Re: Linda Hirshman and 'Choice' Feminism.

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The colon at the end of the comment link is causing problems.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 4:24 PM
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Dammit, I can't type straight. I think it's fixed now.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 4:25 PM
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Just think of an elite education as advanced prep for being a domestic partner. When I come home from my high powered job, in addition to my wife have ready homebaked cake and muffins, properly-brewed tea and scones, a fruit tarte, and a delightful dinner, it would be nice if her little head could understand my rambling lectures on my work and my political beliefs. Perhaps she could even read the books I didn't have time to read myself and write me book reports!


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 4:38 PM
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And make sparkling conversation with the boss!


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 4:41 PM
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And, of course she'll have to appreciate art, culture, and literature so that she can properly decorate my our home!


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 4:43 PM
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What Hirshman overlooks (perhaps --its been a while since I read it) is the potential contribution of stay-at-home moms to the political sphere. The high-powered lawyer probably won't be at the 6pm school board meeting to discuss including intelligent design in the curriculum, or campaigning for political candidates, etc. It could be all Girl Scouts and soccer games and bake sales, but it doesn't have to be.

Having money and power are important, too, and maybe more so in shaping the workplace. But a feminist SAHM should ensure, maybe, that staying at home doesn't mean staying unseen.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 4:53 PM
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You're forgetting the other incredible advantage!

One day, your children are going to be filling out applications to elite colleges (ahhh... takes you back), and they all ask for Mommy and Daddy's alma mater's these days. Do you really want your child's chances shattered by revealing a poor upbringing by a mother who actually went to a second-tier liberal arts school? Or maybe even a state school?!?

I mean, sure, Harvard and Princeton want to take in some charity cases, but that's a much harder pool than legacy!


Posted by: JAC | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 4:53 PM
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Tia: Sure, there are all sorts of other things you can do to advance equality. Very few of them have anything like the impact professional success will.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:12 PM
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*jumps up and down*

'Marry down', whether it's a nice phrase or not, doesn't seem to be good advice if we're supposed to be emulating men. You'll find some high-powered execs with trophy wives, of course, but I suspect you'll find a fair amount more of 'met at the Princeton Club and when we married she quit her art gallery job to raise Ella and Jacob' types.

Why aren't we telling women to marry whomever they like?


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:15 PM
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And Ideal: To the extent she's succumbing to pressure not to pursue career because she's a woman (rather than, as some men do, because she's not into that kind of thing), she is moving away from equality for women. As I've raised a couple of time before in the prior thread, you could argue that an unequal world wouldn't be oppressive, if the choices involved were made, in some way, 'freely'.

But a world where women are primarily responsible for the domestic sphere and men are primarily in control of social power and money isn't an equal world, regardless of whether the people involved are choosing it freely.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:16 PM
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Why aren't we telling women to marry whomever they like?

There's only one of me.


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:17 PM
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9: Yeah, but the fact is that men don't (at least not as often as women) go to Princeton and then stay home with the kids.

So if we want someone to stay home with the kids, we've got to "marry down." I don't particularly like this phrase, but I think of it as needing an ambition balance. I'm extremely ambitious, and I have found myself (consciously or unconsciously) seeking out partners who are not that ambitious. Very smart, but no designs on grand career success like the ones I have.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:18 PM
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Ok, carrying over from the other thread:

297:
But I do not think it has to be that way. Of course it doesn't have to be. However, the fact is, it generally is. Hirshman's entire point is, it doesn't have to be that way. Women don't have to defer to their husband's careers.

I think it's perfectly fine for a woman to choose to make the same choices I have (or any other choices regarding career and family). What I think is misconceived is the notion that she must make the choices I have.

No one is proposing forcing women to pursue careers at gunpoint. However, again, realistically speaking: if a woman does not make the choices "you" (i.e., ambitious men) make, she will not gain the economic and social power that ambitious men have.

We don't *have* to do anything. Unless, of course, we want the things (money, power, status) that come as a result of doing certain things. Then, yes; we have to do them.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:18 PM
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9: 'Down' can mean income and professional status, rather than education or social class, in which case it describes 'met at the Princeton Club and when we married she quit her art gallery job to raise Ella and Jacob'. And for someone highpowered, 'down' should include most of the world, so it's not all that restrictive.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:18 PM
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and what Dr. Oops said:

This is primarily a problem if you believe that there is an intrinsic good in women having an equal share of the power - and it is perfectly reasonable to believe that this is not an absolute good. Let the men keep the money and political power, if I can be happier by devoting a larger percentage of my time to other goals it is a worthwhile trade off. What you can’t do is have it both ways. You can’t expect to be treated as an equal in a given society, if you don’t take on the position that entails. Nobody ain’t ever gonna give you nothin’ for nothin’.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:20 PM
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So far, LB has responded to Tia and Ideal, neither of whom have commented in this thread. Yet her replies seem on-topic. I'm confused.


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:22 PM
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It seems like the main thing that Tia, Idealist, SCMT are objecting to is the prescriptive, rather than the descriptive, aspect of Hirschman's article.

The prescription is made in strong terms to make a rhetorical point. As (I think) LB said in the other thread, there's no way all women are going to pursue those high-status jobs; that's impossible, and furthermore, inadvisable. I think her advice was designed to convince women who are on the fence about career choices (like me) to go for the money, because that's where a lot of the power is, and because it has extra-personal ramifications for the status of women at large if more women are in those high-status positions.

And to that extent, I was, at least temporarily, convinced.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:22 PM
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9 has it right. And I have a hard time imagining that those of you who are advocating marrying down believe it, or even find the use of the term acceptable.

Thought experiment: you are hanging out with me having a drink (already, you are getting quesy) because you want to hear about all the great choices I have made in my life that Hirshman wants you to follow. And I say "Yeah, I needed to have someone who could focus on our family so I could focus on my career. So I decided to marry down."

At this point do you:

(a) Say, "Right on brother, I want to be like you"!

or

(b) Throw a drink in my face and say "marry down!, you fucking pig. How can your wife stand you"?

And the fact is, if I ever said this, my wife would kill me, and if I ever thought this about my wife, I would be deeply, crushingly ashamed of myself. Marry down? WTF!


Posted by: Idealist | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:23 PM
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I think I have it figured out, now.


Posted by: Michael | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:24 PM
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9: Because of what Silvana said.

Look, my husband has a B.S. I have a Ph.D. Guess what? He's negotiating a job offer that will pay twice what I'm making, and he's been out of work for three years. I married "down," and he STILL makes more money. And that affects things like the decisions we will make about our mutual careers and so forth. The reason women need to consider marrying down is because (1) there's a real expectation that women will marry up; and (2) even if women marry their equals in terms of education and career goals, they're still likely to end up earning less and having to fight the uphill battle of "isn't your husband serious about his job?" "Why are you making him stay home?" "Aren't you 'lucky' that your husband supports your career?" And all the other crap that we all hear all the time.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:25 PM
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12. So high-powered women should date art majors! Or carpenters.

Seriously, though, I'm wondering if a better strategy for equality would be to manage your home life however you want -- but don't quit your job. Get a critical mass of women and force your employer to wake up to the fact that if they want to keep their workforce, they'll have to make changes to accomodate them.

And that might be better for equality than having women act like men in skirts. Because I think the upshot of Hirshman's strategy will be women with one child and a stay-at-home-partner, which isn't really so much feminist as man-replacement. We won't get better childcare and flextime if the only ones in the office are those with one cherub-cheeked child and a philosopher baking cookies at home; they won't need it.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:25 PM
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18: Alright, well screw the "marry down" language then. You can frame it as "marry someone who doesn't/won't hold a successful career as high a priority as you do/will", and it means the same thing and accomplishes the same goal: to provide women with the latitude and support they need to both have a powerful career and a family life.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:26 PM
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Great topic!

It's a bit of a digression, but to Hirschman's credit, she is also relying on a straight-forward perfectionist argument here. She doesn't think being a full-time mom is as complete a form of human flourishing as being a working mom. This is, in my view, more than a little crazy. Or, at least, requires (willful) ignorance about what relationship most professional jobs have to human flourishing. Still, it's important to note that Hirschman isn't just saying "be an I-banker for feminism and equality," she's saying "be an I-banker for your own good."

This argument aside, Hirschman *is* saying "be an I-banker for feminism and equality," -- so it's important to note there there are a couple forms of feminsm and equality one could care about, adn that Hirschman (sometimes) seems to equivocate between. This equivocation is important because it's at the breakpoint between feminism understood as a classical liberal rights argument (unproblematic!) and feminism understood as form of identity politics (somewhat more vexed).

What do I mean by this? Well, to crudely oversimplify, there's a classical liberal argument for feminism which is about rights -- sufferage, non-discrimination, what have you. This argument has, in the West, been overwhelmingly successful. I do not think you will find too many people -- even on the usually crazy fringes, arguing for repeal of sufferage or for the permissability of job-discrimination on the basis of sex. Really almost everyone within the realm of polite discourse has been swayed by this argument, and it's a probably the signal moral accomplishment of the last 100 years.

Then there's another feminism, less closely linked to the classical liberal tradition, which asserts the importance of *power* in the hands of a class of people, namely women. This power is sometimes defended as a necessary means to preserving the first type of feminism, but is also often defended as good in and of itself. This is the type of feminism that militates in favor of being an I-banker rather than a full-time mom (or, for that matter, an artist).

Hoschild is surely right that dropping out of the partner track at a big firm to become a mom/artist/less successful lawyer diminishes the power of women as a class, and probably makes it incrementally more difficult for the next partner-track woman to make it. The question is: is what kind of feminism/equality is such a person undermining, and should she care? One issue that probably requires some attention is the idea of power accruing to "women," and indeed the very idea of women as a class. Let's just stipulate that the hypothetical lawyer drop-out of our example has made life difficult for ambitious, highly educated women by her choice. Has she made life more difficult for working women thereby? Poor women? Middle-class women? Maybe. But if she has, it will be by some indirect and dubitable path.

This is what I think people find off about Hirschman. She suggests there's a duty to go be a lawyer, not a full-time mom (or an artist), for the good of women-kind. But what about the people who don't want to be lawyers? They might reasonably ask how exactly they are hurting woman-kind. And the whole of the argument can't be "because it makes it more difficult for the woman lawyers to come."


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:26 PM
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Yeah, I think Hirchman's view of the arts, liberal or otherwise, is such that her "down" includes lots of people most of us wouldn't expect someone to consider as falling into that category.

Generally speaking, given that inequalities exist among people with different-powered jobs and within families, Hirchman really seems to be arguing for a more equitable distribution of those inequalities across gender lines, rather than for any changes to the inequalities among the positions - high-powered worker, spouse with more power - to be occupied.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:27 PM
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Dude, give me a break. You find the word 'down' offensive in this context. Great. You've got two choices -- move past the offense, and discuss it as if she had spelled out 'marry someone less ambitious or under less professional pressure than yourself', or continue to talk about how offensive Hirshman's language was. I, for one, will be bored by the latter option.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:27 PM
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25 to 18.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:28 PM
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if a woman does not make the choices "you" (i.e., ambitious men) make, she will not gain the economic and social power that ambitious men have.

Possibly true. And she should be free to make them, obviously.

We don't *have* to do anything. Unless, of course, we want the things (money, power, status) that come as a result of doing certain things. Then, yes; we have to do them.

Of course.

It seems like the main thing that . . . Idealist . . . [is] objecting to is the prescriptive, rather than the descriptive, aspect of Hirschman's article.

Absolutely. As I noted upthread (well, up and over), her description of the situation seems not unreasonable.


Posted by: Idealist | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:28 PM
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a philosopher baking cookies at home

Exactly.

No, seriously.

Ok, not totally serious, but what is wrong with dating art majors? I have a friend (soon-to-be lawyer) who does this exact thing. I'm not saying I wouldn't date someone because they're a lawyer, but, I certainly am not seeking out someone in the same career field as me.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:29 PM
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Generally speaking, given that inequalities exist among people with different-powered jobs and within families, Hirchman really seems to be arguing for a more equitable distribution of those inequalities across gender lines, rather than for any changes to the inequalities among the positions - high-powered worker, spouse with more power - to be occupied.

Hence, 'feminism'. The universal justice movement is in the next booth.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:29 PM
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Cala's 21 is, I think, half right. Yes, if women just reverse the traditional roles, then fine; the status quo continues.

But the fact is, there is (we can see it) a lot of resistance to women taking on the role of being "men in skirts" (and please, women who have stay at home husbands are not "men in skirts"). It *isn't* just neutral to reverse the gender roles. And I think that as long as family issues are just "women's issues," then they will be marginalized and dismissed. It seems to me that the only reason family issues are starting to gain traction is because they're starting to affect men. Part of that is due to the men themselves, god bless them, pushing to spend more time with their kids. But part of it is also due to the women who are not just giving in to the enormous pressure of taking the easy way out.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:30 PM
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They might reasonably ask how exactly they are hurting woman-kind

She's not saying that everyone who's not a lawyer/ad exec/whatever is hurting women, all she's saying is that if you think quitting your law job after 3 years to plan a wedding is a feminist choice, you're fooling yourself. That doesn't mean you mustn't do it, but it doesn't help women or the feminist cause, if anything, it hurts them/it.

She's mostly debunking the "it's my choice!" defense.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:31 PM
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My boyfriend has a high school diploma (and ten years' trade experience) and he still makes more than I do/will. And you better believe my family is thinking I'm dating down.

But if we get married, it's not because I've decided that dating a graduate student would be against my autonomy. It's because one grad student is enough neuroses for any relationship. ("And," she purred, "when you're on the top of the heap, everyone is down.")

I'm also thinking of my cousin, a med student, about to get married to a physics grad student, and I can't decide whether that's up or down. (They did meet at Princeton. He's richer. But she'll be the doctor! But he's good at math. Arrrrg...) It just seems to be strange advice; maybe better to 'keep in mind long term plans and goals when looking for a partner.'


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:32 PM
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Surely the key thing, if having and keeping a high-powered and high-earning job is to somehow be a feminist act is this -- what are these women doing with that power and money?

If all they are doing is perpetuating an unfair and pernicious system and one that is particularly shitty for poor people, and poor women in particular, then I don't see what is admirable about having the power and the money and what makes it a worthwhile goal in itself.

The power and the money is only valuable if it's being exercised in the pursuit of worthwhile political goals and I don't see much of that happening.

Making life better for poor women who don't have the luxury of making these choices and who have to work incredibly long hours in order to ensure subsistence level incomes for themselves and their children seems a more important goal.


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:33 PM
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re: 25, sorry to be boring you. I'll leave now. But you want to rewrite Hirshman to say something she did not say.

She did not say marry someone less ambitious or under less professional pressure than yourself She describes marrying down as follows:

Rhona Mahoney recommended finding a sharing spouse by marrying younger or poorer, or someone in a dependent status, like a starving artist. Because money is such a marker of status and power, it’s hard to persuade women to marry poorer. So here’s an easier rule: Marry young or marry much older.

There is nothing here about finding someone less ambitious etc. She cites approvingly the rule younger or poorer, or someone in a dependent status, but opts for a simpler formulation because, well, who would want to marry a poor person.


Posted by: Idealist | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:35 PM
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24, 33: Um, no. Look, social justice is a good thing generally. And gender equality is a good thing. And there is no reason to hold gender equality hostage to social justice.

I'm sure it's not what you mean, but what 33 sounds like to me is: "Sure, women can have equal access to power and money after every other social problem is fixed. While there's still poverty, affluent women are incredibly selfish to be worrying about taking power away from affluent men."

You know who that kind of thinking leaves in power? Affluent men.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:37 PM
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Why is the argument "it's unfair to women to have to sacrifice the wonders of home life in order to have a career" instead of "it's unfair to men"? Why are those who are arguing that women should have the "freedom" to "choose" not to be economically independent not making the same argument about men? And why, if they did make such arguments, would I be pretty sure that the arguments were merely theoretical, and certainly weren't anything that the folks making them actually planned to put into practice?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:38 PM
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9: Unless, of course, we want the things (money, power, status) that come as a result of doing certain things. Then, yes; we have to do them.

But that's not true. Hirshman's society-page stay-at-home moms have plenty of money, power, and status. Well-off SAHMs play power and status games at a level that would put many faculties to shame (or at least the ones at my son's school do).

Isn't the real argument that the power, money, and status of women in general is enhanced when there are more women in high-powered jobs? That seems like it ought to be true, but many of us could come up with plenty of examples of high-powered women who outdo most of the men at making life difficult for their inferiors.

Not sure where I'm going with this. A lot of Hirshman's analysis rings very, very true, but her prescriptions are maybe a little overly stark (as they're no doubt intended to be).


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:38 PM
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silvana:

I think her advice was designed to convince women who are on the fence about career choices (like me) to go for the money, because that's where a lot of the power is, and because it has extra-personal ramifications for the status of women at large if more women are in those high-status positions.

I think you're largely right about Tia, Ideal, and me, but I guess my concern is that this is--generally--really bad advice for anyone, male or female. If you're going to go purely for the cash, do it because you like cash. If you take the job that you should like, you may well not advance to the exalted position that Hirshman wants you at. Or, more correctly, note some of the caveats LB had about career plans. My concern is that I don't think that Hirshman is accounting for those caveats, because doing so would make her message much, much more targeted.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:38 PM
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34: Look, I'm sorry I was rude. I just don't want to talk about how nasty Hirshman was, I want to talk about what she's saying.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:40 PM
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29, 30: Yes. I think what's generating a lot of the objections to Hirschman is that her argument breaks the links many see between feminism and (a) a more general concern with socioeconomic inequalities, and (b) the work/family problem, since success by her standards will only change the gender balance of the people facing these problems. So to the extent that people believe that feminism automatically involves a concern with (a) or (b), Hirschman's arguments aren't going to be very appealing.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:42 PM
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32: You're dating down in social terms. And the fact that you're doing so probably means that your boyfriend is going to be a lot more mobile than you will be, job-wise. It's totally to your advantage to be doing that.

I hear 33 a lot the way LB does. Like there's no point to gender equity unless it solves all the problems of the world?

Anyway, look at who is in congress. Look at who has stood up for abortion rights and family leave. And then tell me that rich women are no more likely than rich men to do good for poor women.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:42 PM
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I call bullshit on 33. Seems like you're saying that it's not legitimate for women with advanced degrees to go for the money unless they're going to use that power for the benefit of poor women. Well, men are currently holding a sizeable majority of the power, and poor women are getting shat upon right now.

Are you saying that women can only go for high-powered careers if that alleviates some other social ill? Otherwise, let's just leave them where they are?

No. The power disparity at the highest levels is a problem in and of itself. Period.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:42 PM
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(and please, women who have stay at home husbands are not "men in skirts")

I wasn't intending that. Hirshman is going far beyond saying 'consider having your husband stay at home' or 'reverse the breadwinner/caretaker roles' and saying 'marry the young and dependent!' 'only one child!' 'no girlie education options!'

That whole package is a lot closer to the advice someone might give a young man hoping to have a traditional family: 'ignore the science girls, they're feminists' 'i'm not paying for you to study art.'

One expects this to be followed up with 'three-martini lunch!' 'EAT RED MEAT.'


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:42 PM
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my concern is that this is--generally--really bad advice for anyone, male or female. If you're going to go purely for the cash, do it because you like cash. If you take the job that you should like, you may well not advance to the exalted position that Hirshman wants you at.

Bingo.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:43 PM
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21: Hirshman sort of addressed that issue about work and life balance with a sentence in her original "Homeward Bound" essay for The American Prospect:

"If women never start playing the household-manager role, the house will be dirty, but the realities of the physical world will trump the pull of gender ideology. Either the other adult in the family will take a hand or the children will grow up with robust immune systems."

She seems to be saying that women should refuse to compromise their careers if they ever want to see flextime and childcare benefits at work. When men who want intelligent and well-educated wives realize their children will be left alone due to career ambitions, they will also start to demand flextime and childcare and the other family perks.

The current willingness of a spouse to bend to pressure (usually the wife) and stay at home with the child is just making it easier and easier for employers to demand long hours and other less family-friendly policies.


Posted by: JAC | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:43 PM
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The power disparity at the highest levels is a problem in and of itself. Period.

This is exactly what is at issue, and, frankly, dubitable. I can imagine the outlines of an argument about how Carly Fiorina is making life better for poor and middle-class women. But it doesn't seem like an obvious argument.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:46 PM
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I wrote 40 after seeing only up to 34. I don't think gender equality needs to take a backseat to social justice or anything like that. I'm just trying to get at the implications of Hirchman's argument, in order to get at the kinds of objections people are making to it.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:46 PM
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Hirshman's society-page stay-at-home moms have plenty of money, power, and status.

No; their husbands do. The women may get to spend it, but that's only because hubby "lets" them.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:47 PM
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re: 35

No, I sort of assumed that gender-equality and social justice went hand in hand since many of the most social disadvantaged happen to be women and a big part of why they are socially disadvantaged is because of gender-inequity.

I just get irritated by arguments that seem to just ignore the social justice angle and by the ways in which mass-media discussion of feminism - NY Times articles, etc. - seem to be dominated by discussion of political and financial elites.

Taking power away from affluent men is great. Seriously. But just taking and keeping that power seems useless if it's not *used* for something worthwhile. If our society is dominated by wealthy lawyers and by the choices that they make I don't care quite as much about the gender distribution of wealthy lawyers as much as I do about the power inequity.


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:47 PM
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This is exactly what is at issue, and, frankly, dubitable. I can imagine the outlines of an argument about how Carly Fiorina is making life better for poor and middle-class women. But it doesn't seem like an obvious argument.

No. The point is that if Carly Fiorina is treated unequally because she is a woman that is an injustice full stop. She is not required to wait until poverty is eliminated before she complains.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:47 PM
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I have to go. This has been fun. And on a girlie note, I have new pink sandals. Give it to 'em, girls!


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:47 PM
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If you're going to go purely for the cash, do it because you like cash.

I realize I'm getting a little testy (mostly because this has a lot of personal clout for me; stuff I have been thinking about a lot), but I tire of all of this motivation stuff, and considering how it will affect the greater social ills (like in 33), or doing things for the "right reasons" (which is what I intepret this statement as being a part of, SCMT). Our reasons are all fucked up, and they don't exist in a vacuum. Because of social pressure, going for the high-powered career often feels like the right thing for a lot of men. Similarly, quitting your job to take care of the kid often feels like the right thing for a lot of women.

I don't think men are "going for the cash" solely because they love cash; why do we have to?

I tire of the notion that women have to be perfect in everything they say and do for all womankind and mankind. Hirshman is answering the implictly asked question of "what needs to be done to change the power structure?" and she is answering it strongly, I think at least partly for rhetorical effect and to wake people the fuck up.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:49 PM
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43: All those things are good practical advice. The point isn't to "consider" doing things differently, or simply to "reverse" the status quo--it's to do the pragmatic things that need to be done in order to *change* the status quo. Marrying down, having fewer kids, and having a highly marketable degree is going to give you a lot more flexibility and options. That's just the way it is.

The point is, you can do the traditional things (girly degrees, kids, marrying up), fine. But that's going to make it a hell of a lot harder for you to realize your ambitions, because it's going to mean your husband is going to be holding all those cards, along with the cards marked "I have a penis" and "I earn a buck for every .79 cents you earn" and "I can't get pregnant or breastfeed." Etc. etc.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:52 PM
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Taking power away from affluent men is great. Seriously. But just taking and keeping that power seems useless if it's not *used* for something worthwhile. If our society is dominated by wealthy lawyers and by the choices that they make I don't care quite as much about the gender distribution of wealthy lawyers as much as I do about the power inequity.

Okay, a couple of things. First, you can care more about whichever injustice you like -- everyone's got their own primary issues. Fighting for gender equality isn't incompatible with fighting for social justice generally, it's just not always exactly the same fight. We can work on both at the same time.

Second, eh, I said before that women in power are going to act pretty much like men in power. I say that, because I don't want to overpromise, but I don't think it's exactly true. Even women who try to take Hirshman's advice are probably going to end up more involved in the domestic sphere than high-powered men are (just because it's hard to completely abandon a lifetime of gender expectations) and they will, I think, put more pressure on making it possible to decently combine family life with work.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:53 PM
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This is exactly what is at issue, and, frankly, dubitable.

Really? Are you saying a) there's no power disparity at the highest levels (in which case, um, no), or b) it's not problematic?


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:53 PM
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>Carly Fiorina is treated unequally because she is a woman that is an injustice full stop.

Sure. But how is that an argument for Carly Fiorina to choose to become a CEO rather than a painter? Simply as stated, it isn't. If we think that absent female law partners, women generally will be treated unequally, then fine. It seems true that it will make it more likely that the next female partner-track lawyer gets treated unfairly, but I think Hoschild is after something grander than that.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:53 PM
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Why is the argument "it's unfair to women to have to sacrifice the wonders of home life in order to have a career" instead of "it's unfair to men"?

Dunno. Show me where anyone has made that argument, and I'll see if I can figure it out.

The point is that if Carly Fiorina is treated unequally because she is a woman that is an injustice full stop. She is not required to wait until poverty is eliminated before she complains.

This is obviously right, and it seems totally of a piece with Hirshman's argument. (Though Fiorina is a really, really, really bad examplar--you mean Meg Whitman.) But, to the extent that elite women are trying to enlist the support of people down the chain through moral suasion--men and women--you need a connector. Hirshman's not trying to do that; AFAIK, no one here is either.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:54 PM
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(Though Fiorina is a really, really, really bad examplar--you mean Meg Whitman.)

You know, no she's not. I can think of a lot of CEOs who presided over possibly unfortunate decisions, and went on to the next exciting job. The one who got dragged through the press as an incompetent? Right.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:57 PM
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It's b, silvana.

A priori, no, I don'see t much reason to care about proportional representation at the highest levels of organization X. I am very concerned about injustice, and insofar as more proportional representation eliminates injustice, I see why one would support it as an instrumental good. But that doesn't mean it is good in itself.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:57 PM
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If you think absent female law partners, women generally will be treated unequally, then fine.

See 43.

The more women are in power, the more women in general will be treated equally. Why is that so controversial?


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:57 PM
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It seems true that it will make it more likely that the next female partner-track lawyer gets treated unfairly,

You know, as a partner-track lawyer (ambivalent as I may be) this is enough.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:58 PM
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Crap, I meant "see 41."


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:58 PM
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Why is the argument "it's unfair to women to have to sacrifice the wonders of home life in order to have a career" instead of "it's unfair to men"? Why are those who are arguing that women should have the "freedom" to "choose" not to be economically independent not making the same argument about men? And why, if they did make such arguments, would I be pretty sure that the arguments were merely theoretical, and certainly weren't anything that the folks making them actually planned to put into practice?

See here.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:59 PM
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I think the argument is hinging on the problem that what Hirshman is saying seems harsh and unfair. But as my mom used to say, "well, life isn't fair." Being upset at Hirshman because of the things she's saying seems to me an awful lot like blaming the messenger. And saying, "well, it shouldn't be that way, women should be able to do whatever they want" is true as far as it goes, but unfortunately, it doesn't go very far unless people like Hirshman tell us how to get to the point where we *can* do whatever we want without having to make unacceptable "choices" that men aren't asked to make.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 5:59 PM
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I don't think men are "going for the cash" solely because they love cash; why do we have to?

It's not wholly true, but, in my experience, the ones that have real success really are doing it solely for the cash or the relevant prize. You're working in a law firm, IIRC. Hang out with the most successful partners that you can. If you like them, and think you'd be happy with their lives, you're golden. There's nothing wrong with that; I know people who've made equivalent positions who are really fun and are deeply good people. And I'm certainly not trying to disuade you in any way.

I don't think that any of this is a "moral" choice; I think it's a functional choice about how to construct a functional life that will allow you to be happy. And that's all it is. My only real quarrel with Hirshman is that I'm not sure she's not hiding that ball. It may well be that you are likely to be roughly X happy, no matter what. Or that, though you don't realize it now, money will make you happy. Maybe at base, all I'm really saying is that I think I see some sort of "willing yourself to success" thing going on in Hirshman's piece, and I don't think that's precisely how people work.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:05 PM
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48: no, those women have money, power, and status. It may be derivative and it may be ugly, but it's real.

Which sort of gets at some of the reaction to 33 and the social justice element. It's a little weird to argue that the power and status held by a rich, obnoxious lawyer is a good thing provided she's female, but if that same rich, obnoxious woman can enjoy a comparable level of wealth, power, and status by staying home and surviving on one lawyer's income rather than two, it's bad. There's something to be said for the idea that both are bad, that we spend too much time worrying about wealth, power, and status, and that the way to improve the world is not so much for more women to pursue those careers as for fewer men to do so.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:06 PM
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You know, she's not talking about everyone seeking their greatest individual fulfillment, necessarily -- who knows what that is? Most people don't know what they want on that level.

She's talking about equality, and as a path to equality she's pretty much right.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:08 PM
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66: Where the hell did "obnoxious" come from?


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:08 PM
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There's something to be said for the idea that both are bad, that we spend too much time worrying about wealth, power, and status, and that the way to improve the world is not so much for more women to pursue those careers as for fewer men to do so.

Okay. You first.

What, not all the rich men out there are divesting themselves of their wealth and power?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:09 PM
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The one who got dragged through the press as an incompetent?

You're crazy if you think it was just the press.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:09 PM
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I'm not saying she did a good job, I'm saying that the US is knee-deep in fucked-up incompetent CEOs, but the one who doesn't get shuffled on to the next cushy job is the woman. But this is off the main subject; so take the last word, if you like, and then let's leave Carly for another time (when I've reminded myself of some more facts.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:13 PM
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More on 66: Dude, Hirshman is trying to provide some practical advice, and it's good advice. She doesn't mean for every one to take it, it's strongly worded to make a rhetorical point about not saying "I can do whatever I want and it's feminist."

What's something individual people can actually do?

a) change the structure of our capitalist society so power isn't held by the wealthy

b) don't quit your job.

?


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:15 PM
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69: LB, that's way the hell too easy and you know it. You're moving the goalposts. Hirshman's argument isn't that it should be as easy for a woman to become a partner in a law firm as it is for a man (though she'd no doubt agree with that, as I do). Her argument is that more women should pursue those partnerships. That's a different issue.

And as for the "you first": I'm not a partner in my firm and don't particularly aspire to be, although I guess I should. One of the things that gives me hope is that a lot of the younger lawyers around here, men and women, don't appear to want the lives the mid-level to senior partners have or to be willing to do what those partners think they should to prove their worthiness. As a man who doesn't want to work 12-14 hours a day, I'd much rather see the expectations go down than the number of women who are willing to try to meet them go up. I think that's a feminist point of view. It's certainly one that my wife (also a lawyer) shares.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:16 PM
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Reading Hirshman at TAPPED I had wondered why nobody had posted on her here. Thanks for the new post and great discussion.

What strikes me as odd reading this discussion is that almost everything that LB says strikes me as correct, but the way that I chose to live my life is very different from what we take Hirshman to be advocating and LB defending.

Granted, I'm male, not female, but I've always made life and career choices based on life and personal interests rather than career advancement.

I tend to describe myself as "competitive but not ambitious." That is, in any given situation I take on responsibility and try to do a good job but I tend not to be aggressive about pursuing new situations.

For just this reason I'm acutely aware of how much dedicated ambition it takes to succeed in many socially competative careers. You have to not only want the money and the power you need to be willing to spend time and energy explicitly pursuing money and power -- something I am disinclined to do.

So all my personal sympaties are with the decision to do other things with ones life than pursue money and power for their own sake. But I know that's a message that already has plenty of traction for me and that I benefit from occasionally being advised to be more careerist. If, as BPhD, suggests, this is generally more true for women than men, than I do think the message that more women should be more attentive to their careers is a good one -- even though I find overly careerist people personally annoying.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:18 PM
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I'm saying that the US is knee-deep in fucked-up incompetent CEOs, but the one who doesn't get shuffled on to the next cushy job is the woman.

You get fucked, in large part, because it's HP. Or, in the case of John Scully, Apple.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:19 PM
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73: I'm pretty sure I said upthread that I agree with a lot of what Hirshman says, but whatever. In any case, she's saying a lot more than "don't quit your job," and it's a long way from self-evident that the world will change faster if more women devote themselves whole-heartedly to law firms and the like than if more people--men and women--decide that those games are bullshit and they don't want to play. Having wealth and status is a lot less fun if no one gives a shit.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:19 PM
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Err...sorry, didn't read all of #71.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:21 PM
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reading farther, I also agree with what SCMT says in 65.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:21 PM
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To quote myself from back in 54, I think more women in the partner's offices will make a difference:

Second, eh, I said before that women in power are going to act pretty much like men in power. I say that, because I don't want to overpromise, but I don't think it's exactly true. Even women who try to take Hirshman's advice are probably going to end up more involved in the domestic sphere than high-powered men are (just because it's hard to completely abandon a lifetime of gender expectations) and they will, I think, put more pressure on making it possible to decently combine family life with work.

Further, these are parallel fights. There's a difference between what Hirshman is saying: (paraphrase) 'Do good professional work which you take seriously, and which you can tell that other people take seriously because it's well paid, and make the personal choices that will make this possible,' and 'Buy wholeheartedly into the oppressive capitalist system with its foot on all of our necks.' We should be able to do the first without doing the second, and more so do the first while working to change the second.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:21 PM
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67: You know, she's not talking about everyone seeking their greatest individual fulfillment, necessarily -- who knows what that is? Most people don't know what they want on that level.

Hirschman thinks she knows; what else could she mean with her talk of full human flourishing? If you accept that assumption, then you can say that she's only talking about equality. But if you contest it, then she's saying more than that.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:23 PM
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79 was to 73, and I should say that I also agree with this:

As a man who doesn't want to work 12-14 hours a day, I'd much rather see the expectations go down than the number of women who are willing to try to meet them go up. I think that's a feminist point of view. It's certainly one that my wife (also a lawyer) shares.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:23 PM
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80: I'd say that 'flourishing' and your individual happiness are not precisely equivalent concepts. I can't imagine how to say this without sounding like an ass, but I'm going to, because I'm like that: A life lived in and restricted to the domestic sphere is a smaller one (in Hirshman's terms, less 'flourishing) than one that engages with the larger world outside the home. That doesn't mean that any given person mightn't be happier with the smaller, more restricted life, or that they mightn't do more good (they are certainly likely to do less harm).


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:29 PM
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79: I guess I read Hirschman as a lot closer to saying buy into the existing system of inequalities than you do. Take her second-to-last paragraph:

Finally, these choices are bad for women individually. A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one’s capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one’s own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world. Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives.

So far, I'm mostly with her; though I'll admit cringing a bit at the phrase "lesser lives" I understand what she means. But then:

At feminism’s dawning, two theorists compared gender ideology to a caste system. To borrow their insight, these daughters of the upper classes will be bearing most of the burden of the work always associated with the lowest caste: sweeping and cleaning bodily waste. Not two weeks after the Yalie flap, the Times ran a story of moms who were toilet training in infancy by vigilantly watching their babies for signs of excretion 24-7. They have voluntarily become untouchables.

If that's more than a rhetorical fluorish, it sure doesn't look like Hirschman, in the end, has much more than contempt for housework. And my guess is that this would hold true for her no matter who was doing it.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:33 PM
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79: mostly agreed. Some of the women who are getting toward retirement age now, and who were among the first to fight their way up, are truly scary people, much harsher on underlings than most men in comparable positions, but it's fairly understandable when you consider the amount of shit they took to get to where they are, and I do think that having more women in positions of power tends to make for better workplaces, other things being equal.

But Hirshman's advice to be more strategic in who you marry strikes me as pretty unrealistic. No doubt there are people who can approach life that way and make it work, and to the extent that they can do so it's probably helpful, but an analysis that takes the structure of the work world as given and people's choices of partner as variable isn't obviously more realistic than the opposite approach.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:34 PM
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sure doesn't look like Hirschman, in the end, has much more than contempt for housework.

Me too -- you should see any place I've ever lived alone. Look, when you have kids you deal with their shit because you have to, but it's not exalted work: is there something wrong about thinking of literal 'shitwork' as something that it is unfair to preferentially assign to one gender?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:36 PM
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80: I don't think that you're saying that in a way that makes you sound like an ass. But I think Hirschman does come across that way. I suppose what puzzles me is that you say that you agree with Hirschman but I read you and her as saying different things. Maybe so slightly different as not to matter, ultimately, but there's an edge to Hirschman's arguments that I just don't get from the way you interpret her arguments.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:39 PM
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Agree with eb in #86. Partly because I take you (and Dr Oops, for ex.) to be descriptive.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:41 PM
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but an analysis that takes the structure of the work world as given and people's choices of partner as variable isn't obviously more realistic than the opposite approach.

But remember what she's advising, and what the practice is now. The conventional thing now is for all women to marry 'up'; to marry a partner who makes more and is of a higher professional status than she is. For someone coming out of an elite education, a conventional woman is marrying out of a very, very restricted group, economically and socially.

A woman in a high powered job taking Hirshman's advice and casting off the chains of convention, on the other hand, has her choice of all of the many men who make less than she does, rather than the few who make more (okay, the 'marry old or young, because I can't expect you to marry poor' advice is unpleasantly cynical. Nothing wrong with marrying poor.).


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:41 PM
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Man, all of this talk about women in high-powered careers, and look at me; it's getting on 8 pm, and I'm still at the office.

I need to finish this fucking work and get home to my family boyfriend cookie-baking philsopher.

N.B. Don't know if the guy I'm currently seeing bakes, but this was funny to me because my last Actual Boyfriend was, in fact, someone who studied philosophy, and had a penchant for baking cookies. Which I ate.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:41 PM
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85: We're talking past each other. I'm saying nothing against a more equitable distribution of housework. I'm saying that if you treat it with nothing but contempt, you're going to have more difficulty getting people who can now choose to avoid it to volunteer to do it. That's all.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:42 PM
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And to add to 90. There's a difference between "not exalted work" and work which draws down explicity and active disdain from people who lead better lives and take work more seriously than you, because you're wallowing in shit.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:44 PM
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Wow. You clearly have a better job than my husband, LizardBreath. Can I send you his resume? All he does is bitch and moan about the 5 x 5 space he enhabits on the trading floor and the same 3 or 4 people he interacts with each day. Me, I get to drive all around Northern New Jersey, talk to a wide variety of people both on and offline, slowly make progress on a paper for a conference, chase a kid around the backyard with a waterhose, and totally ignore all housework. (You caught me on a good day.)

Thanks for the link, LizardBreath. We've been reading the same things lately.


Posted by: Laura | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:44 PM
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63: Yes. And notice who it is that's making that argument about men needing more time with their families.

A woman.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:45 PM
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86, 87: I know you mean to be nice, and I know it's well meant, and I don't mean to be rude, and there's a real chance I'm wrong in how I'm interpreting this, and you're both good guys.

But. This:

I suppose what puzzles me is that you say that you agree with Hirschman but I read you and her as saying different things. Maybe so slightly different as not to matter, ultimately, but there's an edge to Hirschman's arguments that I just don't get from the way you interpret her arguments.

God forbid a woman makes an argument for feminism with an edge. Come on, guys, it's hard to fight for stuff without being mean sometimes, and she's old, and tired, and she's been fighting and losing for a long time. If you think she has a point, is saying it nastily so wrong?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:47 PM
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You clearly have a better job than my husband, LizardBreath.

I probably just pay less attention to mine. Can everyone chase me away if I start hanging out here tomorrow? I have to get some work done.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:49 PM
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I think she has a point, to a great extent. I think where she doesn't have a point is where she's being nasty. I think the edge is not a feminist edge. It's not about gender roles. It's about class contempt. God forbid someone to object to that.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:49 PM
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94: Fuck yeah.

If she said it super nicely, no one would have read it, no one would have paid attention, and we certainly wouldn't have been arguing about it for the last 4 hours.

Which is the point.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:51 PM
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I don't see much reason to care about proportional representation at the highest levels of organization X. I am very concerned about injustice, and insofar as more proportional representation eliminates injustice, I see why one would support it as an instrumental good. But that doesn't mean it is good in itself.

You know, if and when we get to the point where women hold about half the highest-paying, highest-status, highest-power jobs in various industries--some more, some less--then yeah: whether or not women are half of, say, partners at important corporate law firms as opposed to, say, neurosurgeons or CEOs or college presidents or senators won't matter. When we get to that point, then I'm right there with you: there will be no reason to care about proportional representation at the highest levels of organization X.

In the meantime, though, when getting women to 20% of the highest levels of pretty much *any* industry or profession is (or would be) a remarkable achievement, dismissing this as quibbling over proportional representation in any one specific industry is really extremely disingenuous.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:52 PM
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96: How is it about class contempt to say that women who are highly educated are in the best position to get into positions of authority and influence and write legislation that will better promote gender equity and a better quality of life for *everyone*? It seems to me, like pretty much everything Hirshman is saying, pretty much the unadorned truth.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:55 PM
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LB - Just remember it's only 'an edge' or 'nasty' if it's is a woman doing the talking. Which is, of course, one of the reasons that this discussion is so heated. Women fighting for power on an unequal playing field have to be nasty - one of the indications of how far we have come is that you don't have to be bitchy nearly as much as our forbears did in order to accomplish something in the daily world. And to those who are bothered by the edge, remember what got us here in the first place. That goes for men and women - I challenge anyone of you to say that life was better before suffrage or civil rights. But the path to this point was not pleasant, and to expect that we can continue to further tthe goals of equality by being pleasant is just sticking your head in the sand.


Posted by: Dr. Oops | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:56 PM
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90: I'm saying that if you treat it with nothing but contempt, you're going to have more difficulty getting people who can now choose to avoid it to volunteer to do it

That's what you're going to hang your objections on? That espousing disdain for housework will make men less likely to do it?

She's treating it with contempt because it's a sphere that has been traditionally associated with women and that women have convinced themselves it's their calling to do, and that's contemptible.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:04 PM
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God forbid a woman makes an argument for feminism with an edge. Come on, guys, it's hard to fight for stuff without being mean sometimes, and she's old, and tired, and she's been fighting and losing for a long time.

I think I'm objecting to something slightly different than eb, or that she's mean. Stealing from Dr. Oops, I thing this is true and right, and is the part of Hirshman's article that I liked: What you can’t do is have it both ways. You can’t expect to be treated as an equal in a given society, if you don’t take on the position that entails. Nobody ain’t ever gonna give you nothin’ for nothin’. That's a really good point. Since I'm not a woman, I don't really feel comfortable saying that it needs to be said, but...it really seems like it's worth saying and emphasizing.

But Dr. Oops also said this: - and it is perfectly reasonable to believe that this is not an absolute good. Let the men keep the money and political power, if I can be happier by devoting a larger percentage of my time to other goals it is a worthwhile trade off. I take Hirshman to be denying that this is a reasonable belief, and to be arguing (a) you won't be happier, and (b) you will be doing society (or at least the sisterhood) ill if you don't also deny that. Hirshman might be right about that, but she needs to make a much stronger case about the way people and society function for me to believe that.

Put it this way: the thing I find objectionable about the article (which is relatively little) is precisely the same thing I find objectionable about Dr. Phil's prescriptions. I just don't trust that the underlying model is sufficiently good to put strong faith in it. The women she is speaking to are well-educated, thoughtful people. It's not as if none of them have considered any of this before. I don't know any women who've taken time off, or scaled back, who haven't worried about essentially these issues. But if she's going to make an absolutist call about which side of the line is right, and a moral one as well, she needs to have a stronger argument. (It strikes me that this is the flip side of the problem with Gallagher; I'm in much greater agreement with Hirshman, but I find the easy-peasy modeling and the deep assurance of each troubling.)


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:05 PM
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I'd like to express general agreement with eb, and note that in the last thread I was also trying to make a point about how the contempt with which she was treating domestic activities would disincline men, not known for voluntarily giving up status, from doing it.

Just as a side notel, it is possible to be a SAH parent and be involved in the sphere outside the home, and lots and lots of work provides little for human flourishing, like Laura's husband's job.

And on preview, B, you're not reading eb very carefully. He was specifically talking about the way she speaks about people who do housework. And frankly, all this complaining about words like "edge" when eb was talking about an element of contempt and deprecation in her argument that is absent in Lb's, and that lots of women (see comments at Laura's) sense as well. I don't know of another man on this site who has been as consistently, passionately feminist, and he really deserves more credit than to be tarred with complaining about her edge because she's a fighting woman.


Posted by: Tia | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:05 PM
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But remember what she's advising, and what the practice is now. The conventional thing now is for all women to marry 'up'; to marry a partner who makes more and is of a higher professional status than she is.

Is that the practice now? At least for first marriages, my impression is that women tend to marry men of roughly comparable status (in terms of education and early career path). I read Hirshman as objecting to high-status women who then bail off the career path themselves, leaving their high-status husbands to continue bringing in the money (and maybe for their professional success to be a stand-in for what the wife would have achieved if she hadn't bailed?).

If she said it super nicely, no one would have read it, no one would have paid attention, and we certainly wouldn't have been arguing about it for the last 4 hours.

Are we arguing about it? From where I sit, it feels more like worrying at it, chewing on the implications, disagreeing with parts of it, but not rejecting the piece and certainly not rejecting Hirshman. For the record, though, I do think it's a very good piece and I think the rhetoric pretty much does what she intends it to do. Certainly I don't see anybody on either of the threads arguing that Hirshman is wrong about her society SAHMs making non-feminist choices.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:06 PM
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Wow, check out the reviews on Amazon. Her book *just* came out--those "reviewers" can't have read it yet. It's pretty telling that every review indicts either feminism or Hirshman herself. We've got the "as a man, I would love to stay home, but I just know that women are more suited for this by nature" folks, the "feminism is evil" folks, the "she's not a very nice lady" folks, the "who cares what effect individual women's choices have on society" guy, and my favorite, the "who is going to teach the children of these working moms--the dumb babysitter?" comment. Talk about your class contempt.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:07 PM
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101: She's treating it with contempt because it's a sphere that has been traditionally associated with women and that women have convinced themselves it's their calling to do, and that's contemptible.

Also, because the only hope for change is by making women see housework itself as contemptible. As long as housework is seen as a perfectly acceptable calling for even the brightest and most ambitious of women, they will fall into the trap of working in the house. If they see simple housework as beneath them, they will continue to pursue their careers full-time and will likely get their partners to help out around the house (or marry young/old/poor but smart).

This is why Hirshman also points out that letting housework lapse is not the worst thing in the world. A private home in disrepair is not as bad as the loss of a public life and career, and could even be a necessary step before men start realizing they have to take up some of the slack back home.


Posted by: JAC | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:09 PM
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Since I'm not a woman, I don't really feel comfortable saying that it needs to be said

Dude, you aren't restricted in what you can say based on your gender. Even though I disagree with some of what you said in the other thread, no one's going to be all "you're a man, YOU DON'T KNOW." Or, at least I'm not.

And I would like to express my agreement with this: The women she is speaking to are well-educated, thoughtful people. It's not as if none of them have considered any of this before. I don't know any women who've taken time off, or scaled back, who haven't worried about essentially these issues.

Still doesn't mean it's bad to talk about it, though.


Posted by: silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:12 PM
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I don't see "better quality of life for everyone" as the ultimate implication of her arguments. I see same system, more equal gender distribution within it. Which is a lot of progress for sure. But when Hirschman advocates such a strong break between home and work I think the ultimate implication of this will be a breaking of the material basis for the argument that women are more likely to be concerned with home/work issues, becuase this argument - when not made as an essentialist one about women's "inherent" or "natural" concerns - assumes that they're more likely to remain entangled in home/work issues even as they advance. It seems like for Hirschman's strategies to result in not just more women in power, but more people in power concerned with home/work issues, they will work out because they are so hard to live up to, and because so many who aspire to getting completely out of the domestic sphere will fall short.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:14 PM
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102: "But Dr. Oops also said this: - and it is perfectly reasonable to believe that this is not an absolute good. Let the men keep the money and political power, if I can be happier by devoting a larger percentage of my time to other goals it is a worthwhile trade off. I take Hirshman to be denying that this is a reasonable belief, and to be arguing (a) you won't be happier, and (b) you will be doing society (or at least the sisterhood) ill if you don't also deny that."

Hirshman is denying this because "letting the men keep the money and political power" means that women will always have to rely on a husband for money. To get through the day, and particularly to exert your views in most meaningful ways, you need money or at least a high prestige job (journalism, etc). So long as women leave those positions to men so that they can pursue charity or house work, they are relegating themselves to a secondary status. The man can live without them but they need the man's monetary support.


Posted by: JAC | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:18 PM
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I like EB very much; but I don't think that means I'm not allowed to argue with him if I think he's wrong.

Look, I happen to believe that, in fact, housework is *not* a really great venue for full human flourishing. The fact is it's pretty mindless and mundane--yeah, you can pull a Martha Stewart and become obsessive about it in an attempt to make it interesting, but the truth of the matter is that vacuuming the floor is something that a robot can do as well, or better, than a woman. Likewise, an awful lot of the work involved in child-rearing is pretty mundane and mechanical: cooking food, cleaning up messes, wiping asses.

Now, parenting well takes brains--it requires a lot of the same skills as being a good teacher, in fact. (And by the way, since we know that every woman in the world is not a naturally gifted teacher, it seems a bit weird to expect every woman in the world to be the best caretaker for her child, but that's by-the-by.) But I think most people who take care of children, if they are honest, will admit that a lot of that time is pretty much just custodial.

Saying that doesn't mean these things aren't important. Custodial and caretaking work is absolutely vital. Nor does it mean that paid jobs don't have some boring-ass, useless aspects to them; of course they do. But it's really not classist or unkind to say that housework (and a lot of the more time-consuming parts of childcare) aren't really the best use of the time or talents of bright women.

At universities, researchers have TAs precisely to protect the researchers' time for the less repetitive aspects of their work. And also, of course, to train TAs in the fundamentals so that when they go on to do original work of their own, they'll have a good grounding. For the most part I don't think we really have a major quibble with the idea that that's a reasonable form of prioritizing time and labor. I don't see why it's *such* a huge deal to say that, like teaching (which is a really important job), childcare has a lot of boring and repetitive busywork that could easily be farmed out in order to allow folks who are really talented at the job to focus their energies on the more important stuff.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:19 PM
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But it's really not classist or unkind to say that housework (and a lot of the more time-consuming parts of childcare) aren't really the best use of the time or talents of bright women.

But it is classist to say that this is the work of "lower caste" people (or poor people, if you deign to marry one of them).

And to add to Tia's point (also thanks for the kind words in 103), it's pretty narrow to say that doing the majority of the housework means being defined by doing housework, which is what I take Hirschman to be assuming.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:28 PM
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It's the assumptions about his motives that is problematic. You can disagree that LH has any kind of problematic edge, but several people, Dr. Oops most prominently, said that the reason for the "edge" related complaint was that she was a pushy woman, and that it would not be said of a man. Given everything we know about the speaker, that's absurd, and so his argument should be treated more charitably. It was also faintly ridiculous in the last thread when LB implied that I had a problem with unwinsome feminists.

And B, the way you say it is not a big deal. But LH put it a different way, with a palpable, at least to some, contempt. You can argue that her rhetoric serves an important focus, but eb was right to point out why it's gross to scorn the women do it as wallowing in shit. "Childcare has a lot of difficult and repetitive and boring aspects" is fine; "gross, those women are dealing with shit" is not.


Posted by: Tia | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:28 PM
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I think the implicit question in 108 is an excellent one. If Hirshman's prescription for the short term is correct (and I think it is, unfortunately, because yes it does ask a lot of individual women), then what's next? Is the ultimate goal to divorce home life and work life? Or is it to play the current game *so that* we can create a more realistic and humane set of work expectations? Or is it to acknowledge that at the highest levels, work is pretty much going to be all-encompassing, but there's no reason that only men should be the ones who get those jobs, and if things are more equitable everyone else that's further down the scale will get a saner life?

I'll have to read her book before I can really get into those questions, or at least what Hirshman herself thinks of those questions--although I think that, based on what I've already read of hers, her answer is a combination of b and c.

But anyway, yes: I think *that* is the legitimate question to ask.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:29 PM
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111: But again, I think what she's saying is simply fact. We *do* think of childwork and housework as "low caste" work. We *do* think of stay-home parents as being defined primarily by housework. We *do* think that home labor is contemptible. (We give it a lot of lip service, but that's not the same as genuinely valuing it.) I think Hirshman's point is to say, look, don't do this stuff because you are going to get put into those categories, and as women, we need to really work hard not to accept a low caste position. If you do this work, it will lower your bargaining power and undercut your ambition. It's kind of like the advice not to serve coffee at a meeting if you're the only woman partner in the office--yes, coffee is a good thing, but if you're the one that serves it, your status is going to drop appreciably, even if all the men say, "oh, thank you so much."


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:34 PM
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"focus" s/b "purpose"


Posted by: Tia | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:34 PM
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Or is it to acknowledge that at the highest levels, work is pretty much going to be all-encompassing, but there's no reason that only men should be the ones who get those jobs

I think this is nearer the eventual truth, sadly. If the only people who are able to change corporate policy vis-a-vis flextime, childcare, etc. are the people at the top, it will not matter if the people at the top are women or men in today's system. The only people getting to the top at the moment are those who devote their lives to work, and can do so because they are either childless or have a less workaholic hubby/wife to watch the kids and clean up at home. If a woman gets to the top in this environment, and faces the question of whether to give her underlings flextime to go home and see the kids, I think she's about as likely as her male counterparts to think "Hey, I survived the rat race and it only made me the better worker for it. Why should the new people get all these breaks?".

Sad to say, our best hope for getting these work-life balance policies enacted in most jobs is to have an actual lazy generation come through. A generation willing to take less money so that they can foist off the busywork crap that takes up so much of our time and instead go home after 8-9 hours of work each day.


Posted by: JAC | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:43 PM
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Yes, childcare isn't for everyone; houseworks sucks; childcare can be delegated to smart, capable, loving assistants. Teaching is important, but I guess I still don't get why it's more important than raising kids or making pizzas or waiting tables.

Smart point about delegating the boring parts of childcare. Maybe I'm just seeing things through the lens of a parent of a kid with special needs, but I just had an hour session with a speech therpist who showed me how to important the boring parts of childcare are for teaching my kid how to talk. She showed me how to turn lunchtime into speech therapy. "Here's the bread. Say bread. Now we add the cheese. Does the cheese go on top of the bread or on the bottom? Yes, on the top." Incredibly boring, but important. If I paid someone to turn lunch into therapy, it would cost $80 an hour.


Posted by: Laura | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:46 PM
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114 is exactly what I've been trying to say. In a sense, women need to realize the crappiness of housework in order to free themselves from it. If they strike and refuse to fulfill the traditional subservient female role by choice, men will be forced to pick up the slack and only then will the genders be equal.


Posted by: JAC | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:46 PM
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116: Maybe. I've certainly seen that happen. But I think I've more often seen women being reasonable and humane--and again, I invoke the current women senators, who've held the line on a lot of issues (women's health, family leave) that don't affect them personally, b/c of their class situation, but that for whatever reason they're a lot more sensitive to than the men seem to be.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:47 PM
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oops. meant to write "small" point.


Posted by: Laura | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:50 PM
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But again, I think what she's saying is simply fact. We *do* think of childwork and housework as "low caste" work. We *do* think of stay-home parents as being defined primarily by housework. We *do* think that home labor is contemptible.

I'm just not sure that's true as applied to the highly-privileged SAHMs Hirshman's article talks about (or, for that matter, the dreaded Flanagan). They really do have a pretty damn cushy life. In some ways, it's the husbands who are getting the short end of those deals (and no, I'm emphatically not arguing that they're in any way being treated unfairly, but only that it's unrealistic to deny that a life of well-heeled leisure has its attraction).

113 seems mostly right, except that I think you have to attack the problem from both sides. The problem is that high-paid, high-status work is demanding enough that most people can only do it if they don't also have significant housework and childcare responsibilities, causing a lot of couples to decide ("choose") that husband should focus on career and wife should drop off the fast track. Hirshman wants to attack the problem by creating more couples in which wife stays on the fast track and husband attends to home. That's progress, and there's nothing wrong with a polemic in its favor, but it's not the only possible kind of progress. Hirshman is under no duty to muddy her argument by suggesting that it would also be good to have more high-quality jobs that leave more time for home and family life.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:50 PM
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Oops. To the last sentence, add "but we can."


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 7:51 PM
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In a sense, women need to realize the crappiness of housework in order to free themselves from it. If they strike and refuse to fulfill the traditional subservient female role by choice, men will be forced to pick up the slack and only then will the genders be equal.

I'm totally on board for a home-work strike. But I think that while Hirshman is right to point out how crappy home-work can be, she is underselling (if only in relative terms) how crappy work-work can be. For most people, for all of their careers, someone else owns their ass. Hirshman, for example, wants a female law partner, and if it takes thirty female associates to commit for (say) a decade to yield that one, she's happy to make that sacrifice. I'm not sure that the 29 losing female associates are. And part of it is that she's the winning associate. She is (or was) a full professor (I think) at a well known school; just from hanging around with academics, that's sounds like a brutal culling you have to survive. I'm glad for her; but there are going to be losers in such a race, and I wish I knew more about how the losers felt about their choices. More to the point, I wish I felt like she knew how they felt about their choices.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:02 PM
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Tia:

You can disagree that LH has any kind of problematic edge, but several people, Dr. Oops most prominently, said that the reason for the "edge" related complaint was that she was a pushy woman, and that it would not be said of a man. Given everything we know about the speaker, that's absurd, and so his argument should be treated more charitably. It was also faintly ridiculous in the last thread when LB implied that I had a problem with unwinsome feminists.

Tia -- There's not a thing absurd about believing that even decent feminist men and women tend to hold women to higher standards of politeness and concillatoriness than they do men. The fact of the matter is that we've got a bunch of people saying that they mostly agree with the points Hirshman is making, but the way she puts them reveals that she's an unpleasantly contemptuous person.

So what? I don't have to eat lunch with her, and neither do you. The focus on her personal flaws as revealed by her writing really seems like something that wouldn't happen to a man who we mostly agreed with.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:02 PM
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The high-caste SAHMs don't do their own housework and childcare: think Caitlin Flanagan.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:03 PM
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I invoke the current women senators, who've held the line on a lot of issues (women's health, family leave) that don't affect them personally, b/c of their class situation,

This is called servicing your constituents; corporate bosses don't face employee recall.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:05 PM
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and 109: Yes, exactly. Further, Hirshman is pointing out that women with access to high powered careers who drop out aren't making that decision for themselves alone -- they're affecting the women who don't drop out.

123: You know, odds are (given the amount of time I waste on line (effect, or cause?)) that I'm in the 29 out of 30 who don't make partner. I'm still going to end up working as a lawyer for the next 35 years, and I'm still going to do very nicely financially. Might I have found it more fulfilling to be supported by someone (assuming I could have found someone willing to take on the project?)? Maybe, but I don't see much reason to assume it.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:07 PM
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126: Why aren't male senators servicing those constituients?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:10 PM
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I'm glad for her; but there are going to be losers in such a race, and I wish I knew more about how the losers felt about their choices. More to the point, I wish I felt like she knew how they felt about their choices.

But guys are nearly as likely to wash out (discounting the discrimination in favor of them), and we just have to live with being the losers while continuing to trudge through our lower-level jobs. There is no reliable "option" for males to marry well and leave the world of 9-whenever work for housework. By not coddling the female losers of the rat race and offering them the consolation prize of a nice marriage to one of the rich male winners, Hirshman seems to be seeking a true equality of the sexes, for better or for worse.


Posted by: JAC | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:11 PM
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Might I have found it more fulfilling to be supported by someone (assuming I could have found someone willing to take on the project?)? Maybe, but I don't see much reason to assume it.

That you've lasted this long despite a certain distaste for parts of the work suggests you're right in your self-evaluation. But assume there was a more fulfilling (or whatever) path/career available that paid you only two third of what you get paid now, and that it was sufficient for most of what you want/need; would you take it, or would you keep on keepin' on for the sisters?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:13 PM
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125, right. I meant to say that but lost it when I rewrote a couple of sentences. But they pretend they do, and if you're tagging them as condemning themselves to a low-status role, aren't you lumping them with SAHMs who actually do their own scutwork?


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:13 PM
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I really don't want to address the tone issue because I don't think I can really convince anyone that I'm not holding women to a higher standard. It's possible that I am. I actually think I hold the arguments of people who use contemptuous attitudes in their writing to a higher standard because those attitudes turn on my "read more critically" alarm, but I could be wrong about the causal direction.

I am unlikely ever to read Eric Lott's new book, but from what I've read of it I find little to agree with. I don't agree with everything I've read of Russell Jacoby, but I think he's mostly right in this review of Lott's new book. It is also one of the more insulting, nasty reviews I've ever read, and I would say counterproductive to Jacoby's goal of having an academic profession attentive to public concerns and effective in the political realm.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:16 PM
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It's absurd when there's reams and reams of evidence that those people don't hold women to a high standard of politeness, and in fact, often praise women for aggressive and determined argument. Then you should consider that the people are actually saying a different thing than you insist on construing them as saying. No one is complaining just because she's not saying it nicely. Sometimes tone carries substantive meaning. Neither eb (I get the impression) nor I care at all about what she's like to have a beer with, but about her apparent, as we see it, contempt for people who don't deserve it, and activities that don't deserve it, and in my case, her deprecation of choices, like social service, that are not less feminist or worthy than i-banking as expressed in her article. This is so much straw.


Posted by: Tia | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:17 PM
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And all of my waffling about what a great guy you are wasn't insincere; I'm by no means certain that that's what was going on, and if is, that wouldn't be a major offense on your part -- it's the kind of trap that's easy to fall into. I just want to pull it out front that whenever a conversation about a woman's ideas turns into a conversation about what a harpy she is (my overstated characterization), that that shift of topic should be explictly questioned.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:20 PM
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134 to 132.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:21 PM
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131: I think the fact that they don't do their own housework demonstrates that it is low-caste; my sense is that the Caitlin Flanagans of the world are simply participating in the lip-service to motherhood and housekeeping thing while actually not doing the work itself. Which if anything just entrenches the problem.

132: See, that first paragraph? So totally classy. FWIW, I wasn't getting the "she's a shrew" vibe off you, although I do kind of think that the argument that Hirshman is offensive even though what she's basically saying is correct (which I don't remember if that was you were saying or not, at this point, but I've seen that said) is, if not always sexist, pretty beside the point.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:26 PM
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126: Why aren't male senators servicing those constituients?

I assume some are; there are only 14 female senators, and HRC can't (and as President, won't) get legislation through/block legislation without the votes of male senators.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:26 PM
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137: Yeah, but the women are the ones who've taken the lead on Plan B, on women's health, on family leave, etc. etc. And given that they're way in the minority, I think this makes a really good case that yes, getting women into those positions matters, in and of itself.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:27 PM
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Sometimes tone carries substantive meaning.

Sometimes, certainly. I'm just not seeing why you (and eb, and Ideal) are putting so much weight on it in this case. The acerbity just sounds to me like a way, as Silvana said, to turn the volume up on her argument.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:28 PM
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131: I think the fact that they don't do their own housework demonstrates that it is low-caste; my sense is that the Caitlin Flanagans of the world are simply participating in the lip-service to motherhood and housekeeping thing while actually not doing the work itself. Which if anything just entrenches the problem.

Then I guess I'm lost as to how this relates to Hirshman and her suggested rules for making good feminist choices. I agree that they're entrenching a (many?) problem(s), but I don't think it's mostly a different set of problems than the ones Hirshman is after.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:31 PM
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And given that they're way in the minority, I think this makes a really good case that yes, getting women into those positions matters, in and of itself.

Or that they get more money from women because women, rightly, want women in the legislature, and that such support depends on at least gestures toward a specifically protective attitude toward women. Nothing wrong with it, and men behave exactly the same way. But the same forces aren't at work in the corporate world.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:32 PM
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Yikes. Strike the last sentence. I think the problems the over-privileged SAHMs are entrenching by not doing their own scutwork are different than the problems they're entrenching by quitting their jobs.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:34 PM
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140: I think I'm lost too. I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about.

141: Maybe, maybe not. I'm not in the corporate world, but I have had some good women mentors in academia who made rather a point of trying to make things better and fairer than they were when they themselves came up. I don't see why women in the private sector would be more likely to be assholes, in general, than academic women.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:37 PM
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140: Well, the CF's of the world (not actually CF, who is, of course, a working professional who vaguely claims not to be, but a hypothetical high-income stay at home mother with copious domestic help) have dropped out of the professional world just like those who do their own housework. It's the same issue from Hirshman's point of view, except that rather than dropping out to do low-caste work, they've dropped out to do nothing productive at all.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:37 PM
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Oh, didn't see 142 when I wrote that. Yeah, I agree with 142.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:38 PM
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But I don't think I've been arguing about Hirschman's personal character. And I don't think I've changed the topic to Hirschman herself. I'm not objecting to the fact that she feels contempt and is thus just another nasty feminist or un-ladylike or such, and I take the argument that women are held to a higher standard as an argument that women are dismissed not because of their ideas but because their rhetorical postures are seen as incompatible with their (assumed) roles as women.

But it's the ideas behind her contempt - what her contempt is for that bothers me. Here is a view that what people think they're choosing to do is not really a choice, that they're deluded, and that even if it is a choice in some very limited sense they are actively choosing to live in low-caste filth because that is what housework is. I think I can object to this view without relying on the gender of the person holding it.

But now the topic has turned to my character.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:42 PM
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146: Hm. I don't think that's what she's doing at all. I think what you're reading as "contempt" is frustration at people "choosing" to give up really promising careers because of the extent to which they've internalized really sexist norms and expectations. But we might just have to disagree about that.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:46 PM
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143: I don't think we're disagreeing, or at least not much. I don't necessarily agree with Hirshman that the privileged SAHMs are choosing a life that's less attractive than the one they're giving up, but that's about it. There's a lot going on in this thread and I'm not always sure when we're talking about Hirshman and when we're not.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:46 PM
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But now the topic has turned to my character.

I don't think your character has received anything but praise. Your choice of focus has been questioned.

Here is a view that what people think they're choosing to do is not really a choice, that they're deluded, and that even if it is a choice in some very limited sense they are actively choosing to live in low-caste filth because that is what housework is. I think I can object to this view without relying on the gender of the person holding it.

See, I'm just not sure where this gets you -- what follows from it beyond commentary on Hirshman personally?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:47 PM
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146 to 134, but maybe now I've written too much.

To 136: I think I may be overly influenced by the irritating academic freedom/politicization mess in the blogospher which is full of sneering and condescension and have come to think that in matters of persuasion, tone does turn people away, even when it should be beside the point.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:48 PM
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149: But Hirchman isn't saying "these are the views I hold, and it stops there, but here's some other advice." She's saying - or I understand her to be saying - that "these are the attitudes you will need to advance in life."

It's like when Mr. Burns gives a talk at school and says something like "chldren, family, church - these are the demons you must slay to become successful." He's saying more than that he doesn't like children, family, or church. Sorry about the Simpson reference.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:51 PM
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I'm just not seeing why you (and eb, and Ideal) are putting so much weight on it in this case.

The problem is that you have recharacterized disagreement with the substance of Hirshman's proposed solution to the situation she see as a disagreement about tone so that you can trivialize, and thus dismiss it. Hirshman seems to have identified the problem pretty well and then has run off the tracks when she gets to the solution. As suggestions of choices women should feel fully empowered to make without guilt so that they can do the same things men who have become financially successful, OK, sure. Cynical and pretty prickish (which is apparently how she views men), but surely choices any women should be able to make. As obligations that women must fulifll lest the let down the sisterhood--pretty poorly thought out, in my view. And unfortunately so, because the first part of the article seems mostly right.


Posted by: Idealist | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:53 PM
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I'm a woman with 3 children, a PhD, and a part-time job. I made my choice based on my situation, not because of others' expectations, so I have little patience for women who demand a sacrifice for feminist causes or for women who sneer at massive involvement in motherhood.


Posted by: Yamamoto | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 8:57 PM
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139: Because the tone carries the meaning I don't like. I noted several things I liked about her article, but she says several things I object to, if I understood her properly, and you know, I get to talk about that, rather than just sit around and focus on all the good things.

1) it is that it is one thing to note the traditional social deprecation of domestic labor and another to actively further it yourself. IMO she crosses that line rhetorically. Further, my first pass opinion, though I don't have deeply rooted feelings about it, is that treating responsibility for housework like it defines the person doing it (to borrow something eb said), and stains them, won't ultimately further the cause of getting men to do it. There's a contrary argument that it will, but nevertheless, I see it and I think, this isn't helping. So I find that aspect of her article troubling.

2) Although some others read it differently, I also read her as actively deprecating my inclinations and choices, which annoys me. Once again, others read her differently, so I'm responding to an argument some may not think she's making. But if I finish school and treat women with eating disorders, as far as I'm concerned, I've done a lot for women with my career, and she is mistaken not to see that many different kinds of careers have value for feminism, or perform a social good, and she errs in elevating i banking over the others. Her stern admonition to me to "consider the consequences of my actions" is what carries the meaning that my career plan is not as good for feminism/the world as if I were an i-banker, and I think she's wrong about that, so her attitude and tone are relevant.


Posted by: Tia | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:00 PM
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Obligations? I don't know about that. Let down the sisterhood? Well, they're making my life harder. I'm working in an environment where a high-level female litigator is certainly not unheard of, but isn't common, and that's the case partially because of dropouts. I don't know that they owe me anything, but they are hurting me.

And they're hurting progress toward equality. You may not value that -- I think baa doesn't (his 46 appears to imply that he's happy with a world that's, in my words, unequal so long as it's not oppressive). But I do, and Hirshman does.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:03 PM
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152: I haven't read enough of Hirshman's work to be confident I'm reading her right, but I took her suggested rules as being very strongly stated for rhetorical effect, not as prescriptions all women must follow to be good feminists. Toned down slightly, the argument is basically that more women need to compete and win at the top of the work world; that the deck is stacked against their being able to do so while also having the kind of marriage and family life that women who are best situated to compete at those levels generally expect to have; and that they need to make some tough choices early on if they're going to make it to the top. If you take the argument as advice to a small group of overachieving young women rather than moral commentary on women in general, it's pretty unobjectionable.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:03 PM
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156: Exactly.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:07 PM
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eb, I'm sorry if I moved the topic to your character.


Posted by: Tia | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:10 PM
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the argument is basically that more women need to compete and win at the top of the work world; that the deck is stacked against their being able to do so while also having the kind of marriage and family life that women who are best situated to compete at those levels generally expect to have; and that they need to make some tough choices early on if they're going to make it to the top.

If she had actually said this, I would not be disagreeing with her (or at least not much).


Posted by: Idealist | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:16 PM
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And comity is subjunctively restored!


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:19 PM
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But the idea of polemical writing is that sometimes you have to hit people over the head to make them stop and think through what you're saying.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:20 PM
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147: I think that's part of our disagreement, but I think we've also been looking Hirschman along different timelines. I've been thinking along the lines of 108 which is about long-term implications; in the short term I think you (and everyone else agreeing with her) are right that the advice is pretty unobjectionable for women wanting to get into power. (Except for that point I won't continue to belabor.)

158: Don't worry about it.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:21 PM
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I don't have a problem with #156; I think it's a great and useful message that should be repeated again and again. Frankly, it wouldn't hurt to repeat it to most men. But it's also primarily a descriptive message, and we've all agreed on that part all the way through.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:24 PM
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B, you might be interested in this dissertation:

--- breaking the silence ---
Toward a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence

It was linked a few years ago on a grad student mailing list I was on and while I haven't read it all, there's some really interesting material in there. Gotta love that qualitative research.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:36 PM
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164: I actually read that while I was doing my own Ph.D. (or parts of) and found it pretty compelling stuff. I'm sure that a lot of my own thinking about ambition and such has been informed by that and similar work from a few years back.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:41 PM
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163: I don't know that I'd agree that it's primarily descriptive. I think she's saying that some women need to sacrifice things that are important to them for the sake of furthering gender equality, not that all women do, but there's still a call to arms there. And I think she really does see her highly-educated SAHMs as sellouts, at least to some degree, and I think she's partly right about that. I think the SAHM with a Harvard law degree, a couple of years at Sullivan & Cromwell, and a husband who's still there enjoys more status and more power than the wife of a similarly well-off husband who lacks the professional credentials. I think she has feminism to thank for that, and I think it's bullshit to claim that it's a good feminist choice to bail out and spend your time on competitive parenthood. Where I struggle is that I also recognize that it's very, very difficult for that hypothetical couple to have any kind of a family life with two big-firm lawyers in the family, that in our increasingly winner-take-all economy one really good paycheck is likely to provide a better life than two mediocre ones, and that the kind of men who succeed in those jobs aren't particularly likely to want to be stay-at-home parents or part-time workers themselves.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:42 PM
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Well, the descriptive message is valid. The basis for the prescriptive message?

The 'flourishing' point: Dropouts are going to have smaller lives. It's possible they'll be happier, or as happy, than if they'd gone after professional advancement, but they'll just have less of an impact on the world. (I'm not really trying to make this argument; more just alluding to it.)

The personal happiness and security argument: Being in a position where you can't sustain the lifestyle that you're used to without someone else's financial support is awfully precarious, and that's the position that dropouts put themselves in -- they're likely to have a great deal of difficulty dropping back in if they need to.

The sisterhood argument: See my 155. When high powered women drop out, they make it harder for those trying to stay in.

Are any of these compelling? I find them pretty strong.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:43 PM
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Or what Dave said.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 9:46 PM
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167: I don't disagree with any of those arguments; I even think it's probably better for women (or men) who scale back to work part time, or only 40-50 hours a week, or whatever.

Two quibbles. First, "lifestyle" is going to include some non-economic factors, and it's possible the dropouts are aware of the economic concern and are valuing those non-economic factors differently. If they get fucked by divorce, we'll find out in a bit. (But late marriers, with high education levels, rarely divorce.) Second, for some value of "sisterhood," the dropouts get to vote as well. That isn't meant to be snarky at all; I think part of the objection is to the notion that the values have been preset by other women.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 10:02 PM
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A couple of points:
1) As several others have said, the problem isn't that Hirshman's misdiagnosed the problem. She's nailed that. Nor is that she is too shrill, as the problem seems to be with her substantive prescriptions, however non-shrilly stated.

By her prescription, LB is letting the sisterhood down, because she's had a second child! And she married Buck, who is not young and dependent. I'm letting the sisterhood down, because I switched my major from biochem. Prescriptively, this seems to be nuts. Now, maybe she just means to exaggerate to get young women to think about their choices critically, but

2) if she means it to be taken as a map of life, not only is she ignoring a lot of career options, I'm not sure the life plan she's mapped out will have the effect she's intending. Will a woman with one child with a stay-at-home dad be as interested in fighting for maternity leave as someone with two kids who has to get them into an infant daycare? Will she care about balancing work and family?

I don't think there's anything overwhelming about being a woman that will make one certain, although one only has one child, to bargain for policies that allow other women to have three. (Anecdotal evidence: women angry with 'mommy-trackers.' 'I gave it up therefore you can.' seems to be the assumption. )

Perhaps Hirshman's goal is simple equality of numbers. But I'm thinking the preferred solution would be an improved workforce. And for that her recommended life-plan seems ill-suited, because the women who will thrive will be the ones least likely to care about achieving a balanced family life.

3) Her argument against low-caste housework only seems to hold if you think that stay-at-home moms haven't realized that housework sucks. Most of my friends who have dropped out of the workforce aren't raving about the joys of cleaning up babyshit, but are instead excited about actually parenting and take the babyshit as just part of what happens.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 10:59 PM
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Incidentally, my point in 33 wasn't that social justice arguments preclude women from taking and holding wealth and power that historically have been held by men. Or that they shouldn't be taking and holding that power until some other problems of social justice have been solved (possibly never). I'm not holding gender equity hostage to social justice.

My point was just that the taking and holding of that power isn't very interesting or important unless it's being used in politically interesting ways. That's not supposed to be an argument against Hirschman's prescriptions. Just an argument that such prescriptions aren't particularly interesting -- for the vast majority of people, and the vast majority of women in particular, who aren't in those financial elites. Unless, that is, they result in some improvement of those people's circumstances.

BPhD makes the point that just having more women in the senate or in congress (or in parliament if we are talking about here in the UK) is likely to do a lot to further political causes that benefit women. I'm sure that's true, up to a point, and it's a total scandal that so few women hold high political office.

Where I'm less sure, is whether having more women CEOs or more women in high-paid jobs is likely to have as much impact. Again, that's not an argument that women shouldn't be pursuing those goals wholeheartedly.


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 12:11 AM
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My point was just that the taking and holding of that power isn't very interesting or important unless it's being used in politically interesting ways.

The taking and holding of power and status is interesting and important to everybody. People hardly think of anything else.


Posted by: joe o | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 1:21 AM
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This post at LGM bats around some of the same issues we've been discussing. He takes Hirshman's prescriptions a bit more literally (or more broadly) than I think they're intended, which leads him to the (mistaken, IMO) view that she thinks that gender equality can be furthered only by changing elite women's behavior, but there's a lot of good stuff there.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 2:39 AM
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re: 172

Speak for yourself. It's not even remotely important to me as a goal in itself.

Power and wealth may have some instrumental value for most of us and I presume, if what Hirshman is saying is to make any sense, the increased access to power and wealth on the part of (some) women is going to have instrumental value (collectively) for (all) women. That's why I made the comments I made earlier -- having the power and wealth is all very well but it's what you do with it that counts. [To repeat that's not an argument that women shouldn't have access to power and wealth or that the status quo ought to be accepted]

On the other hand. anyone who pursues wealth and power for their own sakes is, imho, deeply misguided.


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 4:22 AM
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By her prescription, LB is letting the sisterhood down, because she's had a second child! And she married Buck, who is not young and dependent. I'm letting the sisterhood down, because I switched my major from biochem. Prescriptively, this seems to be nuts.

This is kind of silly. She exhorts women not to drop out -- to do serious professional work. She advises, toward that end, that they make various personal decisions. As an academic, it's probably not true that she sees an academic career as a cop-out; likewise, given that I haven't, and won't drop out, there's no reason to think that she'd be offended by my having married a man capable of supporting himself if released into the wild. The advice she gives isn't valuable in itself, it's valuable in relation to her goal of having women not drop out.

171: That's perfectly legitimate; nothing says you have to give gender equality the same priority as every other issue you care about. But the topic of Hirsman's piece is prety much just how to achieve gender equality, not how to achieve anything else desirable through achieving gender equality.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 4:56 AM
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2) if she means it to be taken as a map of life, not only is she ignoring a lot of career options, I'm not sure the life plan she's mapped out will have the effect she's intending. Will a woman with one child with a stay-at-home dad be as interested in fighting for maternity leave as someone with two kids who has to get them into an infant daycare? Will she care about balancing work and family?

And this? I don't think she's fighting for a better world in the broader sense you're talking about. She's fighting for gender equality first; and then maybe we can work on work-life balance and maternity leave. Having an equal number of women with power won't necessarily make anything else any better (although, with B. I think it probably will), but even if it won't, it's a good thing in itself.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 5:17 AM
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See, I'm not sure why it's a good thing in itself. Seriously.

I can see why unequal distributions of wealth and power are incredibly unjust *because* of the instrumental utility that power and wealth has. I can't see why, on the other hand, if it won't make anything else better*, we should care.

Obviously we want fair distribution but the reason fair distribution matters to us, again, comes down to instrumental value.

*and you may well be right, it make in fact make other things better...



Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 5:28 AM
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Okay, I'm not going to use race as an example because I think the historical injustices are comparable, just because I don't think you can really mean what you're saying:

I can see why unequal distributions of wealth and power are incredibly unjust *because* of the instrumental utility that power and wealth has. I can't see why, on the other hand, if it won't make anything else better*, we should care.

Isn't this equivalent to saying "It's wrong that we live in an unjust society where some are independent and have access to power, and others are dependent and powerless. If that basic state doesn't change, what good would it be to change the fact that the dependent and powerless are largely black, and the independent and powerful are mostly white?"


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 5:48 AM
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Well, yes. That's sort of what I am saying.

Note that, for the sake of argument, the situation being discussed isn't one in which overall inequity is reduced. Rather, it's one in which the gender composition of a particular segment of an inequitous distribution is altered. Of course, it may well be the case that the net result of that is a reduction in overall inequity, in which case, yay!


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 6:01 AM
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Hrm. If that's what you are saying, than I'm out of argument, and down to flat disagreement. I think the elimination of gender and racial inequities is a significant good in itself even where larger social/economic inequities remain unchanged. It's not the only good, and the other inequities should be changed, but it's not worthless.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 6:08 AM
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Of course we want to eliminate racial and gender inequities. The elimination of such racial and gender inequities would be a significant good.

I don't disagree on that at all and I suspect I'm partially being terminologically pedantic. I just think that the reason we want to eliminate those inequities is *because* they are inequities in things that matter to us for important reasons -- inequities in things that are instrumentally important.

We don't care about other kinds of inequities. We don't care about, I don't know, silly things like 'Distributions of surname vowels' or whatever. We don't care about them because they are irrelevant when it comes to the things we really care about -- health, education, social fulfillment, etc.

I only care that 80% of lawyers are middle-aged white men (to pull a statistic out of my arse) because being a lawyer gives people access, say, to wealth and political power and that the exercise or lack of exercise of that wealth and power has pernicious effects.

I suspect we don't really disagree. I want fair distributions of wealth and power across class, and gender and race, etc. But I want it for a particular reason rather than seeing it as an intrinsic good in itself.



Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 6:20 AM
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Matt is right, I think, about the instrumental value of equality (or, at least the equality at stake here). And if it's instrumental, we need strong measurements of it's actual value in a given case. Consider, current OB/GYN residencies now skew 80%+ female. Surgery skews predominatly male. No doubt, this makes it harder for an up-and-coming female surgeon. So how muuch do we care about this equality; is it important reason that a talented female doctor should become a surgeon rather than an obstetrician? I think Hirschman believes this equality is important, and further believes that a female doctor should make this fact a consideration (and maybe a significant one) in her choice of career. And the same kind of consideration it would be yet more important were she choosing between doctor and highschool teacher, or heaven forbid, between doctor and full time mom.

Well maybe it is a reason, but in my view, it would rank so low on the list of consideration that it hardly registers. We all care about the classic liberal definition of equality in the equal rights under the law, absence of coercion, lack of discriminiation sense. It is much less clear what level of female participation in high profile careers is required to safeguard that equality. Once a law partnership is 20% female, does the incremental woman do that much safeguard other ambitious women from injustice? Maybe the magic number is 10%, 50%, or even 70%. But it seems that what we care about is in fact the absence of injustice. And what is the scope of this injustice? Well, LB above said that if it's just injustice to other ambitious women who want to be winners, that's enough. But as great a result as that may be, it doesn't seem enough to command the level of moral obligation Hirschman implies. I think Hirschman believes that by choosing to become a law partner, not a mother, a woman is somehow helping womankind. I really don't think that's true. 51% of the population don't have that much in common.


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 7:11 AM
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This is kind of silly.

Indeed!

She exhorts women not to drop out -- to do serious professional work. She advises, toward that end, that they make various personal decisions. The advice she gives isn't valuable in itself, it's valuable in relation to her goal of having women not drop out.

She's explicitly providing a set of rules to radicalize feminism again. And as a set of rules for making it as easy as possible not to drop out, it would work (presumably, I say pettily, because she'll have no interesting homelife what with the soulless job, the doddering old dependent husband who she can't tell to make cookies because neither of them know where the butter is.)

But if not dropping out is the goal, there's plenty of other ways you can live your life and not drop out that don't fit under her rules. She's made her rules far too strict: politics, the academy, even Tia's feminist social work are verboten. And it is indeed silly to hold those up as rules when we know women right now who aren't dropping out, and thriving, and ignoring those rules.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 7:33 AM
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It is much less clear what level of female participation in high profile careers is required to safeguard that equality.

I would say that a high level is required. It is important that, say, Chelsea Clinton, to take an example of a young woman with the educational potential to achieve at a high professional level, be able to make free, uncoerced choices to do so. If she is able to make those choices, it is partially because her mother is in the Senate and has the instrumental power (as much as anyone does) to 'safeguard that equality' and the personal understanding of what is necessary to that effect. And Hillary Clinton is in the Senate at least partially because there are enough high-powered women out there that she doesn't look like a freak for having been a lawfirm partner.

But she still looks kind of like a freak, because there aren't all that many female partners out there percentage-wise, and as a result there aren't all that many female Senators, and as a result there aren't all that many people safeguarding Chelsea's rights to make socially uncoerced choices.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 7:38 AM
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re: 184

That's an argument for the instrumental utility of having high levels of female participation in various arenas and as such, exactly what is needed. That was my point, more or less. Mere equality per se is neither here nor there.


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 7:51 AM
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She's made her rules far too strict: politics, the academy, even Tia's feminist social work are verboten.

I think this is a misreading of her piece. First, she's talking about dropouts, and analyzing choices leading to low-income work as a step down the road to dropping out, not as necessarily a problem in themselves. Look at how she summarizes her advice:

Prepare yourself to qualify for good work, treat work seriously, and don’t put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry.

That's compatible with politics, or the academy, or even Tia's feminist social work. The income point is about diagnosing dilettantism:

The best way to treat work seriously is to find the money. Money is the marker of success in a market economy; it usually accompanies power, and it enables the bearer to wield power, including within the family. Almost without exception, the brides who opted out graduated with roughly the same degrees as their husbands. Yet somewhere along the way the women made decisions in the direction of less money. Part of the problem was idealism; idealism on the career trail usually leads to volunteer work, or indentured servitude in social-service jobs, which is nice but doesn’t get you to money.

Note that she says the best way to treat work seriously, not the only way, is to go for the money. If you want to convict her of being insufficiently attentive to the point that one can be a serious, committed professional without making a lot of money -- sure. That's a failure of emphasis. But most people with elite educations who have gone down a low-income career path aren't serious committed professionals. They're my cousins in Westchester who each taught kindergarten for five years before getting knocked up and staying home.

Social service indentured servitude? Again, she could have spelled this out in more and kinder detail, but if you look at worthy social service organizations, as Silvana pointed out they have a strong tendency to have a base of female worker bees and to get much more male in the management ranks. And the female worker bees are likely to be part-timers, or re-entrants into the work world after time off for family, or be planning to leave to take time off for family. I doubt she'd judge harshly a woman who wanted to work in a low-paid socially worthy endeavor, so long as that woman were professionally committed to her work.

But for most people, the money is going to be important, because the money is what gives you power within the family. If I were in a worthy, social justice related career, I'd be under a lot of financial and family pressure to give it up and stay home, because we wouldn't be able to afford high end childcare without the kind of money I bring in. Going for the money bought me freedom to work outside the home; or at least freedom from that pressure.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 7:59 AM
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But she still looks kind of like a freak, because there aren't all that many female partners out there percentage-wise, and as a result there aren't all that many female Senators, and as a result there aren't all that many people safeguarding Chelsea's rights to make socially uncoerced choices.

Don't buy any of this. How much of a freak can she be if she's the putative frontrunner for the Democratic nomination at a time when we all think the Dems might actually win?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:08 AM
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also, re: 183

Again, not wanting to harp on about the class issue too much (!) but I really really about the degree to which all of these things really impact on the choices that are available to non-elite women (or non-elite men for that matter).

They may be baby steps in the right direction -- and if greater female participation in all these arenas leads to substantive changes in child-care provision, working hours, etc then they'll be more than baby steps -- but I'm of the unfortunate opinion that class-solidarity among the elite runs rather deeper than gender-solidarity.

[Again, not an argument for the status quo.]


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:14 AM
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Well, freak was my word. She's certainly viewed as unfeminine.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:15 AM
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but I really really about the degree to which all of these things really impact on the choices that are available to non-elite women

That seems like a really, really bad place to drop a word. Was the word "care"?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:16 AM
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Nah, the word was 'worry'.

I worry that these things don't impact. etc


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:19 AM
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The thing is, though, the worst this effort can be is harmless on the issues you care about. More gender equality at the elite levels isn't going to shut down choices available to non-elite men and women.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:21 AM
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re: 192

Yes. It's more a case of "this is largely an irrelevance" rather than "this will be actively bad".


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:22 AM
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this is largely an irrelevance

Pretend we're talking about baseball, then. I'll move off feminism and get back to labor relations or something else you're interested in soon.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:24 AM
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Heh.


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:26 AM
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But most people with elite educations who have gone down a low-income career path aren't serious committed professionals. They're my cousins in Westchester who each taught kindergarten for five years before getting knocked up and staying home.

I realize that the Westchester set is probably who this is aimed at. But I think you're misreading me: I'm not worried about being judged by Hirshman. I'm just saying that if you had a room of college first-year women and you wanted them to have good feminist lives, you'd be doing them a disservice by handing them Hirshman's advice. Not because her advice wouldn't lead them to powerful careers, but because her advice limits them from considering a career that isn't money and gives them truly bizarre relationship advice. (The hard sciences seem to drop out in here somewhere, toom, which bothers me.)

Plus, if she's really addressing only elite women at elite colleges, she should tell them that they can land an investment banking job with a philosophy degree from an Ivy, and certainly no one's been harmed in law school for majoring in a classic liberal field.

But for most people, the money is going to be important, because the money is what gives you power within the family.

I'm not married, but god, I hope not. This has been seriously coming up in my life lately, and right now the plan is to follow my career (his is more mobile, my degree will go stale.) But it's seriously weird to think of this as an adversarial power relationship defined by money. (Tongue-in-cheek, it's adversarial due to a very annoyed Ph.D. candidate saying I did not spend my 20s at the poverty level mister to drop out.)


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:30 AM
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P.S: I can see how my 'you are all talking about this thing that's not important as this other thing people should be talking about' point of view could get pretty irritating/lame quite quickly.


Posted by: Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:30 AM
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But it's seriously weird to think of this as an adversarial power relationship defined by money. (Tongue-in-cheek, it's adversarial due to a very annoyed Ph.D. candidate saying I did not spend my 20s at the poverty level mister to drop out.)

Adversarial? No, not if the marriage is a good one. But if your career choices don't bring in money, and his do, at some point you're likely to have to look at real practical hardships brought about by your failure to either bring in money or contribute unpaid labor to the domestic sphere (i.e., childcare). And you're going to be under pressure to relieve those hardships by dropping out.

You may not succumb to it, but the pressure is going to be there.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:36 AM
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and 197: No harm, no foul.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:37 AM
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Double Kobe!


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 8:59 AM
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It seems there's general agreement that we care about representation of women in high powered jobs insofar as it is an instrumental for securing an environment where talented women can make free, uncoerced choices.

Everyone endorses the goal, so now we really need to ask what are the benefits of that instrument, what are the costs, and what other instruments there might be.

Here Hirschman is less helpful. Taking a job you don't want has very high costs. Not dropping out to be a mother when that's what you want to do has high costs. Against these high costs, one wants to know the marginal benefit of increased representation is on acheiving/maintaining an environment of uncoerced choice. We would also want to know how far the scope of that uncoerced choice (does it also help female doctors?) extends.

Maybe we just want to stipulate that we are far, far away from an environment of uncoerced choice, that more female representation will help, and thus lots more costs are worth bearing. A woman who is now on a partner track and deliberating dropping out, however, may not find Hirschman a particualrly useful guide to balancing costs and benefits. That's because Hirschman a) relies on a perfectionist argument about the superiority of paid work as a vehicle for human flourishing, b) is worried about women getting screwed in divorce, and c) idealizes the unity of women as a class (i.e., that more women in power will help *women*, as opposed to mainly helping women in a position to seek power).

a) is in my view flat-out bogus, and c) only marginally less so. b) is a *very* good point, but one amenable to other solutions (a presumption towards much more punishing alimony settlements, e.g.).


Posted by: baa | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 9:10 AM
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A beautiful, beautiful thread. I'm sorry I missed most of it. It may be ironic, or just coincidence and meaningless, that I had to stop just as the thread crossed over, because I had to prepare dinner, then found I had to attend to family, household and relationship matters all the rest of the evening.

I do see that points about tone and rhetorical purpose I was trying to make, it seems all afternoon, were picked up later. Maybe I was making them at the wrong point in the discussion.


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 9:21 AM
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But it's seriously weird to think of this as an adversarial power relationship defined by money. (Tongue-in-cheek, it's adversarial due to a very annoyed Ph.D. candidate saying I did not spend my 20s at the poverty level mister to drop out.)

I have read some of this book ( which Hirshman mentions) in a bookstore once. It is about the game theory of marriage and the non-intuative things women should do if they want an equitable marriage. Mahony and Hirshman point out that women commonly make certain choices with consequenses that are pretty inevitable but are culturally hidden.


Posted by: Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 12:31 PM
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The thing is, though, the worst this effort can be is harmless on the issues you care about. More gender equality at the elite levels isn't going to shut down choices available to non-elite men and women.

I was thinking about this on the way in and I'm not sure it's true. If you want to make it easier for women to have both egalitarian marriages and equal status in the workplace, then attaining workplace inequality by keeping marriages inegalitarian but putting more women in the dominant* role at home so they can achieve at work reduces the pressure to treat supercharged job requirements as a gender equity issue. I don't think that makes it a bad thing for some women to follow Hirshman's prescriptions--there will always be all-consuming jobs, it's good if women have more of them, and it's also good for people to be willing to choose spouses from a wider range of backgrounds and personality types--but it contributes to my ambivalence about how big a piece of the puzzle Hirshman is really addressing

* "Dominant" in the sense of "in the primary breadwinner role"; how economic and other power dynamics work in marriages is a whole 'nother set of topics.


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 12:55 PM
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196, 198: Read the book linked in 203. Here, I'll link it again.

It's nice to think that marriage is about love and caring and that power dynamics and money and bargaining don't come into it in any way. Sadly, marriages do not happen in a vacuum. (Well, I don't actually think that's sad, but it is if what you want from marriage is love and caring and no bargaining or power dynamics.) The reality is that Hirshman's advice to young women--marry down, don't give up your job, pick a career that pays pretty well--is good advice if you want a feminist marriage, quite aside from the question of whether you're a money-grubbing yuppie.

And this isn't because men are assholes, either. It's just basic reality. Making traditionally feminine decisions about money and jobs just makes it a lot easier to make traditionally feminine decisions about marriage and kids. It can snowball. Very easily.

I mean, read the blogs by married women who have *not* made traditionally feminine decisions, and see how much they agonize over things like family planning, work/life balance, tensions over whose career comes first, etc. These are hard decisions. Because we love our husbands, because we care about our marriages, the temptation to take some of the pressure off is everpresent. Because our husbands love us, the temptation on their part to take some of the pressure off ("it's okay if you scale back your job responsibilities, honey") is everpresent.

These things are real. They fucking suck. But because they are real, Hirshman's advice is sound. I've taken some of it, not b/c it was prescribed, but through a combination of chance and planning. I would like to have another kid. But I worry a lot about what that will mean to my work, which is why I haven't done it yet, and at this point I may not be able to. I would make more money and have more flexible career options (thereby making my career more mobile, making it easier for both Mr. B. and I to have good jobs at the same time) if I were in science or engineering. I sometimes wish I'd studied science because of this.

Hirshman has been through all this stuff too. She has three kids, *and* she's had an academic career, *and* she's got a pretty good writing career going. Oh, and I think she also has a law degree. She's obviously not saying it's impossible to have kids and be married and be successful and be a feminist. Nor is she saying that if you have more than one kid you're not a "real" feminist.

What she is saying is, I am an older woman. I have been through this. It is hard, damn hard, harder than you realize. Here is my advice. Listen or don't. But it makes me angry, *as* a feminist, as a woman with kids and a marriage and a career, to see young people told that these things aren't hard, and don't matter.

She's on our side.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 2:39 PM
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205: That's what I think too. And her annoyance and disdain for the NYT wedding women was bracing for me. I'm not of that class; the ease with which unprepared people get those jobs infuriates me.

We've made our choices eyes open. It may have been easier, starting out 20 years ago, to take the difficulties seriously. Much younger people may have been lulled into the idea this is not important.


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 2:49 PM
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My own experience, of having been primary breadwinner then, by default, homemaker, very likely back again sometime soon, may be typical in the working lives of many people. That's when the power dynamic becomes real to you if it never was before. Even with great self-knowledge, decency and forbearance on both sides, things change between you. If it weren't for the toll it takes, and maybe in spite of it, I would actually recommend the experience.


Posted by: I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06-15-06 2:59 PM
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This is the best thread I've ever read.


Posted by: reuben | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 7:41 AM
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207: I completely agree with this.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 7:57 AM
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207: I completely agree with this.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 7:58 AM
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Oops! But I got the "malicious commenters" page!


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 8:03 AM
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Linda Hirshman works the outrage. She has an opinion piece in Sunday's Washington Post, Unleashing the Wrath of Stay-at-Home Moms

"Okay, I'm judgmental. That's what CBS's Lesley Stahl called me on "60 Minutes." But I'm a philosopher, and it's a philosopher's job to tell people how they should lead their lives. We've been doing so since Socrates. And yet, even though I knew the Greeks made Socrates drink poison, the reaction to my judgment took me by surprise. It turns out that was what people really hated: the judgment. That working women have the better life."

Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 5:02 PM
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Huh. I emailed her with a link to this.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 8:19 PM
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Heh, LB, I'd already emailed her this and the earlier thread :) I can't wait to read her new book.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 8:34 PM
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B, I don't deny that if my youngest sister followed her advice, she'd have a perfectly financially stable feminist life. But I think, say, that my sister could do that by majoring in a) some of the hard sciences or b) something like what Tia's doing.

Plus, I'm not certain Hirshman's got the best take on what jobs are easier to balance. I'm in the humanities, and assuming I land a job in the academy, I'm going to have a *much* easier time balancing work and family than someone who had to put in 80-hour weeks as a lawyer or who worked in a lab with hazardous chemicals.

The 'feminist' career choice might well be broader than what Hirshman allows, is all I'm saying, and while I agree with the general thrust of her advice (except for the marry down part), as it's very practical, I'm not sure it casts a wide enough net.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 8:42 PM
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Oh, I think there are tons of other options, too. Generally speaking, though, I think her "prescription" gives one about the best bet, y'know? Even though the best laid plans always end up being more complicated to execute than to form.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 8:51 PM
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Oh, and because I can't resist:
But I'm a philosopher, and it's a philosopher's job to tell people how they should lead their lives.

Someone didn't read her Plato very carefully, mmm?

I'm not even sure Socrates made positive prescriptions beyond the "Would it indeed not be wonderful if all the young men and women were required to partake of naked exercise?" "Gosh-dee-diddly-yes, Socrates!"


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 8:56 PM
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I'm not seriously worried, B, because I can't see any woman hellbent on curing autism chucking her career, or a women who really wants two kids, etc, etc. It's just that I would have liked a 'Of course, this isn't the only path. But it is the path that will guarantee you the most independence and security [even if you're cutting yourself because you hate torts].'


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 06-17-06 8:59 PM
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Yeah, the philosopher line was low-hanging. I figured someone would go for it. I expected w-lfs-n to agree with it.


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 06-18-06 9:18 AM
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Actually, I really want another kid, but so far, no. I'm way too worried about the career/time/equality effects of doing it.

But that's probably because I'm more neurotic than most.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-18-06 9:53 AM
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