On 9/2/06, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie, now:
> Almost everybody in positions of power in the state and economy in
> many heterosocial societies have been men, including most other
> capitalist states (outside some countries that have established
> explicit gender quotas) and all socialist states. What women need is
> explicit gender quotas ...
you've got to admit that "western" capitalist countries have allowed
_some_ women to be in power (to be as bad as men). Some state
governors in the US have been women, as have some senators and CEOs.
In my cursory understanding of the issue, the US is doing much better
than Japan on this count (which of course is only one dimension of the
issue).
Well, there has not been any female head of state in the USA, but all
three countries of the subcontinent -- Bangladesh, India, and
Pakistan, two of which are predominantly Muslim and all of which are
homosocial societies -- have.
Outside the Nordic countries, women's representation in parliaments in
the OECD nations isn't a whole lot better than the rest, especially
when we take serious economic and/or political problems that plague
the rest and relative absence of them in the OECD nations into
account:
Regional Averages
Single House Upper House Both Houses
or lower House or Senate combined
Nordic
countries 40.0% 40.0%
Americas 20.6% 21.6% 20.7%
Europe - OSCE
member countries
including Nordic
countries 19.2% 16.9% 18.8%
Europe - OSCE
member countries
excluding Nordic
countries 17.3% 16.9% 17.2%
Sub-Saharan
Africa 17.0% 17.6% 17.1%
Asia 16.4% 17.6% 16.5%
Pacific 12.1% 27.4% 14.1%
Arab States 8.2% 6.0% 7.7%
<http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/world.htm>
what to do specifically about this problem (quotas, etc.) is another
issue, for another day.
The Nordic countries have achieved conditions close to gender parity
due to political parties adopting quotas:
<http://archive.idea.int/women/parl/ch4c.htm>. Without quotas, the
glass ceiling appears to be about 17%.
Yoshie:
> LBO-talk doesn't have many women posting here either. Aside from me,
> you only see very infrequent postings by several other women, and
> that's all.
I dunno. It seems there are _more_ women on LBO-talk than on pen-l
(which is what I said above).
PEN-l is, after all, a progressive ECONOMISTS network, and men and
women are still socialized to think that economics is a male thing to
do. It's still probably a whole lot more male-dominated discipline
than, say, English, anthropology, and so on. Besides, PEN-l is more
Marxist than LBO-talk in subscriber demographics, and, alas, the more
to the Left you travel, the fewer women you see!
> > Usually
> > women don't participate, but that's not because of men's power as much
> > as men's obnoxious styles.
> Men's obnoxious styles come from their social power.
but pen-l itself has abolutely no power.
Men who comprise them enjoy gender privilege, a form of social power,
such as the privilege to assume that they can speak louder than women,
lecture women about feminism, etc. even when they know nothing about
the subject!
> True, but political organizations to the Left of the Democratic Party
> -- except ones that are specifically feminist -- also have few women
> in leadership positions. So, if socialists ever take power here in
> the USA, they will simply replicate hitherto existing socialist
> societies dominated by male leaders.
My contention is that socialist organizations have to practice gender
equality (something that's much more likely with independent women's
caucuses than without) if they are ever to "take power."
But they haven't and still don't.
> There are feminist ones, but there isn't any Marxist-feminist one in
> the English language. ...
obviously, that's something to be fought against.
It's too late. Most feminist women have given up on Marxism in the USA.
> Then, obnoxious
> Marxist men such as Doug feel free to write me out of Marxism, and
> obnoxious Marxist men such as Lou purge me from their comfortably
> mostly homosocial Marxist environments, so it's no wonder that there
> are few women who remain Marxist and feminist. Men just don't
> tolerate such creatures!
are personal insults useful? how?
Women have the right to point out problem behavior on the part of men,
except men here don't support it unless it is exercised by women in
Iran!
Yoshie:
> It should be obvious that I'm talking mainly about possibilities,
> unless I specifically state that there will be automatic changes.
I kept on bringing up obstacles to these possibilities and you seemed
to ignore my points.
What makes you assume that I am ignorant of them?
> But
> women's entry into wage labor itself is usually already a result of
> women's own struggle, against state policy, company policy, men in
> their family, older women in their family, and so on. You ought to
> know that without having that pointed out in every posting.
No, I don't think that women's entry into the paid labor force is
primarily a result of women's own struggle. Usually, it's like Rosie
the Riveter: with so many of the men off at war and excess demand for
workers developing domestically, the US government pulled the women in
(and then tossed out when the war ended). In many cases in poorer
countries (and in the US in an earlier era), women (especially younger
ones) are brought into waged employment because (male) employers see
them as more docile than men (while their families let them go because
commercialization of agriculture implies that they desperately need
the money).
The state and employers' needs are pull factors; women's needs and
desires are push factors.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
