General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm surprised how many DU'ers think aknowledging white male privilege is somehow bigoted [View all]thucythucy
(8,048 posts)So is "control." These articles say women "control the vast majority of all purchase decisions," and this in turn leads the various authors to the conclusion that women "control" this wealth.
The one doesn't necessarily follow the other. My grandmother would routinely do the shopping for her family. She therefore "controlled" those "purchasing decisions." That doesn't mean she actually controlled or owned that money--it was my grandfather's paycheck, after all, and had he decided to withhold it, her "control" of these "purchasing decisions" would have been suddenly nill. And nothing you've posted shows me that "the intergenerational transfer of wealth" (which was indeed what I started out by describing) now favors women over men. For that we'd need a study of median figures of inherited wealth for women vs. men, females vs. males, which I haven't as yet seen. As I said, women, particularly white women, have indeed made progress--though the CCED study I linked to would seem to indicate that women of color are in fact falling further behind.
And of course white women have privilege--it's a property of their whiteness. But in relation to white men that racial privilege disappears. Similarly, white women married to millionaires, or who are millionaires themselves, are most likely "priviledged" when it comes to working class men--Ann Romney being a case in point. But this doesn't mean that white male privilege doesn't exist, nor does it mean that there still isn't such a thing as gender bias and inequity.
And as I mentioned rape, sexual violence, and domestic violence are at the same time enforcers of and examples of male privilege, and this spills over into the economic sphere as well. Men, by and large, are able to live much if not most of their personal and professional lives without having to worry about being raped, at least not outside of a prison, certainly not by a woman. Though, of course, sexual violence against men does occur, and there are instances of women abusing men. But rape and sexual violence are realities that almost ALL women (and girls) have to confront at one time or another, and are experienced by anywhere from a quarter to a third of all women during the course of their lives. Men generally don't confront that sort of raw reality--and that too is a form of male privilege. It means, for instance, that women entering certain career paths (such as the military, or night shift medical work) have to be cognizent of that risk, and make economic and other decisions accordingly, thus leaving the field relatively open for men.
By all means, I'm all for a civil discussion.