If women were the ones EXPECTED FROM BIRTH to be wage slaves...

[Bonobo]

Please finish the sentence and discuss.

[Scuba]

1. ... then they'd only make 77 cents on the dollar.

[Bonobo]

2. In that case, they would get full pay.

Getting paid less probably has more to do with the fact that they still have greater opportunities to NOT be a wage slave.

[cali]

21. that would be incorrect. In the U.S. more women than men work

Globally the female workforce is slightly over 40% and that includes countries where there are obstacles to women participating in the paid workforce.

[Major Nikon]

8. Actually that has more to do with child rearing

For people who are younger than 30, unmarried, and have never had kids, the gender pay gap is reversed.

A growing number of women across the country are upending the conventional wisdom about a gender gap in pay.

These women earn 8 percent more on average than their male counterparts, according to a new study of Census data from Reach Advisors, a market research firm.

But there's a big caveat -- the so-called reverse gender gap applies only to women who are unmarried, without children and younger than 30-years-old.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/reverse-gender-gap-study-young-childless-women-earn/story?id=11538401

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. You know that this is false, right?

I mean, we've shown you that this isn't true, time and again.

[MadrasT]

3. OK, I will give it a go.

Last edited Tue Mar 5, 2013, 12:25 PM - Edit history (1)

I think what you are getting at is the idea that men are expected from birth to be providers for women and children? And that kind of sucks?

If that assumption is correct, here is what I have to say about that.

I was born almost 50 years ago in a female body. My parents raised me with the expectation that I would grow up, choose a profession, and support myself. If I met a man and got married, that was a side issue. It was never part of the "how to survive" game plan for me.

From age 16 to age 23, while in high school and college, I dated a man who was older than me who was employed full time. I was an unemployed student most of that time, and thus he paid for almost everything all the time.

I hated it. I felt like a prostitute.

From the moment I got my first full time job, I have fully supported myself. Even when I was married (for 20 years), my husband and I split every last household expense 50/50. To the penny. We kept a ledger and even had separate bank accounts. When I wanted to go back to school, it was on me to figure out how to pay for it. When he wanted to go back to school, same thing. We divorced after 20 years because he was a hoarder and I couldn't take living like that. We were friends - and would have remained friends - had he not died soon after. Money was *never* an issue in our relationship because we were 50/50 equally invested in joint things, and provided for ourselves the extra things we wanted to have. (If I needed new car, I figured out how to pay for a new car, we didn't have to figure out as a couple if we could afford a new car or how to pay for a new car. We each bought our own books and videos and musical instruments and everything else that was a "me" item.)

That tl;dr story leads to this...

Now I am dating a man who makes 1/4 what I make. He loves his job and doesn't make a lot of money, but makes enough to support himself. I hate my job but make a lot of money and it is a trade I am OK with. But, it is incumbent on me to pay for much more than half of our "joint expenses". I am expected to pay for vacations, pay for more than half of the times we eat out, etc., etc., simply because I have more money coming in.

I don't like it and I will be honest, it creates some minor resentment inside me on occasion. But in this case, it is my choice to continue the relationship, and the good things about the relationship outweigh the financial imbalance. And if I waited for a man who was my financial equal I would have a long wait. I have chosen to be in this position.

If it were a societal expectation that I support another person (as it is still for many men) I would resent the hell out of it.

[Bonobo]

4. Thank you for your honest post.

It seems you have been on both sides. I certainly understand how -when you were with the older man who supported you -you felt cheapened and like you were using him.

And it seems now that the shoe is on the other foot, you can experience the sense of "how is this fair?" that men live with. Not only do we die earlier (10 years or so) but we never really have an equal opportunity to pursue careers out of pure love because the societal expectation strongly pressures us to work for money and be the providers -both so that we can find a mate and then, after, so that we can provide. To fail to do so means a loss of manhood for most. A sense of worthlessness that honestly I don't think most women can fully appreciate.

I really appreciate your attempt to see things from this side. Thank you.

[MadrasT]

6. One of the reasons I respect my new male partner is that he went with a career he loves

and said "screw what society thinks I need to do to be successful". He trained up to graduate school for a different career, and could have made more money doing something different, but went with his passion instead.

But he certainly has expressed frustrations about feeling like a lot of women have shut him out as a potential partner because of his relatively low income.

I know it is a big issue for men, and frankly I don't have much respect for women who look to men to be their meal ticket. If you are married and have a family, OF COURSE sometimes what makes sense is dad goes to work and mom stays home with the children. And sometimes what makes sense is the other way around. Those are decisions families make about how to run their families and that is cool.

But there are clearly some women who are looking to men to "provide" for them and, ack, gah.... just.... ick.

I wish gender roles would evaporate completely and folks could just be folks. That is my dream.

Gotta get back to that job I hate... nice chatting w/you.

[lumberjack_jeff]

13. What is frustrating isn't "women who look to men to be their meal ticket"

It's those same women who simultaneously argue that their attitude has no relationship to the fact that women as a group make less in wages.

If ones internalized belief is that men are responsible for supporting the family, then OF COURSE they will personally choose careers (and husbands) that reflect that belief.

[Major Nikon]

15. I don't really see a big problem with gender roles

Most people seem to embrace them. The problem comes in when you try to use "tradition" as an excuse to discriminate against someone. Everyone should have the same opportunities, but even if we get there it doesn't mean outcomes are going to be the same and people shouldn't have that expectation. It's different with other things like race or sexual orientation, where there is no good reason for unequal outcomes.

[MadrasT]

16. For me, there is another problem with traditional gender roles.

What happens when they just don't match who you are? It creates a life experience where you always feel like an outsider or as if you are defective.

I am a nongendered (or third-gendered) person and traditional gender roles alienate me because they do not apply to me. (I am transgender but not the kind of "transgender" people usually think about when they hear the term. I am sometimes envious of transgender people who know they are man or woman, even when it is different from their bodies, because at least they are "something". In modern 21st century US of A, I am "none of the above". But then I do "pass" as a woman because I have a female body, so I fly under the radar unless I choose to identify myself to someone as "not woman".)

I guess many people embrace gender roles because they line up with their identities so they don't see a problem. That is not the case for me, so it is a sore spot for me.

If the whole world has expectations of you, and makes assumptions about you, because you have female parts, and your identity is not "woman", it gets really tedious and isolating.

(Not arguing, just explaining it from my eyes.)

[Major Nikon]

17. The way I see it is it all goes back to discrimination

There will always be majority and minority groups. Someone will always be the outsider in the respect that they are different. If you value someone less because they are not like you, that is discrimination which has no reasonable basis. People need to figure out how to value diversity and most people can do better in that regard. I think a lot of problems are going to take care of themselves if people got better at it. The problem is that a lot of people are using tradition as an excuse to discriminate. I'm not so sure the problem is tradition itself.

[MadrasT]

18. That works for me.

I especially like this statement:

People need to figure out how to value diversity and most people can do better in that regard.

[Warren DeMontague]

20. I agree with all of it, too.

I think people should be free to structure their selves and their lives as they see fit, rather than being shoehorned into the expectations others put on them.

And we should support everyone's choices in that regard.

I think we as a society could do a better job of making work; particularly corporate life, more family friendly- benefits like they have in Europe, more flexible hours.. family leave. I also think that the workplace should be more accomodating of people- women AND men- who have taken time out of their career path to focus on their kids, particularly in the early years. We talk about stay at home moms OR stay at home dads; yet usually it's one or the other. Why not encourage employers to be more accomodating so that maybe Dad does it for a year or two, then Mom? Because usually in a SAH situation you have the "career one" and the "home one" and the home one, whichever one it is, incurs the ding on the resume.

[Bonobo]

19. My daughter has been schooling me lately...

on pan-sexual vs bi-sexual.

Also came across a interesting character recently in Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore" who seemed to be in a similar spot.

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. Once upon a time, when I did make much more than my wife, it didn't cause resentment at home

Partly because she hated being alone while I worked 60-70 hours a week. What resentment existed was largely because I recognized that we needed me to capitalize on the opportunity that existed at that moment and sacrifice for long term reasons, and I felt she didn't see the bigger picture.

But it did cause me to dislike the expectations from society.

Now we both work mon-thur and have never been happier as a couple. We've never had "my money" or "her money", we started living together while still in our teens and therefore pooled our resources for survival reasons, but it has become a habit so our finances have always been joined.

The challenge is carving out some autonomy within that arrangement. "I bought a new saw/computer/program because a) I wanted it and b) we can afford it" Frequent use of the veto pen carries significant long term problems.

I feel bad for some of my friends who are continuing the punishing work pace into their 50's and 60's to support the household in the style to which they'd become accustomed, with their spouses only giving passing attention to his resulting physical deterioration.

[st0rk]

14. I feel the same way

and I also hate when a significant other pays for something more often than I have. Hell, I hate when other people pay for me, always have. I don't mind paying for other people though, especially if it's a girlfriend, as long as it's not overly lopsided in how much I'm giving and how much she's taking.

[Major Nikon]

5. You would see more women...

...nailing down shingles on top of a 2 story house in the hot sun.

...climbing wooden electrical poles to repaired downed lines after a storm.

...driving tractor trailers cross country.

...plowing fields.

...rigging rebar on top of high rise buildings.

...picking up garbage and recyclables.

...working in holes repairing broken sewer lines.

...dying and being severely injured from workplace accidents.

[Bonobo]

7. You mean men don't choose those things because they LOVE to do them?

But what about all the freedom men have?

[Major Nikon]

9. I'm not sure women have any more or less freedom

The biggest freedom women have is that if they decide not to have children, gender pay gap issues disappear and they suddenly have more or less the same earnings opportunities that men have, if not more so. If they do decide to have children, they have their own set of societal expectations to deal with.

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. ...the system would get changed. n/t

[BainsBane]

22. I'd like to know which women aren't expected to work?

This isn't 1950. I've worked since age 13, and I'm hardly alone. Women with families work full time out of the house and then work at home for no pay. This OP diverges greatly from reality.

[Warren DeMontague]

23. I can't speak for Bonobo, but I think his OP is deliberately exaggerating and caricaturing

what might be considered to be "traditional attitudes", even to the extent that such attitudes aren't, exactly, real;

in much the same way that statements like "If Men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament" imply totally ridiculous assumptions about the anti-choice movement, namely that it's all about Teh Menz trying to control women, when in reality anti-choice and pro-choice sentiment is quite nearly equally split along gender, and the real demographic divisions fall along lines like religion, education level, and geography.

[Bonobo]

27. Not exactly.

The choice is still available for women but not for men. THAT is the point and one poster's having chosen to work since 13 does not a thing to change that.

[Warren DeMontague]

33. I have done some time as a SAHD. I think things have changed, somewhat.

Years ago I got a lot more weird vibes around it. I think after the economy tanked people were far more used to seeing Dads with their kids. Sad it takes that, but..

I also don't think you can underestimate how much society has changed just in a decade or so. Or maybe I'm in the Pacific NW Progressive Bubble; entirely possible. Still, I think things are more open than they used to be.

Of course I've never been one to particularly give too much of a shit what other people think, anyway.

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. The blogosphere is filled with debate about the appropriate choice for moms

"work or stay home".

In my experience there's very little of this kind of public soul searching among dads. You simply do what you gotta do in support of your wife's choices.

[Bonobo]

25. Yes. That is correct.

"The CHOICE between work and home"

"How women can 'have it all'."

Where the hell is that choice for men?

Not 1950 is a strawman, and congrats on working from 13 -as was your choice. But NO man is born thinking they can choose whether to work or not. Women can still do that in staggering numbers compared with men. And EVEN IF THEY DO WORK, a lower income is considered by and large, if not expected than at least accepted, so women can choose more interesting and rewarding jobs.

No man ever chooses a woman based on her "earning potential". But the same cannot be said for women's choice of men.

[BainsBane]

29. the choice is there

Of course it is. Men just need to be able to work for no wages as women have done. The question is if their families can survive based on their wife's income alone.

Working from age 13 was only my choice if I didn't want to starve. Do you call eating and having a roof over your head a choice? You don't seem to understand the world we live in, or at least not the world most of us live in. You ought to have a look at census data. I believe there are more women than men in the workforce today. Few Americans earn enough to afford for either couple to stay home. There was a brief period in the 1950s and 60s where that was the case. Perhaps you grew up in that era. But especially since the turn of the 20th century, very few people have options to stay home with children.

Women aren't born thinking they have a choice not to work anymore, not in the past fifty years. More women go to college then men now. That prepares them for the labor force. Yet the poor and women of color have always worked. My mother worked, and my grandmother born in 1895 worked well into her 80s. Working-class American women have ALWAYS worked. Read some labor history from the late nineteenth and early 20th century. Working has NEVER been a choice for me. I actually worked from age 10 but had W2 income from age 13. I wouldn't have had clothes for school if I didn't work. I could never have gone to a movie with my friends or done anything that cost money if I didn't earn my own money. I wouldn't have made it through college and grad school without working two jobs, winning competitive fellowships, and keeping a high GPA throughout that entire period.

If by choice do you mean I could have attached myself to a wealthy man for the sake of security and turned myself into an unpaid laborer, I suppose one might consider that a choice. If men think selling themselves is a valid choice, they could also have find a wealthy wives or husbands. They could also choose to do housekeeping and child care for no pay, as long as they find a wealthy partner or don't care if the kids were fed, clothed, or had a roof over their heads. Of course that means no work resume if your partner turns out to be abusive or leaves you, and no Social Security for retirement, but that's only shelter. One can choose to be homeless. Or one can choose not to have kids at all and be responsible for only themselves. No one forces a man to marry or have children. Thankfully, increased opportunity means that women are no longer forced to have children or marry. Those are choices we all make for ourselves now.

Most men don't choose a woman based on earning potential. They choose based on physical appearance. Men are judged by net worth and women by cultural notions of beauty. So if men are comfortable having their destiny determined by their waist and hip size, and some accidental symmetry of facial characteristics, they can pine away for the life of the idle trophy wife depicted on television. They too have the option to turn themselves into a physical commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. Only not many women live that life, and even fewer men, though some do. But for those men who find that something to aspire to, they can pursue their dream. Meanwhile. the rest of American women and men will continue working as we always have done.

[BainsBane]

28. The only Moms that have that choice are upper middle class

Poor women have always worked outside the home. So sure, Anne Marie Slaughter and others may worry about such things, but the rest of us don't have that luxury.

And there are stay at home Dads these days. Whether it's the man or the woman looking after the kids, it's a full time job and far more demanding than working out of the house.

Poor women have worked outside of the home since the dawn of industrialization. The media doesn't talk about working- and-middle class mothers because they simply don't care. Don't mistake media for reality.

[Bonobo]

30. Exceptions proving the rule. nt

[BainsBane]

31. Your rule is the top 1%

So what about the men who don't work like Mitt Romney? Since you're so determined to assert the most privileged in society tell you everything you need to know about sociology, how about all the wealthy men who don't work either?

Your talking about a world that's long since past. Perhaps you were born into an upper middle class world of the 1950s. The rest of us, however, have never lived that life. Immigrants never lived that life. People of color never lived that life. Poor and lower-middle class whites never lived that life. Only a select slice of white America lived that life for a few decades in American history, while the percentage today is far smaller.

[lumberjack_jeff]

32. I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to be a stay at home dad.

But it wasn't really a choice, and there was no moral issue to agonize over. It was mostly a necessity due to a changed family and employment situation.

For me, staying at home was a vastly better personal situation than working outside the house.

[BainsBane]

34. It's great you had that opportunity

and that you found it a good experience. Taking care of children full time, as I'm sure you know, is very hard work. I myself don't have children, but the time I've spent looking after my nieces and nephews at the toddler stage was far more mentally exhausting than any job I've had.

[Bonobo]

26. My response is in #25 below. nt