me:
> > > being in the labor force isn't the same thing as being in power. In > > > the US, feminists had to fight to break down the walls set up by the > > > old boys network and still haven't succeeded completely.
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> > No, but women need their own sources of income aside from what men > > bring in if they are to have more bargaining power within families and > > communities, and getting into workplaces outside homes brings women > > together with other women and men, which is a better political terrain > > than household labor that is often solitary in a country above a > > certain level of economic development.
me:
> "their own sources of income"? I don't know about Iran, but just > because women earn money from wages doesn't mean they actually own or > control their income. It wasn't that long ago that women's rights to > property ownership were severely limited in the US.
Yoshie:
Muslim women (beginning with Muhammad's first wife, Khadija, who was a businesswoman) actually already had the right to own their own property when such a right was not available to women in predominantly Christian societies.
how does this work _in practice_ (rather than just in theory)? Is it possible to dig up one of your on-line sources that talks about the actual life of women _on the ground_ in Iran? me:
> further, in many cases women participate in a workplace in a way that > is controlled in an extremely paternalistic/patronizing/patriarchal > way. It used to be that female teachers in the US had to live up to > all sorts of "moral" rules, about their sexuality, etc. I doubt that a > country which requires that women wear special clothing that covers > their heads and bodies would be any more liberal here.
Yoshie:
Women in the USA to this day do not enjoy paid maternity leaves common in almost all countries: "... In contrast, in Iran, women enjoy paid maternity leaves: ...
Maternity leave is a good thing. But when it's handed down from above rather than being won via struggle from below, the powers that be are likely to take it away or interpret it in a way that's extremely paternalistic. (Not all countries' maternity leave rules are the same on paper and in practice.) Here's an analogy: it used to be that the US had a pretty good welfare system (compared to what existed before), handed down to poor women by LBJ, etc. It was interpreted in an increasingly paternalistic way and eventually (under Clinton) became work-fare. As far as I can tell, the positive aspects of the old system arose due to popular struggle, not due to the benevolence of our rulers or the automatic workings of the Invisible Hand.
There are many things that women in Iran would want to change, but in some respects they enjoy more feminist social and economic rights than American women do.
I wasn't bragging about the success of US feminism compared to other countries' feminism (and I don't know where you got the idea that I was). Instead, I was using the country I am most familiar with as a source of examples. (I try not to talk about countries about which I don't know very much. If I do talk about other countries, I talk about those aspects I know about.) Again, the nature and content of "rights" might look very different _in practice_ than on paper, especially since women in Iran have so little power in their society. I admit that head-scarves, full-body veils, etc. can be quite charming, but do the Iranian women dictate what the Iranian men wear? (Britney and Chrisina might look better in burkas.)
Perhaps, American men such as yourself ought to first exert yourself to win American women the rights that women in Iran already enjoy.
getting beyond the implied insult, the key is not for women in the US to aspire to get what exists [in theory] in some other country (and to be supported in their aspirations by men) as much as to build on actual, concrete, aspirations and problems here and now to improve the independent self-organization of women here and the rights and privileges that women receive here. (and it's important for men to support these efforts in a non-paternalistic way.) if you have any contact with the independent women's organizations in Iran, Yoshie, maybe you could help build bridges between them and such organizations here.
> It's a little strange to find myself making (Marxist-) feminist points > to Yoshie. The fact is that there is no automatic process that > produces the liberation of women. Throwing women in the workforce can > easily lead to their being thrown out again (as with women in the US > after WW2). Capitalist dynamics only create possibilities for gender > equality: it is women's struggle that can realize the possibilities.
That's because you assume, without evidence, that I'm arguing that there is an "automatic process that produces the liberation of women."
if you were to present your assertipms about automatic processes in conjunction with acknowledgement of the existence of power structures resisting liberation, maybe people (it's not just me) wouldn't make such assumptions. -- Jim Devine / "But the wage of sin don't adjust for inflation. It's a buyer's market when you sell your soul." -- Jeffery Foucault, "Ghost Repeater."
