Letters to the Editor
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"We control slightly more than half of the world's wealth"
I find that finding suspect, mostly because I don't understand it. If there is wide-spread consensus that women are oppressed and still are not quite first-class citizens, then how are they controlling their fair share of financial resources? Something doesn't quite fit.
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Who is running the world again?
If women control more than half of the world's wealth, and they are more discriminating spenders, then it follows logically that it is women who have more influence over how the world is run than do men.
There is no other logical conclusion that can be made.
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the disconnect is simple to explain:
As long as anyone has the power to make them unhappy women are powerless and oppressed in their own eyes. Men are programmed, by both culture and biology, to understand that the world, or more specifically the people in it, don't exist for the purpose of making them happy (it's based on reproductive role, women know that NATURE can be tough i.e pregnancy and childbirth but they expect the role of other PEOPLE to be supportive; because men don't have to go through that they DO have to fight for opportunities and be rejected).
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and therfore don't have the deep seated feeling on an emotional level
that there is something "unnatural" about other people not doing what they want them to.
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Who's running the world?
This is Salon so it must be the Jews.
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Women control half the wealth
My understanding is that the statement is both true and misleading. Much of the "control" the women exercise is over the logistical factors of running the family home. Husbands typically turn over a significant part of their paychecks to their wives as operating funds for the household. This does not mean that the money the wives "control" in their expenditures on operating expenses for the family are theirs (the women's) to dispose of how they see fit. A more accurate number would be one that reflected the actual amounts of disposable moneys after expenses that are available to the different groups.
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Moral to the Story
The moral to this story is don't let facts get in the way of a good story.
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Who says candidates *aren't* "sucking up" to women?
It seems that whenever a consensus emerges among a large group of women, politicians pay clear attention to that group and that consensus. Case in point: MADD.
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uh-oh
"We control slightly more than half of the world's wealth (who knew?), and we make 83 percent of household purchasing decisions"
So that's it for claiming women are economically powerless, right?
The world is what we pay for. If women are spending 83% of the money, then women are to blame for this entire mess and must be relieved of power.
kidding. mostly.
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A full house
Now if only the Parson would step in, we'd have a full set on the first page! C'mon Jim! Here Jimmy, Jimmy Jimmy! Come & get it!
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A more accurate number would be one that reflected the actual amounts of disposable moneys after expenses that are available to the different groups.
For most men that would be zero: ALL money is spent on necessities either by the definition of both or the definition of the woman i.e. for her they are necessities and for him that means they are necessities too, if he is going to have a life.
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The fact that women control...
over 80% of America's disposable income has been known for a long time. If you look on what is on television, the medium is almost entirely geared toward women, because they are American's biggest consumers.
If you take the argument made recently by the AAUW regarding the "boy crisis," which is that there is not a boy crisis, there is a "some boy crisis," you could make the same argument the politics of gender and income. That is why the AAUW's argument will back-fire. When you do comparative disadvanage by measures more percise than gender, white women come out way ahead. It's enough to scare the bejesus out of any good feminist.
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Nobody Cares?
If women make the majority of these decisions and have this kind of power they must be partially at fault for "no one caring". The main problem is that this article and the study it cites lump all (American) women together under one category. And if you say that women are being treated as a niche market, you have to point out that oftentimes they're also included in the general market. The article also makes no mention of any distinctions between gender and, at least as important, socio-economic status. I find it ironic because I'm told that feminism was once dedicated to idea that a woman shouldn't be lumped together with all other women and stereotyped because of her gender.
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Since getting the vote in 1919
A woman's class has been far more predictive of her vote than her gender. Most women tend to vote like men of the same class and culture (which includes race, geography, personal political affiliation, religon, and ethnicity). That includes women who vote against women's best interest as a gender.
A lot of women voted against abortion for health reasons in the South Dakota vote last year based on ideology. Gender has historically been a weak affiliation, with the exception of ideologues. There are very few female ideologues who vote solely on gender. Numbers I saw at Slate and IPUMS put them at less than 7% of Democrats, 2% or less of the total electorate. Considering that far less than half of all women accept the label feminist as a descriptor, then you have a a very weak affiliation for all but a very committed minority.
When someone uses gender in an ad, I usually laugh, as do my students. Quite bluntly, my affiliations tend to be based on personal philosophy, and most ads based on gender tend to stereotype.
Most women in the US are far more nuanced than this. That's why this is not going to work.
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@domini
I wholeheartedly agree.
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So women have all this money but the people marketing to them just don't know it yet?
Wow, those people making money off women sure are stupid for not knowing that women have money!
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I'm not convinced women will rule any better
Look, if all women were groovy liberals, I'd be all for a female takeover of everything (especially if they let the groovy liberal vegetarian lesbians make at least half of the decisions), but that isn't the case. How many women are braindead conservatives (sorry about the redundancy). How many are ignoramuses, or religiously insane, or regressive anti-feminists? How many women oppose choice? How many women believe in libertarian rapacious capitalism? And so on.
Give me a progressive man over a regressive woman any day.