[lbo-talk] Servant culture

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Mon Aug 18 09:27:18 PDT 2003



>>it looks to me like the potential or the reality of
>>combining with a man's typically higher paycheck is a factor in their
>lives
>
>That's two things, men's higher earnings, but also just a second
>paycheck. Two can live as cheaply as 1.4, they say. Why most women
>commingle paychecks with men rather than other women is a mostly
>noneconomic question.
>
>Doug

I agree. Yoshie's claim, as I read it, was that women aren't dependent on men unless they're mostly or entirely supported by them. But in the situation in which most women (I think a slight majority) find themselves, paired with a guy, a man's higher paycheck is a reality which impinges on such decisions as who takes unpaid leave, who cuts back on paid work to do care work in the home, whether you move based on his job or hers, who gets more say in how the money is spent, and a thousand smaller things, including the evidence of one's 'value in the world' as measured by pay. And it would be romantic to an unwarranted degree to think that finances don't come into decisions by women to either move in or get married, especially in the social welfare-challenged U.S. It's a factor.

Jenny Brown



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