Misogynism

Abhaya Budhil wrote: About 25% of elected representatives are women.
Women are about 1/3 of the people in MBA programs, but they are only 2% of Fortune 500 CEOs, 8% of other top leadership positions, only 6% of top earners, and only 16% of board directors and corporate officers.

Over half of college graduates are women, but only 25% of college professors are female and less than 20% of college presidents are female.

(etc.)

And this is men's fault? If women wish to be elected to public office, they should stand up and present a decent platform, run a good campaign, and be elected. If women want to be trillionaires, let them come up with something brilliant, or swindle their way to the top, same as men. I'm not saying there aren't problems with sexism and misogyny in the world, but this is a gross oversimplification, and does not point toward "patriarchy" in the slightest.

For example, the wage gap between the sexes isn't because women aren't being paid the same in most instances. Typically, it results from men working harder by being more willing to take on extra responsibilities, longer hours, more dangerous jobs, or longer commutes than women are willing to put up with. At that point, the work is truly unequal, so the wage gap isn't sexism, it's fairness.

Furthermore, I'd like to point out that if I said there were a secret cabal of gnostic geniuses running the entire world, I'd be called a madman. But replace "Illuminati" with "men", and suddenly everyone accepts it as fact?

Patriarchy is a society ruled by men. So yes, statistics that show that men hold a disproportionate amount of power points to patriarchy.

As far as men working harder, women are also expected to do more work in the home. Men do more paid work, but they also have more free time because women are often working at home as well as in a job. Women can't take on longer commutes or hours because they need to go home and work, too.

I didn't say the underrepresentation of women is men's fault. It is a societal idea that masculinity, and therefore most men, is better than femininity, and therefore most women. Women play into this myth as well. I'm not blaming anything on men. They just happen to be the ones who benefit from this most, even when they don't want to or don't mean to.

I wasn't trying to generalize all parents. I was making broad statements because I'm talking about societal trends, not specific cases.

I"m sorry, no. I work an average of 11 hours a day to support a home(3 other people plus dogs, not including my child support) and then I go home and work on renovating the house. My wife doesn't fix the roof, replace windows or work on the foundation. She has a part time job around 20 hours a week(of which I do not receive any money) and self admits to about 2 hours of cleaning a day. I have exactly 1 hour to shower, care for my dogs, and feed myself (plus travel time)between jobs in the morning and when I get home after work I have house work and taking care of my dogs, then I have about an hour in the evening to eat, do what I want to do and go to bed in order to get 6 hours. On my day off I do my laundry, yard work, and dog grooming as well as work on whatever latest house project I'm involved in(something I'm doing for me and my families benefit, but that doesn't make it "free time fun". Its float this boat or sink my loved ones). If I'm LUCKY I can watch a few cartoons or a movie before I pass out. You can't sell me on the "men have more free time". Maybe some corporate fat cats have that luxury but down here in the real world I bust my ass.


And that wasn't intended to be read in an angry tone...just matter of fact from my perspective.

The "women stay home and raise the kids" is no longer the norm as it has been replaced with everyone in the family having to work. I can't think of a single example from my friends and peers in my age group that a family member has the luxury to stay home. My own wife makes ALOT more than I do.

Abhaya Budhil wrote: Patriarchy is a society ruled by men. So yes, statistics that show that men hold a disproportionate amount of power points to patriarchy.

A patriarchy is a society ruled by men. The patriarchy is the feminist equivalent of a global sexist conspiracy to which all men are part, even if our decoder rings haven't come in the mail yet. I can discuss with you at length the reasons they are different, if you'd like, but please note that you've been using the latter instead of the former.

Women can't take on longer commutes or hours because they need to go home and work, too.

That sounds pretty sexist to me. Are you sure you're not a member of this diabolical cabal? Women haven't been expected to work more at home in my living memory, not even in the rural, traditional, Bible Belt town where I live. If it ain't like that in Podunk, I can guarantee you it's not a cultural norm in the Western world. If anything, women have been actively encouraged to seek work outside the home and shunt housework onto the men in their lives since at least the mid 80's, around the same time that men became a sitcom trope instead of actual human beings with feelings and opinions.

It is a societal idea that masculinity, and therefore most men, is better than femininity, and therefore most women.

This sentence is what we like to refer to as "ethnocentric." You cannot take it as a global standard that this is true just because it seems to be true in your own culture.

As you can see from this graph, women's happiness has been declining since they started entering the workforce:


I don't think the statistics used to determine equality are very well conceived. If we say only 25% of elected people are female... does it matter? Or that 90% of teachers are female? What if we had more equitable pay instead? If teachers and senators made the same money, maybe there would still be the same distribution of sexes in each occupation... maybe it wouldn't. Does it matter? What if we force a bunch of women to become senators instead of teachers and that makes them unhappy but now our statistics show more equality; when instead we could let them choose and ensure equal pay... which would balance the money problem out without forcing people into a career they don't like...

Andy Spalding wrote: The "women stay home and raise the kids" is no longer the norm as it has been replaced with everyone in the family having to work. I can't think of a single example from my friends and peers in my age group that a family member has the luxury to stay home. My own wife makes ALOT more than I do.

and might I add that this is because you need two incomes to maintain the same lifestyle as in, oh say 1970, which means real wages have declined and people have been compensating by sending more household members out to work. This proves, once and for all, that capitalism is the best system.

The patriarchy, as used by feminists, is a system that prefers masculinity over femininity, which is why men have more power, resulting in a patriarchy.

There are studies that show that men have more free time than women because of sexist inequalities even in personal relationships where women are expected to work more around the house. This is often because men work more at their job and work around the house often isn't seen as "real work." So men statistically have more free time.

Nobody's individual experience proves the societal trends wrong. Trends are overall generalizations backed up by measurable statistics. So yes, your own experience will not always match. But enough people's experience is the same that it backs up the data. I haven't said every single person in the entire country has the same experience. I've said that these are the measured trends.

Whyte Horse, until we stop treating men and women as inherently better at certain jobs and acting like the lower paying jobs are only fit for women and the higher paying jobs are only fit for men, we won't know how much people are actually making the choice they want and how much people are feeding into their own socialization and participating in self-fulfilling prophecies. So yes, maybe the statistics of men and women in certain fields wouldn't change if we honestly all had completely free will that isn't affected by how we are raised differently and what we are pushed into. But until then, we just don't know. And without equal representation, we can't ever know.

Abhaya Budhil wrote: The patriarchy, as used by feminists, is a system that prefers masculinity over femininity, which is why men have more power, resulting in a patriarchy.

That logic is cyclical, but the thing it describes is not. Furthermore, that's not a patriarchy--that's sexism combined with thousands of years of social evolution.

There are studies that show that men have more free time than women because of sexist inequalities even in personal relationships where women are expected to work more around the house. This is often because men work more at their job and work around the house often isn't seen as "real work." So men statistically have more free time.

Women also receive (or take) more time off, and the "sexist inequalities...in personal relationships" are caused by gender roles, which were a necessary part of our survival in the era before recorded history. Again, if you'd like to discuss this more in private, I can illuminate some of the sociological reasons for that, but I feel like this thread isn't the best place to do so.

Nobody's individual experience proves the societal trends wrong. Trends are overall generalizations backed up by measurable statistics. So yes, your own experience will not always match. But enough people's experience is the same that it backs up the data. I haven't said every single person in the entire country has the same experience. I've said that these are the measured trends.

If you insist on discussing specific studies, cite sources. I love that the Internet has made everyone feel like they have a voice, but too many people use that voice to make claims they can't produce backing for. This has been studied? By whom, funded by whom, and when? What were the specifics of the studies? What metrics were used? How were they interpreted? What specifically was being studied/measured? How was it worded? All these things have a very, very huge impact on the results of such studies, and must be taken into account when you discuss them.

Whyte Horse, until we stop treating men and women as inherently better at certain jobs and acting like the lower paying jobs are only fit for women and the higher paying jobs are only fit for men, we won't know how much people are actually making the choice they want and how much people are feeding into their own socialization and participating in self-fulfilling prophecies. So yes, maybe the statistics of men and women in certain fields wouldn't change if we honestly all had completely free will that isn't affected by how we are raised differently and what we are pushed into. But until then, we just don't know. And without equal representation, we can't ever know.

This is the part of the show where I state an uncomfortable truth: men and women are inherently better at certain jobs. One of the most logical theories about how gender roles began takes into account the physiological and mental disparity between men and women, and how those differences were exploited by early humans to better survive their environment. We have not outrun evolution just because social justice bloggers say that we have; men and women are equal in importance, but on the average, they are unequal in many other ways. The difference between early human societies and modern sexism is that tribal societies understood that they would only survive as a group, and therefore men and women would do different work but be treated with equal respect.

I've found this link to be of considerable help on this subject:
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/03/14/modern-parenthood-roles-of-moms-and-dads-converge-as-they-balance-work-and-family/

If both men and women stop thinking of themselves as superior, we would have a better outcome, in my opinion, and less worry about the statistics of it all.