For the first time ever, at least half of all American workers are women. In addition, mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of families.
These are the findings from a new report called The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything, put out by Maria Shriver, wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Shriver Report will receive widespread media coverage this upcoming week.
While the mainstream media is heralding these findings as showing that women have achieved gender equality with men, the true meaning of these statistics is actually quite different.
As Wendy Norris, an investigative reporter based in Denver pointed out in a recent interview, the "equality" of women in the workforce is the result of the severity of the financial crisis and the resulting unemployment among men. Specifically, it is well-known that men have suffered the majority of job losses from the rising tide of unemployment hitting America.
Norris also points out that these are lower-paying jobs, as women typically earn less then men.
So what is being celebrated as a sign of progress and equality is actually an indication of the severity of the unemployment crisis in America.
Now aren't we glad that we elected a moderate Republican instead of one of those crazy FDR-type Democrats or a conservative wingnut?
ReplyDeletethere is a reason that this Great Recession has been called a 'mancession'.
ReplyDeleteplus women are easier to control ( especially mothers fearing for their jobs - they will do anything to keep their jobs ).
More women in the workplace mean less Mothers with their children.
ReplyDeleteLess quality time at home means more in an institution like school or daycare.
If you follow John Taylor Gatto, this isn't a good thing.
This is all much more complicated than is apparent to anyone, and certainly more so than this fancifully and popularly drawn up blurb indicates.
ReplyDeleteHumanity -over the long term- would be better off if everyone stopped working for a while, -a good long while.
Take a good look around at what is being built, and where it's all heading, -if you need verification of this notion for yourself.
Concerning this notion of a difference in the sexes -back in the Eighteenth Century, Lord Chesterfield noted for his son -that the Lord had never met a rational women in his life.
He suggested to his son, that women should be treated as "tall children".
Though these words written here will cause many to throw their arms up in dismay, this sentiment is still quite common today.
This suggestively sexist statement is most fairly balanced however -by my own similarly astute philosophic observation- that what men think is rational is far from being so.
Tall children are all there are apparently.
I think of Barack Obama and his lovely wife.
Let us get back to basics. Read "Chesterfield's Letters to His Son".
What a man might write to his son, is a good place to start understanding what the world really is, and our possibilities in it.
One of the things you will find out reading this collection of letters, is that the Eighteenth Century -Chesterfield -and- his son, were far more educated than likely anyone alive today.
I didn't read it until just last year. But at sixty, I can fairly state, "Chesterfield's Letters to His Son" is the most important book I have ever read.
Yes, Chesterfield is an antique. We will all become antique with time, however.
Chesterfield's letters were never meant to be published. They have been in continuous publication ever since they were discovered some few short years after his death.
You can read the letters as if your own father wrote them to you. Or, perhaps these are letters you should quickly write off -to your own son?
Enjoy-
Gender equity is not the issue as much as class and pay equity. A book called The Living Spirit talks about how much more healthy a society is when income and wealth is more equitably distributed. That is where we have the most work to do.
ReplyDelete"plus women are easier to control" - I foresee a wave of indignant male-ego rationalization sweeping over us all due to this occurrence. I would never have considered it as a 'sign of progress', yet it is interesting how even though women have been able to hang onto their (supposedly meager)incomes, they still take flak for it. Can't win.
ReplyDeleteI read this very same information in a Parade Magazine Intelligence Report in the late '70s that in the future, women were going to outstrip men in the workplace, not because they were going to be equals, but because there was going to be a paradigm shift in the job market. Back then, I was a young married career woman in my twenties who was planning to start my family soon and stay home with our firstborn.
ReplyDeleteMy then-husband's career hadn't quite taken off, and I'd hoped he would have been the primary breadwinner of our family, but as it happened, his plans bottomed out, we had our first-born, but his aspirations never reached their goals, and our marriage ended some years
(and second child) later.
For the life of me, I never forgot that article, and considered it an omen of things to come. I had researched the status of women's place in the workforce since then, and as the above poster stated, affirmative action wasn't just directed at minorities, but at women who were easier to control and would need to hold onto their jobs to keep their families afloat.
I know, I was one of them long and ever ago.
Though I then made more money than my husband, I was always wary of the powers that be that dictated how our society steered those in the grip of their control and how it affected our lives.
I am no longer in the workforce, due to a disability, but it breaks my heart to see families suffer the same fate so many years later, seeing the pain and heartache they are now suffering is just an outrage of the highest order. I am so grateful this important information is surfacing, so people will learn more about this development and what to do about it.
Yeah, I've been waiting to hear something official about this. It's not just in America either. I'm in Northern Ireland and I've been searching for work nationwide, and it's plainly obvious that men are losing jobs in favour of women, and women are getting into employment more easily than men.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the old maxims of women working harder (and more happily for less sometimes) are true, but it's furthering the disallusionment of the castrated male gender.
The woman I work with,work for less, are total suck-ups, are the worst backstabbers and run to the boss everytime they hear a rumor. Management loves them! Womens lib my ass.
ReplyDeleteThe paradigm shift in work has been in areas where men do not excel and into areas where women do excel if you believe anything about right and left brained people. Men tend to be more left brained and women more right brained.
ReplyDeleteThe things that left brained people do, like make things, and things like math and science are not in demand. Those jobs are gone. The things that left brained people do, like verbal skills and non-science seem to be in demand.
Even the education system seems geared in this direction now. Not nearly as much emphasis on math and science as there once was.
No wonder women have caught up in the job world. Good for my daughters, but bad for their husbands and boyfriends. And ultimately, our inability to make things or use math and science will hasten our decline.