kids, pay would very quickly rise.
This is a largely a blue collar vs. white collar issue, although that is becoming less true with time. Office workers are working many many uncompensated hours. Not so with the trades. I first noticed this in the 1980s, when I was working in a printing shop. We did a lot of the work for local businesses: publishers, PR firms, all kinds of stuff. We had regular breaks and left at 5:00. The office workers had mandatory working lunches where they paid for their own pizza, unpaid overtime, mandatory neetings. Yes, a lot of those workers were women, and young just-out-of-college women in particular. They were given titles instead of money, status instead of cash. This was the beginning of the era of "associates", "co-ordinators" and the like. Put the word "project" in front of anything and suddenly, you are not a "worker" anymore, are you? I saw the same thing when I worked on the killing floor of an insurance claims company. Assembly line workers with computers instead of hammers, but they were all "associates" or some such. Take a look at your own work -- are you really a superviosry employee? What would it mean if you were not? Would you be willing to trade the status for the cash? Get paid all that lovely overtime? Become a steelworker in a pantsuit or suit-and-tie?
As someone above mentioned, this is not so much a woman’s issue as a labor issue.
As I like to say, the Family Values folks value families so much they want them all working as many hours as possible.