tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post114183910669833957..comments2023-08-03T04:54:54.068-04:00Comments on Abacaxi Mamão: Happy International Women's Day!Abacaxi Mamaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142861252110189432006-03-20T08:27:00.000-05:002006-03-20T08:27:00.000-05:00Avi,I must clarify. I wrote that, "some of the thi...Avi,<BR/><BR/>I must clarify. I wrote that, "some of the things that people think women are better at, I stink at," but now I feel obliged to defend my womanhood. SOME of the things that people think women are better at, I stink at. A lot of the things that people think women are better at, I'm good at. These include taking care of children, communicating verbally, and being very interested in building and maintainig a network of interpersonal relationships with family and friends. I'm also a damned good dish-washer. I just reject the notion that <I>only</I> women can be good at these things, and that only men can be good at quantitative tasks, logic, reasoning, and orating. Because I'm good at some of these "woman things" and I'm also pretty good at some of these "man things" and I'm sure that many men and women are the same. I know a lot of men who are very good at taking care of children, and even a few who do a mean load of dishes.<BR/><BR/>The "woman things" that I'm not great at include cooking, reducing clutter, and putting crap all over my face and in my hair (I guess people call this "makeup" and "hair styling," respectively?). I'm also not good at wearing high heels, or perhaps I should say that I'm not willing to get blisters all over my feet and limp around in pain in order to gain shaplier calves and a few inches.<BR/><BR/>Alright, enough ranting for today.Abacaxi Mamaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142556354163162822006-03-16T19:45:00.000-05:002006-03-16T19:45:00.000-05:00I'm not sure that I buy the idea that feminism is ...I'm not sure that I buy the idea that feminism is attractive to women because they're not good at womanly things - "feminism" can mean lots of things to lots of people - from the idea that men and women are identical, to the idea that men and women should be paid the same for the same job.<BR/><BR/>Most people have no significant problem with the latter (although defining "same job" is a lot harder than it sounds), but the former is a tougher pill to swallow.<BR/><BR/>I know some pretty feminine women who describe themselves as feminists (I also know some pretty butch ones who do too, but that's separate).Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16491386537225283381noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142542141717530632006-03-16T15:49:00.000-05:002006-03-16T15:49:00.000-05:00ALG,I would guess that, like you, most feminists a...ALG,<BR/><BR/>I would guess that, like you, most feminists are better at things that most people say men are good at. That's one of the things that causes them to identify with the feminist movement. Women who are good at woman things probably embrace their womanliness and are proud of the characteristics that make them different than men, rather than try to convince other men and women that they're the same in most non-anatomical ways.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142539212102682202006-03-16T15:00:00.000-05:002006-03-16T15:00:00.000-05:00Interesting about the origin of the "assigned to m...Interesting about the origin of the "assigned to men" terminology. I don't think that I would have come up with that phrase myself (when you mentioned it I didn't remember using it at all. Because "alg's brother" used it, I parroted it back. In fact, I almost quoted his wording verbatim.<BR/><BR/>I don't know about men and women and different ways of making decisions. I tend to agonize over all decisions, large and small, and mostly feel fine about all of them once I've made them. But maybe it's because I've never had to make a really big decision, like buying a house. The biggest decisions I've made in my life involved choosing a college, choosing a yeshiva in Israel, and applying for and accepting jobs.<BR/><BR/>I do know that some of the things that I'm pretty good at are things that people often say men are better at, and some of the things that people think women are better at, I stink at. For whatever that's worth.Abacaxi Mamaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142511703382590602006-03-16T07:21:00.000-05:002006-03-16T07:21:00.000-05:00"Daddy"'s mention of the difference in approach be..."Daddy"'s mention of the difference in approach between types of decision-making is fascinating. Personally, I've found my experience to be orthogonal to it - I make large decisions very quickly, and mostly feel good about them. Sarah does massive amounts of research, and carefully considers each decision, big or small. She has an easier time making small decisions (perhaps there's less information required?) than I do - I had a much easier time deciding that I wanted to convert to Judaism than deciding where to go for dinner...<BR/><BR/>I did want to point out a terminology issue - y'all have been discussing CEO jobs using that term "assigned to men": that's language which the early feminist movement used, partially because some of them were socialists, and believed in a planned economy. I think that we should be careful when talking about "assigned" and "average women" or "average men," because language shapes thought.<BR/><BR/>An anecdote: when I was a freshman, I took "Math 250" which used Roudin's book "Principles of Mathematical Analysis" (funny enough, taught by Dr. Brin, father of one of the google guys... anyway) 43 people started the class, of whom 3 were women. 17 finished the class, including 3 women (I was in this group). 5 went on to the next semester, including 3 women. My lesson from this was "not many women go into upper-level math, but the ones who do are really good at it."Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16491386537225283381noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142284427761428412006-03-13T16:13:00.000-05:002006-03-13T16:13:00.000-05:00A couple of comments. Regarding the NY Times artic...A couple of comments. Regarding the NY Times article on men's and women's different patterns of overspending on useless things, I couldn't identify with any of the examples they gave of the kinds of things men spend money on, until they mentioned men whose self-image is tied up in the size of their music collections, and I suddenly thought "books." Especially when you consider how many of the books that I have bought I have never read, though I do read most of them eventually. But I suspect there are as many women as men who relate to buying books in this way.<BR/><BR/>Regarding Avi's claim that men are better at math, and therefore better at making business decisions that depend on numbers, there was an article in Science sometime in February that studied the relationship between how much time people spend thinking about a decision before making it, and how satisfied they are afterward that they made the right decision. It turns out that for small decisions, like which toaster to buy, the more time they spend thinking about it beforehand, the more likely they are afterwards to think they made the right decision. But for big decisions, like which house to buy, the more time they spend thinking about it beforehand, the less likely they are to think afterwards that they made the right decision. For big decisions, people did better if they gathered all the relevant facts, and then trusted their gut instincts. If there is any truth to the cliche that women have better intuitions than men, i.e. are better at subconsciously integrating a lot of information to make a difficult decision, then it might well be that women would, on average, be better than men at making critical business decisions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142145781045966872006-03-12T01:43:00.000-05:002006-03-12T01:43:00.000-05:00ALG's Dad,I agree with your comment 100%. I think ...ALG's Dad,<BR/><BR/>I agree with your comment 100%. I think that women often value flexibility or working conditions over salary. <BR/><BR/>In terms of flexibility, this may be, in part, because they are be married to men who work at jobs with *less* flexibility, and at least one parent needs flexibility to pick kids up, drop them off, and take care of them when they're sick. It is possible that in a more gender-equalized society, both men and women would or could have jobs that allowed them both to earn a living and to care for their families. I'm not sure why one person should consistently have to sacrifice salary and career advancement in order to attend to the needs of the family. I don't really have a solution to this, though.<BR/><BR/>In terms of working conditions, I also know that, personally, I have consistently chosen jobs with good working conditions even though I make less money than I could at a more pressure-filled (boring) job. I think that some men feel familial or societal pressure to choose careers that would enable them to single-handedly earn enough to support a family, whereas I never felt that pressure. If I thought that I would one day have to support multiple children and myself on my salary alone, I would choose a different career path than I have.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, this is all very interesting, but I also agree that this does not mean that none of the present wage gap can be attributed to discrimination, especially when you're talking about two jobs in the same field and with similar resposibilities (flexibility, conditions), at which men make more than women.Abacaxi Mamaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142145198386916332006-03-12T01:33:00.000-05:002006-03-12T01:33:00.000-05:00First of all, read this delightful column from tod...First of all, read <A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/business/11instincts.html?_r=1&oref=slogin" REL="nofollow">this</A> delightful column from today's (3/11/06) New York Times. It's called "The More Sensible Sex? It's a Tie" and discusses men, women, and money. More specifically, it addresses the common feeling or complaint that women make decisions about money with their emotions while men use just the cold, hard facts.<BR/><BR/>You wrote: <BR/>> The fact that it's socially <BR/>> acceptable for women to be CEOs <BR/>> (and has been for some time now, <BR/>> and there are plenty of women's <BR/>> groups to support and help them) <BR/>> but there still aren't very many <BR/>> of them is perhaps a sign that <BR/>> they don't make the best CEOs. If <BR/>> they did, executives would be <BR/>> snapping up the best female <BR/>> businesswomen from around the <BR/>> country.<BR/><BR/>I think that you seriously underestimate the pervasive bias against women at *every* level of the educational and professional world. In my own experience, I had to fight a lot harder to be let into the honors track in high school than the boys did. I am also the assistant director at my current job, but people constantly assume that I am the "assistant to the director." Maybe they assumed that with my male predecessor, but I tend to think not. They think that I am replacing the previous administrative assistant not the previous assistant director, solely because of my gender. The truth is that it is still NOT socially acceptable for a woman to be a CEO. Aggressive women who get ahead in the business world are referred to with epithets that don't belong in a "family blog" (which this has clearly become!). Talk to REG (I think that's her middle initial) about engineering and gender bias sometime and I'm sure that she will confirm that the same is true in her field.<BR/><BR/>Stay-at-home moms are not making it hard for women to advance in their careers. In some cases, their husbands who don't think women should work outside the home are.<BR/><BR/>> Now, compare that to basketball or <BR/>> teaching where there was a rapid <BR/>> transition from white to black, <BR/>> male to female because it was <BR/>> obvious that there were <BR/>> differences between the groups.<BR/><BR/>There was a rapid transition from male schoolteachers to female schoolteachers because women were willing to work for less money than men were, because female schoolteachers were traditionally living at home with their parents. If women CEOs were willing to do the same job as men do for 2/3 the salary, and if men could overcome their gender bias in the business world and believe that women could succeed in business, maybe there would be a rapid transition to more female CEOs as well. Look, even if someone wants to make a woman the CEO of their company, if they think that others will perceive that as a business mistake, then they won't do it because it will hurt the bottom line. It sucks, but it's true. It's not always about who is best for the job--sometimes it's about who the shareholders will think is best for the job, and that is often a man. <BR/><BR/>This is totally unsupported in terms of research, and I have no idea if it is objectively true, but you also have no idea if women really make better teachers, so I feel justified in sharing my opinion as if it were fact.Abacaxi Mamaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142025173436220622006-03-10T16:12:00.000-05:002006-03-10T16:12:00.000-05:00I don't have time to respond at length now, but I'...I don't have time to respond at length now, but I'm sick of the argument that things are a certain way because society "imposes it" up us. You could make that argument about any topic, and there's simply no way to disprove it. I could say that black guys are better at basketball than white guys in recent years because as a society we expect them to achieve at that sport. I could also say that women make better elementary school teachers than men because recently society has been imposing it upon them. The fact is, black guys are better at basketball and women are better at teaching children. The fact that basketball used to be an all-white sport and teaching used to be a man's job while now it's the opposite is enough evidence for me to conclude that certain groups of people are better at certain professions. The fact that it's socially acceptable for women to be CEOs (and has been for some time now, and there are plenty of women's groups to support and help them) but there still aren't very many of them is perhaps a sign that they don't make the best CEOs. If they did, executives would be snapping up the best female businesswomen from around the country. Now, compare that to basketball or teaching where there was a rapid transition from white to black, male to female because it was obvious that there were differences between the groups. If women really do make great CEOs, then you have nothing to worry about. If all of the non-business, stay at home moms are making it difficult for the female business-women to advance their careers, tough. If a woman is really good at what she does, she'll just have to prove it by working her way up the corporate ladder. In most cases, if she fails, it's because she lacks the leadership qualities that is more commonly found in men. That fact isn't going to disappear simply because women's groups impose their ideals on us, just as it's not upheld as a result of society as a whole wanting it that way.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1142000726993161982006-03-10T09:25:00.000-05:002006-03-10T09:25:00.000-05:00Avi,Dem's fightin' words. I don't have time to res...Avi,<BR/><BR/>Dem's fightin' words. I don't have time to respond at length now, since I just hit "publish" on another mini-manifesto, and, after all, I do have to go earn my bread for the day. I may have to write a whole post on this series of falsities another time.<BR/><BR/>1. Regardless of what one thinks about women and numbers, business leadership is rarely just about "making decisions based purely on numbers."<BR/><BR/>2. I got a higher score on my math SATs than most men in this country. Should I be denied a career based solely on numbers because the *average* math SAT score may be higher for boys than for girls? (I'm not even sure that assertion is true.) Averages do not top-CEOs make. You know what I'm saying? Individual variability is so high that to make sweeping assertions about women's (or men's) suitability for any career based on *averages* is entirely unproductive.<BR/><BR/>3. I *think* the latest data indicates that girls and boys run apace in math skills until puberty. Does this mean that testosterone makes boys better at math or that women lose self-esteem and confidence when they hit puberty? Also, I think the latest data indicates that girls develop verbal skills before boys, and that the distinction arises as early as preschool-hood, but that verbal abilities even out at some later point. Would math abilities even out at some later point if our society weren't rife with ideas about how bad women are at math? (I think so, but am willing to be proven otherwise if hard data exists.)<BR/><BR/>4. It used to be (<B><I>traditionally</I></B>) that all school teachers were male. The "women as teachers" thing is relatively recent. Also, all librarians used to be men. So basing appropriateness for a job on what you perceive as traditional jobs for men/women is ridiculous if you don't know history. This idea that "women make better teachers" arose in the past 100-200 years. Before that, nobody thought women could teach. Just sayin'.<BR/><BR/>I appreciate your not thinking that men are smarter than women or that women are smarter than men. I agree.Abacaxi Mamaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1141952196455020582006-03-09T19:56:00.000-05:002006-03-09T19:56:00.000-05:00So you don't think it's more difficult for a woman...So you don't think it's more difficult for a woman to make a decision based purely on numbers when it's necessary for the success of her business? Based on my own interactions with women outside of the business world (I have limited experience in the business world), women are more emotional than men, and more often make decisions based on how they feel at the moment than men do.<BR/><BR/>As for why women-owned business grow faster than men-owned, it's because it's more difficult for a woman to break into that world, and only the very best business-women do. I suppose that's evidence that there is still discrimination because only business-women who are better at what they do than business-men are put in a position of power. However, if it were really clear that women were so much better than men at being CEOs, surely a lot more would be CEOs in a world where decisions are made based on money and growth.<BR/><BR/>Isn't it true that women do better on the verbal part of the SAT, while men do better on the math part? I seem to remember reading that somewhere. I don't think that men are smarter than women or women are smarter than men, but I think it's clear that they're smarter at different things. A women might have an easier time "telling what Jimmy was feeling when he learned about slavery in social studies class" while a man might have an easier time figuring out what time Train A and Train B crossed paths. Obviously, I'm not referring to all men or all women, but there's a trend. This idea that men make better business-people while women make better teachers is based in reality, not just tradition.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1141950601884411592006-03-09T19:30:00.000-05:002006-03-09T19:30:00.000-05:00ALG's brother, formerly the commenter known as "Av...ALG's brother, formerly the commenter known as "Avi,"<BR/><BR/>I agree that the rights that women ought to have over their own bodies and especially their reproductive systems <I><B>may</B></I> be different in important ways from their right to have jobs traditionally assigned to men. <BR/><BR/>The problem is that women have not traditionally been excluded from jobs such as CEO, president of the country, etc. because they are less suited for these jobs. They were excluded for other, far sillier reasons, such as the notion that women weren't as smart as men, or the notion that working too hard or thinking too much would damage their uteruses. Really, I can find you old stuff that says that, especially around 1880-1920. This is one argument that was made against women going to college. Think about the (future potential) children!<BR/><BR/>Furthermore, I'm not sure that the fact that women and men are different (I'm not sure I would go so far as to say "fundamentally different," although the older I get the more differences I see) means that they wouldn't be equally good CEOs, albeit potentially with different styles. One of those facts that I quoted was about woman-owned businesses growing much faster than man-owned businesses. I'm not saying it's necessarily because of women's superior business acumen, but I honestly think that the fact that women aren't in leadership positions in businesses are mostly due to external biases rather than any innate superiority of male CEOs. It would take many years of non-bias to test this theory, though. <BR/><BR/>In the meantime, I see no evidence that suggests that women make worse CEOs, presidents of countries, etc., so I'm all for suing against discriminatory hiring practices that are based purely on X and Y chromosomes rather than ability, experience, and other substantial indicators of a candidate's suitability for a job.Abacaxi Mamaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1141949963043479562006-03-09T19:19:00.000-05:002006-03-09T19:19:00.000-05:00Imma,I agree that every mother is a working mother...Imma,<BR/><BR/>I agree that every mother is a working mother. In an old issue of Ms. Magazine from the 1970s that I once came across at Schlesinger, there was an article by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith" REL="nofollow">John Kenneth Galbraith</A>, possibly related to the 1973 publication of <I>Economics and the Public Purpose</I> in which he discusses the national economic effect of the *unpaid labor* that women do. It was an interesting article. The only difference between the work that fathers stereotypically did and the work that mothers stereotypically did (at least in post-war, middle class America) is that the fathers earned money doing it and the mothers didn't. Maybe they earned something else that they wanted more (closeness to their children, flexibility, control over the internal workings of the household), as "alg's dad" pointed out.<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your comments, family!Abacaxi Mamaohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06604184268628243496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1141931895536005692006-03-09T14:18:00.000-05:002006-03-09T14:18:00.000-05:00I think it's important to make a disctinction betw...I think it's important to make a disctinction between women's rights over their own bodies and their "right" to have jobs that have been traditionally assigned to men. What makes you and other feminists so certain that you could be just as effective as a man as a CEO of a company? Men and women are so vastly different that there's no reason to believe that they're equally suited for that kind of role. Maybe women are better at it, maybe men are better at it, but the fact that men and women are so fundamentally different would lead me to believe that it's highly unlikely that one is just as effective as the other. It would therefore be silly to try to reach this 50/50 utopia.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1141927201381184122006-03-09T13:00:00.000-05:002006-03-09T13:00:00.000-05:00My main gripe about women and work is that I don't...My main gripe about women and work is that I don't think a mother's job is properly appreciated. As the bumper sticker read, "every mother is a working mother."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11850330.post-1141859883984444242006-03-08T18:18:00.000-05:002006-03-08T18:18:00.000-05:00Regarding the male-female wage gap that still exis...Regarding the male-female wage gap that still exists today, see pages 353-359 of Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate" for an analysis of why you would not necessarily expect the gap to go to zero in the absence of discrimination (deliberate or subliminal). His argument, basically, is that it is known that there are, statistically, differences between men and women in personality, though obviously with a lot of overlap. It is also known that both men and women make tradeoffs between wages and other characteristics of a job, such as flexibility in working hours, or working conditions, in deciding whether to take a job. A priori, there is no reason to expect that men, on average, will make the same tradeoff as women, even in the absence of discrimination. This does not mean, of course, that none of the present wage gap can be attributed to discrimination.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com