[lbo-talk] feminism and the failure[s] of capitalism

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

> If this doesn't sound terribly equal, nor, for that matter, 
> loaded with exciting opportunity, don't blame the commission. 
> All it did was assign the survey, which was undertaken by the 
> Future Foundation, and contains a wonderfully mysterious 
> quote from a Young Southern Woman: "Every time I think of 
> feminism, I just get this really awful feeling." And that's 
> all there is to explain the absurd claim that women "choose" 
> lower pay for the same work - to complain about it would be 
> feminism, which is kind of icky.


Three points:

1. Pay inequality does involve a choice women make, albeit it is not the
only factor invilved.   Women tend to seek and accept lower paying job
because they tend to scale their aspirations to what they perceive as
more attainable.  Of course, employers also tend to scale their pay
schedule to the gender of the job holder.  Barbara Reskin and Patricial
Roos (_Jobs queues, gender queues_) call that process "queuing"  i.e.
both job apllicants and employers 'queue" or rank-order jobs and then
match them with the perceived "fit" of different types of applicants
(e.g. job A may be seen as much better than job B, a female applicant
see herself as more "fit" for job B because she perceives she has more
chance to get the job B than the job A, and th eemployer sees female
candidates as better "fit" for job B because of sexist stereotypes).  

2.  Feminism got discredited when it put the bread and butter demands
(cf. equal pay, equal opportunity, health care, abuse victim protection)
into wacky lit crit.

3.  A lot of women my daughter's age take the Camille Paglia's approach
to feminism (the reason her book is still on my shelf is that I do not
have a fireplace where this trash can be properly burned) - as a denial
of female sex appeal - and openly embrace the most outragegously sexist
symbols like the playboy bunny or the hooters for the fear of being
"unpopular".  Nauseating.

Wojtek