Model Behavior

Nancy Fraser’s After the Family Wage: Gender Equity and the Welfare State to be very thought provoking. It raised some interesting questions for me as I considered how unfairly women in the work place are treated. As a woman I know firsthand that I have to work twice as hard just to compete with my male counterparts. I never understood why. I’ve always been under the impression that I was just as capable as any man and never quite understood the logic of penalizing a person because of their sex.

I thought Fraser’s piece was really interesting because it not only offered options on how to elevate that financial earning ability of women but also presents the areas in which they would be successful and those where they would lack. The breadwinner model, in my opinion, would be the closest to a feasible solution to the disparity in men’s and women’s wages. I think it would be harder to totally undermine the system, as patriarchal as it may be, and reconstruct it so that women’s unpaid labor is now paid and given more dignity. Granted, I do think that work in the home and care responsibilities are highly under appreciated, I don’t quite think that I would personally want to be paid for cleaning a house that I reside in or taking care of the family that I chose to create. I think it’s all in principle to me. The same goes for taking care of a sick family member. I’m just thinking of having to take care of a parent; my mother didn’t get paid for taking care of me for 18 years, so why would I feel the necessity for compensation for taking on caring for her should she need it?

It seems that it would just be easier to raise wages for women so that they are equal to men and then base one’s salary on the work that they put forth. Both of the models that Fraser presents are very idealistic, as she admits, but also flawed. Neither of the models fully speaks to the woman’s condition in terms of work. It also leaves out those of minority groups. The target of the breadwinner and care models is middle class white women. Now it is far more common for women across many different categorizations to seek employment that is equal to their male counterparts. The social and economic locations of women very to such a degree that something needs to be done to cater to them more generally. I think by starting with what seems to be most pragmatic we can begin reforming the way women’s labor is conceived while not totally trying to deconstruct and reconstruct the system at once.

Where do we go from here?

I feel enlightened. Do you? I am sure that this class has opened the minds of many of the people who have been present throughout this semester. From discussions about health care to discussions about gay marriage, we have all probably heard viewpoints that differed from our own. We have all been forced to reevaluate or defend some point of view that we have held. We have been forced to think long and hard about issues that plague our society… issues that no one has really asked us to think about before.

We have discussed so many things theoretically in this class. Perhaps, this is the biggest problem and most significant complaint that I have had with this class. I am the type of person who hears something and wonders what I can do to change the status quo. While this class has forced me to think critically about gender and sexuality in our society, it has not told me what I can do personally to challenge these notions that are so prevalent in our society. I have often been left wondering: How do I go from the theoretical to the practical? How do I transform my thoughts into action? Do I go back to the status quo? Do I choose to continually accept the way things are? Where do I go from here?

Perhaps that is one of the greatest downfalls for our generation. We wait for other people to tell us what we should do. We wait for classes to tell us what our next steps should be. The class has done what it was supposed to do: it enlightened me. It is up to me to use this knowledge for the benefit of future generations. It is up to me to be unsatisfied with the way things are. It is up to me to decide that I can no longer dismiss the notions that I have been taught. This class has provided me with the ammunition to back up my claims. It is up to me to do the rest.

The "Other" Problem

The word “other” has come up in many of the essays we have read this semester. I first began to have an issue with the use of this word in my German 242 class, the Holocaust in text, image, and memory. Here the word “other was used to describe the Jewish people. The Jews were seen as everything the “norm” was not or did not want to be. For example, if the norm was to be sharing, the Jewish person was portrayed as selfish. Since hearing this, the word other used to describe people who are not what is deemed the norm has a very negative connotation to me. In the male dominated world, men are the strong, rational, hardworking men who provide for himself or his family. Women on the other hand, are weak, emotionally unstable, and should stay at home and take care of the husband and children, basically the things men see as being below themselves. I believe this is what the feminist movement as well as any movement that attempts to overcome oppression is trying to do, they are trying to eliminate the concept of “other.” The goal is to acknowledge that people are different, but try to unite on some common ground. However, I do not believe that the feminist movement will ever be truly successful until it corrects the “other” problem within the female order. Most feminist do not think in terms of the poor or of women of different ethnicities. This is where conflict within the oppressed group starts.

The feminist movement will forever be in a push/pull dynamic as long as there is an ongoing push/pull within the group. “Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between and individual and her oppression…community does not mean a shedding of differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.” (Lorde 50) Ignoring the problem never makes it go away. For middle class, upper class, and rich white women to pretending that everything is on equal playing ground and that all women are fighting against the same inequalities is a stone waiting to drop in a glass house. It’s the same thinking the male oppressors have when trying to deny that there is anything wrong with the way things are as of now. “The failure of academic feminist to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.” (Lorde 50) I believe recognizing the differences between women and finding strength where the oppressor finds weakness is the way to begin to eliminate the “other” problem.

Autonomy and Vulnerability in the movie “This Christmas”

Reading the title alone, you would think that the movie “This Christmas” was simply about the ups and downs of a Christmas holiday. Well…it is, but after reading Marilyn Friedman’s’ “Autonomy, Social Disruptions, and Women,” and Susan Orkin’s “Vulnerability by Marriage,” I began noticing things that I hadn’t before. The movie is about a black family who comes together for the holidays. Needless to say, there is a lot of tension and drama that takes place over the period of three days. Two issues stood out to me the most when looking back at the movie. First was the dynamics of the family as a whole, and second was the relationship the oldest sister had with her husband.
In Marilyn Friedman’s essay, she points out that autonomy in men is something that is encouraged and praised for the most part. In women, autonomy can disrupt relationships and cause more harm than good. In the movie, the matriarch of the group, Madear, is separated from the father of her six children, Senior, and is living with her present beau, Joe, in her family home. It is known early in the movie that the patriarch of the family has been gone for nearly 18 years. He left his wife and children to pursue his true passion, music. Throughout the movie no one really seems angry or bitter that the father has left. I’m not sure if everything is okay because Joe stepped in and was a father and provider to the crew or if they just accepted their father’s autonomous need. Either way I feel that this coincides with Friedman’s accretion of autonomy being okay for men.
The eldest daughter, Lisa, is married with two children. It is obvious very quickly that Lisa is not a strong figure in her household. Lisa did not go to college and because of this feels insecure when it comes to her husband who is the bread winner. Because her husband works and provides for her and the children, Lisa lets him treat her however he chooses. During on of the dinners, Lisa’s husband constantly asks her to do pointless mundane tasks and Lisa keeps defending him. Her husband asks her to reheat his food even though it has just been served and is still worm. One of Lisa’s sisters complains, but Lisa says that it’s okay because “he likes his food really hot.” Then she proceeds to cut up his food for him. Later on you realize that Lisa’s husband is cheating on her, but Lisa already knows and ignores it. She is scared of starting over again after having two children and being married for so long, so she is willing to stay in the marriage even though she isn’t happy. Susan Orkin’s essay says that one of the ways women can be made vulnerable in their marriage is because the husband is usually the bread winner and the women would have nothing to fall back on if they left the marriage. Lisa is an example of this. However, in the end we also see the positive side of Friedman’s autonomy in women when Lisa decides that she needs to sever the tie between her and her husband and move on with her children.
If you have never seen this movie, I would recommend it. You may see more things involved in this movie than I did.

But I'm a Cheerleader

Pointing out inequality in the sexes is a way to bring the injustice in to the light, but it can be a catch 22 when the point you try to make falls back into the given stereotypes. The movie “But I’m a Cheerleader,” attempts to show the gender roles women and men have been put into, and how those roles are supposed to shape one’s sexuality. In this movie, Megan, who is a cheerleader, gets sent to a camp that can “cure” her of her lesbianism. However, everyone but Megan seems to be aware that Megan is a lesbian. Because Megan is a vegetarian and she doesn’t enjoy kissing her boyfriend and she has pictures of women in her locker instead of men, she has to be a lesbian. The movie helps bring to light many of the socially constructed rules about gender and sexuality. For instance, the teens enrolled in the camp went through “gender identity” sessions where each group (boys and girls) participated in activities meant for their gender. The girls learned how to clean and take care of children while the boys learned about sports and warfare. It also shows that society believes that sexuality is something that you choose based on an event of some sort that happened in your life not something you were born with. The teens were all forced to find a “root” or origin to their homosexuality. One character, Jan, was probably the most tragic case of them all. She was a stereotypical butch lesbian. Her root was that she had been molested as a child, but what is most shocking about her is the fact that she is not a lesbian. This label was put on her because of her appearance. Though the movie sheds light on the wrongs of gender roles and homophobia, it also solidifies stereotypes against homosexuals. The homosexual men in this movie were portrayed as feminine according to the social constructs already in place. A man who is feminine must like other men and a man who is masculine cannot like other men. By implementing this stereotype the creators of this movie have used standards defined by the oppressors and used those standards to define the people being oppressed. They essentially ended up using the master’s tools, and because of this the message sent by the movie gets pushed a step further, but the means of presenting the movie cause it to be pulled two steps back.

The Dodge Charger Commercial (Finally)

The Dodge Charger commercial entitled “Man’s Last Stand,” depicts downtrodden, worn out men who look like the life has been sucked out of them explaining everything they do in a relationship to keep their mate happy. Though you never see who the men are talking to, it is understood that they are talking to women. In this commercial women are depicted as naggers and the men they are with have to put up with this so the men deserve an award because they will be at work at eight in the morning and sit through an eight hour meeting and clean up after themselves when they get home. This commercial was seen as sexist. As a response to it a video from the women’s perspective was released. In this video, women expressed the things they have to put up with as women, from how they will pretend not to notice when guys look at their breast, or the fact that they get paid seventy five cents for every dollar that men make doing the same jobs. However, at the end of the video, the women offer no real stand against what the men have said, they’ve stated facts and then decided to “feel sorry” for the men in the Dodge Charger commercial. What’s more interesting is that the female rebuttal offered no women of color.
The video that actually speaks volumes is the video where you still see the men’s faces, but it a woman’s voice saying all the things, the man once gave as his reason for wanting his “last stand.” This video gives a voice to women as a whole not just one category. This video also makes a point to the men in the first video by explaining that the things they are complaining about could easily be done by a woman and that it’s not wrong to want to be nice or to have common decency. It also shows that you could not dub the first women’s parody with a man’s voice, thus showing that there is a clear difference between what women experience and what men claim to experience in being emasculated. The third video also shows Lorde’s point about the differences between the passive be and the active being. The women in the second video tried to use the same method as the men in the first video but left off the real message, that men can not put themselves in the same position as women and have it carry the same meaning. Therefore, their message makes a point that is ineffective without the third video.

Female Autonomy & Indian Education

(This post relates to points made in a previous post’s comment section, the April 25 post entitled “Being a Caregiver.”)

India’s government recently passed legislation declaring education a basic right for its 192 million children. The Right to Education Act mandates “free and compulsory education for all Indian children between the ages of 6 and 14.” However, whether this law indeed guarantees free education for Indian girls is another issue. The TIME article covering this law describes the current family situations which prohibit young girls from attending school in any significant capacity. An Indian government survey in 2008 attributed 42% of girls’ dropouts to family reasons, being “told to quit by their parents, in order to look after the house and siblings.” Adding to the problem are the statistics on child labor in the country, as “a 1996 International Labor Organization report said 33 million girls ages 10-14 worldwide were working, as opposed to 41 million boys, but that figure did not take into account the full-time housework that girls undertake at home.” When agricultural, household, and childcare work is not considered “labor” in the International Labor Organization’s report, what counts? Surely all that was considered was paid labor, occupations traditionally held by males. The report would seem to feed into common misconceptions about the nature of unpaid labor as not deserving of the title “work.”

As the report leaves out the care of younger siblings, the majority of child labor remains ignored. The TIME article describes the lives of two girls facing different limitations, both seemingly victims to the demands of poor village life.
As a result, the potential autonomies of both are restricted, stunted, and to a large degree ignored by those who could make a difference. Older girls (ages 10-14) are required to take care of their siblings when their parents are, presumably, working to sustain the household, financially. While this is a valid consideration, one must wonder what conditions compound to create the current situation. I would have to study the social structure in village life to get a greater glimpse into the underlying issues before beginning to criticize the parents for willfully limiting the educational potential of their girls. As the article states, “Girls are kept at home to take care of younger siblings, a direct fallout of no [government nurseries] near homes." When the children are actually in attendance of classes, a beleaguered instructor claims, “In the present system, we can look after the children but not educate them.” Such an absence of childcare workers and services leads to the continuance of the currently broken system. Other issues derive directly from the parents: “forty-six percent of public schools do not have toilets for girls; it's one reason parents are reluctant to send their daughters to class.”

While the RTE is definitely a step in the right direction, as it will seemingly lead to the construction of schools and training of teachers, the real preventative aspect of Indian girls’ education may not have a technical solution; thus, the real solution may be more difficult: a culture shift. The article notes that the non-technical solution to the problem would be “designating household chores and agricultural work as child labor, so that no child in India should work — whether at home, for the family or outside.” While this would bolster universal educational opportunities, no meaningful policies are without their adverse effects. One would have to recognize how a sudden dearth of agricultural, household, and childcare workers would affect a family’s survival. However, as scholars of the American civil rights movement or historians of Indian culture recognize, one can grant rights to an underrepresented group without effectively reversing the public perception of those groups. A case in point would be the Dalits in Indian society. The institutions ensuring the oppression of others (i.e. governmental corruption, traditional village strictures, and capitalistic exploitation of labor) must themselves be critiqued and reformulated, with attention given to informing the public perception of their effects. This broad point relates to most of our readings, as the goal of feminist philosophy seems to be consciousness-raising in respect to certain situations and issues, while shedding a critical light on the larger systems of oppression. In any case, the difficulties of applying traditional notions of care work to a modern setting are showing their depressing signs in the prevention of Indian girls’ adequate educational opportunities.

For the full article: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1985026,00.html#ixzz0mkW9ZG1k