Is female dominance a success for feminism?
Feministing
By Miriam
16 June, 2010
http://www.feministing.com/archives/021544.html (http://www.feministing.com/archives/021544.html)
Hanna Rosin, Co-Editor at Double X, has the cover story of this month's Atlantic Magazine with a piece entitled "The End of Men: How Women are Taking Control--of Everything."
This topic is a familiar one by now, not too far off from the discussions about the "he-cession"--our current recession which has seen 3/4ths of the job loss falling to men.
Rosin does a good job of really parsing the statistics about women's increasing dominance of employment, particularly among the working class. There is one topic that is blatantly absent from her narrative: that of the extremely high rates of incarceration among low-income men of color. Men aren't being made unemployable just by the shifting job market--they are also being kept unemployable by high rates of incarceration and discrimination towards folks with a record.
QuoteI think we should focus on eliminating the ways we are defined by our gender identities and how that affects what we can do, be, how we are seen. I think we need to break down notions of extreme gender difference (particularly the difference that is attributed to biology) and focus on nurturing individuals and their needs, without gender stereotyping.
Yes. People exaggerate the differences frequently.
In professions, when the number of women reaches just 1/3 the perception is that is then a "woman's profession" and what happens is that the average salaries then drop. You can trace this over almost all professions. The last major one was general practice medicine. GPs average incomes took a big big hit when women entered the field in larger numbers while the specialties dominated by men still bring the major money.
If a field sees a glut of incoming workers, the supply of workers can outstrip the demand for them, which can drive their wages down. If women enter in large numbers and men don't leave in substantial enough numbers, there can be practical reasons why some newly "female-dominated fields" pay so poorly. However, I think it merits exploration why certain jobs have not seen an influx of women -- is it due to sexist roles and discrimination (business management seems vulnerable to this), does the work tend to be less suited to them (probably most applicable in fields involving heavy physical labor, although physical tendencies likely do not fully explain disparities), or is there something else about the job that leaves this shortfall?
For whatever gains women have achieved and for any "advantages" they have acquired, they still have many disadvantages to their credit (for example, even if they closer to equal footing in the work place, they still tend to do more of the housework).
The Feministing article is about on the mark (or it at least seems that way to someone who didn't read the The Atlantic article and half paid attention to the interview on Colbert). Our society/world is at its best when the goal is for everyone to realize their potential, not saddle people with "roles," divide them into arbitrary "sides," and drive them to battle by keeping score.
To answer the question posed in the title, no.
On an unrelated note, I think dividing people into sides is human nature. The brain has a strong desire to classify things.
does this count as a double standard?