Thoughts on: Economic Facts and Fallacies, Chptr. 3: Male-Female Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell
So as I quest through the different realms of male and female, I find myself confronted with socio-economic obstacles in femininity, which seem to be common female concerns. In fact, our femininity is the very problem of this whole work force equality. Every obstacle women have been presented with in regards to occupation (I suppose the chapter I read was dealing with equality in pay), even historically, boils down to pregnancy, so says Sowell: a pregnant woman is “less a woman” in the work force because they are less able. So all the stuff about not sending women into the work force was precaution against sexual exploitation and unwanted pregnancy? Were equality movements such as equal rights and feminist movements just attempts to even the scales between men and women, scales which I feel cannot be reconciled because of some undeniably fundamental nature differences, such as the female ability to bear children, produce life?
It has been claimed that females have been underpaid in comparison to the work of males is not a disputed fact, but rather the explanation of this fact. Such disparity, Sowell suggests, might be due to differences in: upbringing, skills, education, and career choices. Women haven’t always been given the opportunities of men, or even considered equals with men (from previous comments on articles, I as a woman have been considered an “honorary human”) and for me, looking at the female question of occupation and acquiring a livelihood resurrects the question of risk and sexuality: somehow we women have been the representatives and bearers of our family’s shame, maybe honor too in the bearing of children? If honor has been forgotten and motherhood desecrated from its sacred office, dare I say its holy order, have we too forgotten shame in today’s American culture? I would boldly venture a yes, just watching the evolution of current society. We women have chosen to either encourage the organization of this world as a man’s world, or we attempt to force the men to abdicate in order to get female power (forgive me for being terrified by such a though).
So we live in a culture of lessening discrimination between men and women, affecting the pay disparity between incomes. Sowell notes that this evolution of the equality of the female being as a productive, contributing member to society (as defined by culture omitting the factor of motherhood… thus one must be a mother + something else or just not a mother…which denies some fundamental maternal desire within women, I might add) that encouraged pay disparity over time is due to: the feminist movement, pressure of government, and “general increase in enlightenment.” (55) Now, Sowell notes (and I ponder if this were also true of the past), women embody both extremes of humanity: while two-thirds of the illiterate populations are women, some of the world’s most educated people are also women. I am struck again by the contradiction we women embody socially as vessels of honor and shame; even if that acknowledgement is denied to us by current society, we internally know it is true… thus we struggle with existential guilt that does not belong to us, nor is confessed in public (because it is shameful). What society wants to admit its women are the buffers, its scapegoats (of course we also place ourselves in those positions.).
Sowell states, somewhat in paradoxical comparison that “women are walking off with a disproportionate share of degrees” (56) He states further that this current predominance of women in the realms of academia and therefore the upper-level work force are both quantitatively and qualitatively rivaling male standards. I think my professors would tend to attest to this, and sadly, I have noticed an overall immaturity about the males that need not be present in my fellow female students. Unfortunately, we women are all too willing to sell ourselves short to be amongst those men: what is it with this loneliness factor, can we not be alone without feeling half a being? Why do we continue to buy lies and common beliefs that we are not whole unless married? Such a belief becomes less and less common, but I know two years ago, I believed it whole-heartedly, and dared not aspire beyond. My imagination needed to be recreated to picture the freeing Jesus who has made me equal, yet not equal, with my brothers in Christ.
As mentioned, today’s society does not have nearly the archaic sorts of discriminations between genders, restricting women’s labor. There are, however, facts of my femininity that can never be fundamentally denies and may always be a separating factor on the pay scale: physical strength. We women may be touch and durable, but there is a delicacy in our durability that typically constrains itself to will. I remember when I was much younger physically disciplining myself to a far greater extent than my male athlete comrades, but they were always able to out-do my best attempts. Physicality in terms of strength may not matter so much anymore, though, because of “the replacement of human muscle by machine power in our own times has reduced the importance of physical strength that it may be difficult to see how important the factor was in centuries past (57). If one’s survival depended on being the fittest and strongest, I understand the preference of most men over most women. Because of technology, not only is physical strength not as predominant a separating factor, but age and gender no longer play as hefty a class-casting role as in previous centuries. Child-bearing remains one of the sole physical factors… and all the complications attached to that part of female nature, which separates men and women in the work force.
There have always been major economic consequences to women’s ability to bear children. As mentioned in passing on shame and honor, motherhood seems to be considered another function of womanhood, now, rather than a role in the female nature. As a function, women find ourselves in competition between domestic and occupational responsibilities, tending “to fall furthest behind in income” beneath those who are able to work more (57). Educational opportunities have added to this conflict; if one really wants to live a simple, “idealistic” lifestyle and is willing to cheat herself out of the possibility of a freer life. I must confess at one point in life, I toyed with my own desire for further education, because I realized it would complicate those innate maternal female desires. For the first two decades of this century, the proportion of women in the academic world increased “before either anti-discrimination laws or the feminist movement.” (58) Yet these increases appear to have declines by 1950s and 60, suggesting, “that what changed over these decades was not discrimination but women’s marriage and child-bearing patterns.” (59)
Sowell fascinates me in his confession of the women’s responsibility for their society as it really is…. Does he know what he’s doing? Reading the last phrase of the paragraph above, I find that maybe our situations don’t change and never do, but we can rise above the circumstances. As women continues in their assumptions of higher-level occupations, the marrying age also increased. Because of this, Sowell notes (60) that the birth rate “fell sharply and was much lower at the end of the century that it was at the beginning.” I find it remarkable how much the changes in women’s marrying ages and conceptual ages differ and affect so much of their possibility in society. “The distribution of women and men in various occupations has long differed, partly due to restrictions placed on women and partly due to choices made by the women themselves.” (61) There we go again, voluntary subjugation: we women choose to be beneath, beneath even unhealthily in a way we do not deserve?
Sowell launched into what I found to be a fascinating explanation of the restrictions placed on women in the workforce—a lot of which has legitimate value, but maybe overly conservative and rigid application: In the past where “chastity was a prerequisite for favorable marriage prospects,” a young woman was prohibited from work that would make allotment for “unsupervised contact with young men” (62) for fear that she would be taken advantage of sexually or consent to illicit desire. Sowell notes that young men have never had the possibility of female difficulties, “anything so visible or with so much social and economic impact as becoming pregnant.” (63) Therefore, men were freer, always, in their lines of works, for their risks and gambles were quite different from those of a woman. Sowell recounts that before the industrial era, wealthy and reputable families were “able to attract live-in maids either because the supervision or the reputation of these particular families were considered to be of some assurance of lower risks of sexual misconduct” or because the families were so poor they had no choice (63). Such considerations affect my perspective on the constraints of female occupations: for protection rather than detriment?
It’s interesting to see just how much families were concerned about their daughter’s inability to work because of employer sexual misconduct throughout all of a woman’s struggles for work. Fathers no longer have such a role in their daughter’s lives… decisions such as limitation for protection are now viewed as inequality and bias rather than real love. However, Sowell asserts that employers did not focus on sexual misconduct in segregating women from some types of work. Physical strength being no longer a significant separation factor in most occupations, accounting for one the “external limitations places on the range of occupations” open to women. Women tend to make career choices influences by the likelihood that they would at some point become mothers.” (65) Children have been a huge factor in “interruptions in the labor force participation” of women, which accounts for some for some of the disparaging treatment between the genders (66-67).
“With women more often then men carrying the burden of domestic responsibilities for children and the care of the home, careers that involve much unpredictable night and day work are less attractive to women.” (68) Upon first read of that portion of the book, I thought “are less attractive to women” read “produce less attractive women…” referring to the exhausting sporadic schedule that develops. While a woman may ream of “having it all—a career and a family and an upscale life—is fine, but doing it all is often harder for a woman, given the usual division of domestic responsibilities between the sexes and the inevitable differences in childbearing.” (68) Women really are disadvantaged in the work force in comparison to men because of the physical limitations of pregnancy. This is seen in the fact that “women who have graduated form top-level universities like Harvard, Yale have not worked full-time, or worked at all, to the same extent that male graduates of these institutes have.” (70)
In domestic situations where men are the sole income earners (even in typical working-class America), the situations “have been described as ‘male-dominated societies.’” (72) How can one reconfigure the presentation of headship so as not to pose the threat of domination? One runs into further difficult with women in work: “because the situations of husbands and wives have not been symmetrical in traditional families, it is likewise not surprising that marriage has had opposite effects on the incomes of men and women.” (72) Studies show that women who are not married and without children have higher incomes then those who are unmarried and have no children. “Traditional” wives invested so much of themselves in their husbands’ careers that divorce, even if warranted by other factors, that they remain in the marriage or relationship, for a separation/divorce “would mean a loss of that investment.” (73) What sort of loss? Is this a selfish reason for voluntary subjugation (not that I am endorsing any sort of divorce theology at all)?
Sowell notes that even with all the feminine obstacles to working, “people who discriminate against girls when it comes to education pay no price for that but employers who discriminate against women workers do.” (73) It is very challenging to find comparable grounds on which to analyze men and women… unlike other distinguishing differences such as ethnicity and race. The effect of the education experience and race experience “can have opposite effects on men and women… marriage and parenthood tend to lead to increased incomes for men and reduced incomes for women. So what was this about marriage affecting life and domestic asymmetrical arrangements. My question arises, are non-married, never-been-married individual women affected by the sex differences in income?
Of never-married people, women tend to earn more than men: “academic women who never married earn more than academic men who never married.” (77) There is an obvious “pattern of negative correlation between marital responsibilities (including children) and women’s educational levels and career advancement” (77) which emerges from the information Sowell presents. Of men and women who were comparable in occupation, industry, and other such variables, there was not much difference of income, Sowell claims. Perhaps, I suggest again, the men are no longer advocates of female submission struggles… but rather participants as women continue to subject themselves to such a life. So what do we make of such notions as “the ‘glass ceiling’ restricting how high women are allowed to rise, especially in top management position” (80)? Sowell notes that “much depends on whether the social goal should be equal opportunity or equal income” (85) between men and women.
Concluding on such a note, we women are faced with a decision: opportunity or income? We know from our very natures, that we are not able to do all things men can do and we can hardly do things in the same manner they do. But some shared occupations and aspirations we excel over men in. I think I advocate equal opportunity as far as gender allows… but perhaps the equal income question is different: if men and women do not work the same way, how do we set a standard of accurate measurement when the scales weigh so differently? Questions as to the discarded image of shame and honor once attributed to women and not subversively assumed into womanhood arise. This ability to produce life out of ourselves continues to fascinate me: it grows within us, and enables us and disables us. So what of those women unable to bear children; more androgynous and capable of male roles than the typical female?
