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I would add to it the whole issue of 'standards' used to define jobs , job
responsibility, and work schedule that 'engender' work by making it more
'suitable' for men or women - but without overly sexist overtones. To
illustrate, establishing a standard that requires 100lbs lifting
autmoatically excludes most women but does not look like overtly sexist,
until we realize that the 100lbs standrad is arbitrary.>>
Not only are weight limits arbitrary, but they frequently discriminate against smaller men as well as women... I have some random thoughts on this 'problem' of women and physical strength, so here they in no particular order: 1. when one man can't do a job, they send a second man. When two man can't do a job, they invent a tool. when a woman can't do a job, they say she's too weak. 2. Housework and child care frequently demand the lifting of very, very heavy weights. So does nursing -- nurses routinely lift patients larger and heavier than themselves. In fact, i think many women flunk weight lifting limits either because they think they should, or because they have not been trained (like nurses are) to lift heavy weights. Boy children are expected to display strength from the getgo while girls are not. The naturally stronger boy child develops his strength while the girl child develops her weakness. Two cases in point, one historical and one personal: a) with the opening of archeological digs in the Russian steppes, it is beginning to look like amazon women were not a myth. Graves of women warriors have been found in several locations. b) For a year I worked in manhattan manholes a'la the phone co. (pressure maintenance on cables and trouble shooting). At the beginning of the year, I was already a strong woman. By the end of the year, popping 3-5 (sometimes 6-7) manhole covers a shift at 280 lbs. a pop (with a partner of course) made me very strong. At the end of that year, I was lifting weights in the gym which were comparable with small/average men. Of course, I've lost much of this strength since, but it certainly blew my own gendered misconceptions of my own ability to develop upper body strength.
Wojtek:
>>The same can be said about work schedule which is designed with the male
"breadwinner" and female "homemaker" in mind. Interestingly, the unions
are in a very peculiar position here - fighting the loss of well paying
jobs on the 'breadwinner' grounds would be politically suicidal. They use
the euphemism the "living wage" but that assumes only one spouse working
without explicitly mentioning it.
>> Maggie One of the biggest problems with unions and breadwinner incomes is that the concept remains gender specific to men. There would be nothing wrong with a breadwinner income battle which was gender neutral -- applied to men and women in the workplace. In fact, some of the more recent feminist work out there is aiming at just that concept, and in this case I am thinking of some of the work done by Deb Figart.
maggie coleman mscoleman at aol.com