Amongst all developed countries, the US firmly occupies the very last place in terms of women's rights. Even Spain, which until 1975 lived under a fascist dictatorship that was extremely repressive towards women, has made such impressive strides in terms of women's rights that it's hard to imagine the US ever catching up. (You can read about some of Spain's feminist advances here and here.) Whenever I meet a student from Spain, I know that the perennial whispered question is forthcoming: "I don't want to offend but where are the feminists and why are they allowing for this to happen?" Try watching American television with a group of Europeans and you'll know what I mean. You will soon get tired of explaining how it is possible for a civilized society to demean women in such an egregious manner. Even Canada, which is so close geographically, is light years ahead. To give just one example, women have a guaranteed one year long maternity leave, and many men get paternity leave, as well.
There are several factors that prevent American feminism from living up to the standards set by other developed nations. One of them is, of course, the strength of religion in this country. Fundamentalist Christians destroy sexual education programs and replace them with anti-women abstinence propaganda. (If you are not sure why abstinence programs are anti-women, read Jessica Valenti's The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women
.) Weekly Church services reinforce the idea of female inferiority on a regular basis. Organized religion is the enemy of female liberation. Remember that it was not until Spain managed to shake off the cloying religious propaganda of Franco's dictatorship that it started to make its impressive feminist advances. Any religion whose hierarchy is predominantly male is obviously going to be aimed at oppressing women.
.) Weekly Church services reinforce the idea of female inferiority on a regular basis. Organized religion is the enemy of female liberation. Remember that it was not until Spain managed to shake off the cloying religious propaganda of Franco's dictatorship that it started to make its impressive feminist advances. Any religion whose hierarchy is predominantly male is obviously going to be aimed at oppressing women.Another factor that hinders American feminism is this country's traditionally poor record on social services. Societies that have no parental leave and where the access to day care is severely limited always end up turning women into domestic slaves who sacrifice their professional realization to child rearing. Workplace discrimination against women is still rampant, and nothing is being done to reduce it. This sad state of affairs, in turn, requires that a complex discourse justifying female underachievement in professional realms be created. As a result, we end up with anti-women propaganda pieces that present an expensive wedding and a bunch of babies as the greatest achievements women can hope for.
There are several other factors that prevent American feminism from flourishing, of course. Still, the two I mentioned here are key, in my opinion, for the understanding of this country's poor record on women's rights.
32 comments:
“Even Canada, which is so close geographically, is light years ahead. To give just one example, women have a guaranteed one year long maternity leave, and many men get paternity leave, as well.”
One of the reasons that Canada is more enlightened about parental leave is the fact that we measure unpaid labour using census data while the states in their wisdom do not consider it important enough to measure. I have in the past on your blog mentioned about the Conservative government eliminating the long form census on the basis that prior census data does not support the assertions which underlie their right wing agenda. This is a specific instance of my previous general comments. The following is part of an article by Antonia Zerbisias, a Toronto Star writer:
“It’s said that a woman’s work is never done and as far as Stephen Harper’s government is concerned, it need never be measured either. All but lost in the controversy over the Conservatives’ impending elimination of the mandatory long-form census is how, in the proposed $30 million dollar replacement — the voluntary National Household Survey — Question 33 from the long form has been cut.
Question 33 (let’s call it Q.33) is a three-part query that has been in place since Canada made commitments at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. The question gathered data on how much time people spent on unpaid work: domestic chores, child care and attending to the needs of elderly relatives and friends. It helped make Canada a world leader in “time-use” data.
The results have also been showing how women are faring, socially and economically. For example, the results indicate that despite a higher volume and percentage of women in the workforce over the past 20 years, changes between men and women in respective unpaid workloads have merely been “marginal.”
Based on information gathered in the 2006 census, StatsCan reports that, on average, “Women spend about an hour a day more on basic housework chores than their male counterparts. In 2005, women aged 25 to 54 averaged 2.4 hours daily cooking, cleaning and doing other basic unpaid household chores, compared with 1.4 hours per day for men in this age range.”
Two-thirds of Canada’s unpaid work is being performed by women. No matter how the value of that is evaluated —anywhere between 30 to 45 per cent of Canada’s $1.5 trillion GDP. That’s a heck of a lot of productivity that is being completely discounted.
“Question 33 has made it possible to understand that productivity does not consist in producing dollars alone,” says Queen’s University law professor Kathleen Lahey, author of Removing Fiscal Barriers to Women's Labour Force Participation. “Productivity also consists of producing the human beings who grow up, if they are healthy, to become functioning members of the workforce, who help drive innovation, develop technology, etc. And it includes the work that produces day-to-day life that sustains human growth and evolution.”
“Why don’t we want to know about that part of our productivity anymore?’’ The reason is that the thrust of NAFTA was to harmonize the social and economic conditions of the three countries – Canada, America and Mexico - in order to facilitate free trade. For Canada, this implies paring down our social safety net since America considers generous parental leave as a form of labour market distortion. Of course, you can argue that child labour laws are also labour market distortions but we haven’t reached that point yet.
I don't think it helps that one branch of the American Feminist movement has gone screaming into radicalism, insisting that men are inherently evil and any sexual contact between a man and a woman is by definition rape, and a married woman is by definition brainwashed by the patriarchy. They've given equality-feminists (which should be redundant, really) a bad name, and hence people see any push for equality as a "crazy feminist plot" to take over everything by taking it from men. All the stuff you've mentioned certainly plays into it, too. It's a big mess that won't be solved until Christianity is no longer the default position of the American public.
"Organized religion is the enemy of female liberation."
So true. And America is the most faux-religious Western country on the planet.
And by "faux-religious," I mean Americans are religious only when it suits them or grants them more power.
-Mike
Perhaps this is true only for my small group of American acquaintances, but the insistence of monogamous behaviour used to always bother me. Deeply. A woman I briefly met was in the process of divorcing her husband of two years (and the father of her little baby) because he had had a few drunken kisses on his stag night (this apparently came out two years after the wedding because someone thought that behaviour was very amusing).
The line taken by her vocal supporters was "self respect" and "Feminism". Which is odd. If a woman thinks a few kisses and a possible grope could shatter the man she had been with for four years pre and post nuptials, and whose genes her child shared, then she must think him and their relationship utterly worthless. In which case, why was she with him at all?
This point of view was received with a great deal of hostility. As was my suggestion that if a capable professional woman's self-respect depended on the tiny ring between her legs, and even that control was outsourced to her partner's genitalia and how that behaved, then a feminist this woman was not.
If I learned something like this about my husband, I would divorce him in a flash. First, because this would mean that he doesn't love me (according to my definition of love). Secondly, I'm not deluded enough to think that somebody who does this will ever stop at doing this once. There is no doubt in my mind that this guy was cheating on the woman left and right. Also, he did it PUBLICLY, not caring how horribly he was humiliating her. Imagine all those mutual friends laughing at the woman for years behind her back.
More power to her for divorcing this idiot.
Feminism is something that allows women to leave men whenever they feel like it because women are no longer dependent on men financially. And that's a wonderful thing.
I have no idea what you mean by self-respect being outsourced to somebody else's genitalia. Self-respect in this case lies in not staying with someone who so obviously despises you "for the sake of children" or for monetary considerations.
I wish more women were like that and didn't sell out their dignity for financil considerations and social status.
"Two-thirds of Canada’s unpaid work is being performed by women. No matter how the value of that is evaluated —anywhere between 30 to 45 per cent of Canada’s $1.5 trillion GDP. That’s a heck of a lot of productivity that is being completely discounted."
-Canukistani, if women CHOOSE to do all that stuff, it's only because they want to. I, for one, am not choosing to do more than 50% of household chores. I suggest that other women make the same choice. As long as they don't, I take it to mean that they enjoy all that "unpaid labor." So good for them. How is that anybody else's problem?
I believe it's completely anti-feminist to offer people any form of remuneration for household chores. Soon, we'll ask to be reimbursed for brushing our teeth, for Pete's sake.
“Women spend about an hour a day more on basic housework chores than their male counterparts. In 2005, women aged 25 to 54 averaged 2.4 hours daily cooking, cleaning and doing other basic unpaid household chores, compared with 1.4 hours per day for men in this age range.”
-Is somebody forcing women to do this? Keeping them chained to the stove? I have no idea how anybody can take such proclamations seriously without even trying to analyze why women insist on chaining themsleves to their kitchen appliances. This is what I call superficial, irresponsible journalism.
This is my old post on gender and housework:
http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com/2009/10/gender-and-housework.html
Clarissa, your deliberately misunderstanding of my anecdote is most unworthy of you -- in as much as I assume you have functional analytical skills you are not afraid to use. If you had further questions about this woman's decision to divorce, I'd appreciated you asking them instead of going on an assumption spree. Stupid people do that and make fools of themselves, as you probably know.
This woman divorced her husband because he, and I used her words earlier outside quotes, "shattered my self respect".
Also, you'll notice that no textual evidence points to me saying, OMG, why is she divorcing him??? I'm saying, why on earth did she stay on with a man she valued so little that a couple of dead-drunk kisses would make him disposable? Was it because she'd settle for a husband and child at any cost? Is THAT what professional women have been reduced to? Is that because she's been counselled that her husband's fidelity is really HER responsibility and if he as much as kissed another woman (I'll ignore the fact that he was completely drunk and on his stag night because I personally would consider that excuse irrelevant) then she has failed as a wife and needs to end her status as a wife? (this was her second reason for the divorce, that she was obviously unsuitable wife).
You are entitled to your misdirected aggression and lack of close reading, my dear, but it makes me think so much less of your intellect. Although, as a knee-jerk reaction, I suspect you'll say you don't care what I think of your mind -- and in this alone, you'll be perfectly right. It shouldn't matter what I think of your analytical abilities.
Which is just as well.
Also, I notice you make a hue and cry about him publicly showing how much he humiliated and despised her. Perhaps you're not familiar with the bizzare and rather insulting practice of stag-nights. I wasn't before, but I am now. To throw a rather tired line you used on me before, cultures work differently. If a woman did not object to a stag-night at a strip-club and brought her groom an outfit for it, I'm assuming she signifying she doesn't care what he does on his 'last night of freedom' before the onerous task of being married to her.
And if that's how she thinks this man thought of their relationship and still stayed with him AND had a child with him within the year for social validation of her femininity then, to repeat myself a third time in the hopes it makes through the mists of your aggression, she's no feminist.
Rimi: you are seeing aggression where there is absolutely none. All I feel is happiness that this woman values herself enough to get rid of this nasty individual. I don't know whether she is a feminist or not. This story is not about feminism, in my view. As I said, feminist achievements allow her to leave somebody she doesn't want to be with any more, but that's all feminism has to do with this story.
"why on earth did she stay on with a man she valued so little that a couple of dead-drunk kisses would make him disposable? "
-Maybe because she loved him and thought he loved her? So she was mistaken, it happens.
"Was it because she'd settle for a husband and child at any cost? Is THAT what professional women have been reduced to?"
-I see absolutely no evidence in this specific story that this has anything to do with it.
"(this was her second reason for the divorce, that she was obviously unsuitable wife)."
-And she is absolutely right. These people obviously shoudln't have gotten married in the first place because he didn't love her and obviously didn't want to get married at all. Probably, he only got married for social status and the sake of having a baby (it would make a lot more sense for a guy to get married for those reasons.)
"I'm assuming she signifying she doesn't care what he does on his 'last night of freedom' before the onerous task of being married to her."
-You are assuming wrong. Tons of people go to strip bars but most of them manage to prevent their tongues from falling into other people's mouths. Unless people agreed that making out in public with other people is fine, the guy was cheating. Once again, I'd have dumped his silly ass even if we had 25 children together.
It's a 'feminist' matter not because you or I insist it be (or not) but because, as I mentioned in my very first comment, SHE insists it's a feminist statement. And I do believe in your first response you agreed with her.
Anyway, I'll let the matter go, since you haven't the dubious advantage of a first-hand conversation, and objectively your comments have a certain value. Having had met her and hosted her for a day, I'll have subjective opinions about her which will differ from yours.
Just, its curious you emphasise the child factor though. I should certainly hope having 25 children with someone shouldn't prevent a woman from leaving him if she found him awful and abusive! What I do question is the wisdom of having a child so soon in a relationship, before a couple has quite settled themselves in (and the mum is younger than 21). A child is not an achievement or a cute plaything, and should be brought into this world after the parents are sure that together or apart, they can provide it a certain amount of emotional and financial security. This is my personal conviction, however, and of course other people are not obliged to share it.
"should certainly hope having 25 children with someone shouldn't prevent a woman from leaving him if she found him awful and abusive!"
-Or if she stops loving him. Or if she doesn't feel like living with him any more.
"A child is not an achievement or a cute plaything, and should be brought into this world after the parents are sure that together or apart, they can provide it a certain amount of emotional and financial security. "
-Only the most irresponsible, feather-brained people would disagree, I think. I'm sorry for their poor children, of course.
Strippers usually don't allow kisses. I wonder how this indiscretion happened.
Also I think calling someone a "nasty individual" based on such a flimsy two-liner story without knowing anything about the specific dynamics of the relationship of the concerned couple, is a tad hasty. Many feminists often tend to alienate a lot of people by acting so hysterically.
Many feminists also have the nasty habit of not caring whom they alienate by the fact of having opinions. :-)
certainly, certainly...your blog, your opinions, you have made the point before and we all agree to play by it. :)
Speaking of strippers, I wonder what your feminist take on prostitution is. That could make for an interesting post. Just a thought. :)
"I wonder what your feminist take on prostitution is."
-Do you mean the legal or the illegal kind? :-) They are both very sad, in my opinion.
Let's say the kind where women are not explicitly forced or coerced into it. Why for example do you think it's sad if it's consensual? It has the economic advantage of women who are unskilled or under-qualified for the job market being able to be self-sufficient, and sex as business is sometimes more honest, simpler and less hypocritical than that obtained within the confines of a traditional relationship.
Have you tried having sex with somebody you find repulsive? Have you tried doing it all day every day for years? If you were to try it just even once, I promise that you'll discover that it messes you up real bad for a real long time.
I'm so far from being judgmental of such people. But I can't avoid feeling sadness for this horrible self-violation they engage in.
How do you know they find their clients "repulsive"? And maybe doing it repeatedly makes it much less repulsive and much more matter-of-fact for the woman. Those that are doing it by choice also probably have the power to opt out of it if they feel threatened or violated by someone.
Every sexual partner that hasn't been chosen by you on the basis of your sexual desire is repulsive. It doesn't matter who that partner is: a client, a husband, a boyfriend. Every sexual act that is performed for any reason other than one's own intense physical desire for that person is always deeply traumatic.
As to prostituting oneself "by choice", what range of choices are we talking about? A person could have been a CEO of a huge company, a famous singer, a movie star, a millionaire living in a castle but chose to be a prostitute? Is there anybody who is making that kind of choice? Or is it rather a choice to starve or to prostitute?
All our "choices" are made within certain constraints. Even an affluent banker would probably rather have been an oil sheikh. Most likely a prostitute has to choose between being an industrial laborer with a hard life and very little pay, and easier work with the stigma and potential trauma of being a prostitute. Like everything else in life, it's a trade off. Even here there are exceptions to the stereotype. It is not uncommon for example for even affluent women to exchange sex for benefits (like teenage girls in Japan prostituting themselves for pocket money). One could argue that such behavior is deranged, but then doesn't the woman reserve the right to do whatever she wishes with her body in a feminist world, including exchange it for economic benefits? Also I can't resist a somewhat cheeky observation : a lot of your "more feminist" European countries actually permit or tolerate prostitution whereas America doesn't. :P
I don't disagree with anything you say. And obviously all attempts to ban through criminalizing it prostitution are doomed. And of course it's deeply hypocritical and morally wrong to condemn legal and illegal prostitution. It's beyond my understanding why it's respectable to sell yourself to one person for a lot of money but not respectable to sell yourself to many people for little money.
Still, it doesn't make any of such cases any less sad.
"it's hypocritical and impossible to suppress it through criminalization but at the same time something not entirely desirable" seems to be a fair enough place to leave the debate at. I just realized it's rather late! :)
Ahh, feminism (heavy sigh).
Clarissa, I'm sure you would claim that your feminist views are moderate, and some of your comments would indicate that. But I doubt it. You seem to have little tolerance for those who subscribe to the more important aspects of feminism but not necessarily all, as I do, and you don't allow for individual choices that violate your personal sense of what's right for everyone. For example, within a family there may be agreement that the man is the outside worker and the woman is the home worker and the rearer of children. If it makes them both happy, who the heck are you to condemn their choices? If a woman decides to drop out of the workforce for a year or two to have children, thereby losing seniority, pay increases, work experience, and chances for promotion, how can you cry "oppression!"?
I also note that on women's rights as on virtually all other measures, you find the U.S. lacking. You do that after receiving a world-class education in the U.S. and taking advantage of superior professional opportunities in the U.S. Is their something in the drinking water in faculty lounges across the country that makes otherwise reasonable people feel such disdain for the country that provides them so much freedom and opportunity? In all honesty, if I felt like you feel, I'd find equally desirable work in Canada, if you can, or in Spain, which you can't.
"There is no doubt in my mind that this guy was cheating on the woman left and right.
And you know this...how? That's a fact-free conclusion of the kind you wouldn't accept in a student paper.
"Every sexual partner that hasn't been chosen by you on the basis of your sexual desire is repulsive."
And you also know this...how? I've lived and traveled in many countries, and I've hung around lots of bars. Prostitutes are among the most interesting people I've ever met (and don't even ask!). I've spent many an hour talking with girls in bars, at little more than the price of a few drinks, and I assure you that there's no "typical" prostitute. There are the sad cases, true, of young (and sometimes old) women who do it for lack of other choices. But there are also many who do it because it's easier and much more profitable that typical jobs, and some actually enjoy the lifestyle. Many don't, in fact, find the majority of their clients repulsive, and it's not uncommon for them to have regular clients that they like and enjoy spending time with. Do I recommend prostitution as a career choice? Of course not. But at the same time, it's like just about everything else in life--you can't force it into a box defined by your own biases and preferences, wrap a ribbon around it, and declare the subject closed.
"If it makes them both happy, who the heck are you to condemn their choices?"
-I'm a person entitled to express my own opinions on my own blog.
"If a woman decides to drop out of the workforce for a year or two to have children, thereby losing seniority, pay increases, work experience, and chances for promotion, how can you cry "oppression!"?"
-I would now request a quote where I "cried oppression." Of course, as usual, no quote is forthcoming because I absolutely do not think such women are "oppressed" and have repeated it on this blog ad nauseam. Of course, as usual, I will hear how you assumed and inferred.
"I also note that on women's rights as on virtually all other measures, you find the U.S. lacking. You do that after receiving a world-class education in the U.S. and taking advantage of superior professional opportunities in the U.S."
-My American education was horrible, Tom. And whatever its quality, how does it change the fact that there are no maternity leaves in this country?
"And you know this...how? That's a fact-free conclusion of the kind you wouldn't accept in a student paper."
-I'm not writing a research article on the subject of this guy. :-) I'm chatting on my blog. Sometimes I do it without the support of a bibliography. :-)
"And you also know this...how? I've lived and traveled in many countries, and I've hung around lots of bars. Prostitutes are among the most interesting people I've ever met (and don't even ask!)."
-Where did I claim otherwise??
"There are the sad cases, true, of young (and sometimes old) women who do it for lack of other choices."
-Why just women? Men do it too. A lot.
"Many don't, in fact, find the majority of their clients repulsive, and it's not uncommon for them to have regular clients that they like and enjoy spending time with."
-All of my bosses always thought I liked them. :-) Little did they know. :-)
"If it makes them both happy, who the heck are you to condemn their choices?"
-I'm a person entitled to express my own opinions on my own blog.
"If a woman decides to drop out of the workforce for a year or two to have children, thereby losing seniority, pay increases, work experience, and chances for promotion, how can you cry "oppression!"?"
-I would now request a quote where I "cried oppression." Of course, as usual, no quote is forthcoming because I absolutely do not think such women are "oppressed" and have repeated it on this blog ad nauseam. Of course, as usual, I will hear how you assumed and inferred.
"I also note that on women's rights as on virtually all other measures, you find the U.S. lacking. You do that after receiving a world-class education in the U.S. and taking advantage of superior professional opportunities in the U.S."
-My American education was horrible, Tom. And whatever its quality, how does it change the fact that there are no maternity leaves in this country?
"And you know this...how? That's a fact-free conclusion of the kind you wouldn't accept in a student paper."
-I'm not writing a research article on the subject of this guy. :-) I'm chatting on my blog. Sometimes I do it without the support of a bibliography. :-)
"And you also know this...how? I've lived and traveled in many countries, and I've hung around lots of bars. Prostitutes are among the most interesting people I've ever met (and don't even ask!)."
-Where did I claim otherwise??
"There are the sad cases, true, of young (and sometimes old) women who do it for lack of other choices."
-Why just women? Men do it too. A lot.
"Many don't, in fact, find the majority of their clients repulsive, and it's not uncommon for them to have regular clients that they like and enjoy spending time with."
-All of my bosses always thought I liked them. :-) Little did they know. :-)
OK on all that, but you got a horrible education at Yale? Well, I suppose some people are never satisfied....
"All of my bosses always thought I liked them. :-) Little did they know. :-)" That one raises some obvious questions, but I won't ask them...of course, you can elaborate if you care to.
For a brief, shiny period in American history, from the late '60's to the early '80's, feminism was resurgent, and organized religion was on the wane. If you haven't already, please read Susan Faludi's 1990 classic, "Backlash", which outlines exactly how politicians and comentators, of both the right and left, subsequently dismantled feminism during the Reagan era. It will give you some idea as to why, now at the end of 2010, stripper pole-dancing as an exercise is considered "liberating", and why the tabloids push "baby-mania" like crack cocaine.
I will argue that only monotheistic religions with a male deity are anti-feminist. This is one of the very strong appeals of polytheistic Pagainsm as a religious path.
PaganTopologist: Of course, I meant only rganized religions with powerful male hierarchies. Things would be completely different if your religion was the dominant one.
eric: Of course, I have read Backlash. What a great book! Still, in GB they had Thatcher in the 80ies, but their feminism is light years ahead.
Tom Carter: As I said, I am convinced that the US system of higher education is by far the best in the world. However, my 5 years at Yale were a complete waste of time academically, professionally, and educationally. It's very painful for me to realize that I frittered away 5 years of my life because I believed that a famous name should necessarily mean something.
Just to wrap this up, the "Rosie the Riveter" poster girl just died at 86.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101230/ts_alt_afp/ushistorywwiifeminism
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