American women have seemingly achieved most of the goals of the folks in the 1960s who called themselves “feminists.” Women can work 24/7. Women can vote (for the white male of their choice, at least in the last few presidential elections). Women can get abortions without having to travel beyond their home state. Women constitute close to 50 percent of the young folks training for and holding jobs that are actually worth having (e.g., medical doctor).
What then does someone who calls him or herself a “feminist” think about in 2005? http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/ is an interesting place to start looking for the answer.
Another: http://www.msmusings.net/
Philip–
As fortune would have it, I happen to have, right in front of me, the AMA’s “Physician Characteristics and Distribution in the US.” As of 2002, there were 209,982 female physicians and 621,663 male physicians (25.2% of the total physician population). The greatest percentage of female physicians are in the age range of 35-44, so yes, I would argue the women’s movement has been a big help here.
However, there are more interesting questions to think about. The majority of female physicians are in patient care (82.7%), and of those 82.7%, 2/3 were in office-based practice. The top specialties are: Internal medicine, Pediatrics, Family Practice, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Psychiatry and Anesthesiology.
Only 4% of the the combined activities of Administration, Medical Teaching and Research jobs are filled by women. So, a woman is unlikely to be at the cutting edge of medical research, is unlikely to be the teacher of an up and coming female med student, and unlikely to be the Chief of Staff at a hospital.
Something to think about!
Those numbers suggest that perhaps women who become doctors do so in order to help people, not order them around, lecture them, or avoid them by working in a lab all the time. This is a motivation I would consider desirable in a doctor…
Sure, they *suggest* that. They suggest lots of things, right?
And, who could argue that wanting to help people is a good motivation for going into medicine. (Yet, given the crap doctors have to put up with now–insurance companies/malpractice suits, etc.–its not likely to be the sole motivation anymore).
But, these numbers can also *suggest* that women are not being mentored or directed into research and administration. And, these medical positions are just as important, if not more important overall, for the future of medicine, as patient care is. It might be interesting to see how women would change patient care delivery protocols etc. if they were in administration. Or, how might diagnoses shift, in say, the DSM?
Any data on nurse practitioners distribution, by any means a very respectable and high earning potential profession?
You’re kidding, right? There is still an enormous amount of disparity in our society between women and men. Let’s pick a simple and fairly non-controversial one, equal pay for equal work. See here http://www.now.org/press/04-03/04-09.html and here for data and info http://www.now.org/issues/economic/120304statusreport.html and here http://www.now.org/issues/
Also see http://www.ncwit.org/what.mission.html for people who are working on achieving parity for women in IT, which I think is a career path at least as worth having as medicine.
Yeah, there is a lot of work to be done of the feminist front – one thing is helping men realize that as women advance and get parity it isn’t all bad for men. Not only will we get more ideas (not because they are women but because they are a greater range of people) for inventions and research, that will benefit everyone, but also equal benefits for men. Now more and more (but not enough) men can take maternal leave as well when a new baby comes in the family. More people of both sexes are getting flexible schedules (which work better with families) and other family friendly practices are advancing as well.
Until women earn parity with men (last I heard it averaged 70 cents to the dollar) and are represented at least close to equal in most genres, and until men take equal responsibility for cleaning, family, and home life, feminism has a ways to go.
My mom was president of the local NOW chapter and I marched for the ERA when I was five. My conclusion is that the feminist movement will soon realize (if it has not already and to the extent it has not already realized) that advancement of women is now inextricably linked to the advancement of men. Men working overlong hours at emotionally unrewarding jobs and spending too little time with their families not only gives them heart attacks and obesity (you women are living longer for a reason) but also means women can only reach the top by doing the same. Those women who do not copy these unhealthy habits are often rewarded by having to work a “double shift” of caring for kids and home while hubby works late again.
The struggle is greater emotional freedom for men, a more flexible workplace, stronger protections for work-life balance, all while avoiding the robust Chinese and Indian worker populations snapping at our collective heels. Tough nut, ladies and gents.
PS I’m not against importing Chinese or Indian workers or their products I just they have enough people who worker harder and smarter than us to do some damage to our economy if we don’t clean up our act. In the meantime it may be hard to argue for fewer hours and more leave.
Amy,
You’re welcome to test your belief that women do not receive equal pay for equal work by starting a labor-intensive business (perhaps IT consulting?) and hiring only women: a 30% cost advantage will allow you to totally demolish your competitors. This was an idea that a former high-ranking NOW person named Farrell had.
But perhaps this isn’t a slam-dunk to riches? Maybe there are reasons that the “average” man makes more than the “average” woman, like choosing a higher-paying career, working longer hours, commuting farther, or picking a more dangerous and more unpleasant job?
As far as an IT career being “a career path at least as worth having as medicine,” I suggest you spend some time on salary.com. Perhaps you think that a job as an OBGYN earning >$300k/year is “at least as worth having” as being an unemployed programmer who made $50k/year before he trained his Indian replacement, but most of women seem to disagree, based on the gender ratios in technical schools vs law and medical schools. Philip has mentioned elsewhere that his best female CS students often decide to go to medical school.
I don’t identify myself as a feminist, but I don’t see feminism as something that’s simply localized to the U.S. Rather, it is something more global because oftentimes the only people who stick up for women in other countries (where they have considerably less power) are women in nations that have more power and money. So, feminism is more about destroying the cruel inequalities / violence in other countries against women (i.e. the sadistic murder of young girls right next door along the Mex-US border), the forced prostitution trade in Asia, the lack of rights for women in the Middle East, and the use of rape as a tool of war or tribal retribution). These women are truly powerless to speak out for themselves, that’s where the resources of Western feminism come in (in the form of diplomatic pressure, NGOs, etc).
Interesting that you mention abortion, Phil, since early suffragists/feminists like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Victoria Woodhull were completely against abortion.
You might want to ask yourself why a medically-invasive procedure that is completely preventable by the couple involved, with all the pain, possible scarring, and later guilt (it often happens) falling on the woman to bear for the rest of her life, is such a wonderful advance for the women’s movement.
Just something to think about.
After 20+ years as a software engineer, just once I’d like someone to assume that I might, just might, know as much as the 20 something guy who has never so much as taken a CS course much less written a major computer system.
PatrickG, all those things you mention are still infinitely better than forcing a woman to carry a fetus inside her body for nine months all because of rape, lapse in judgement, or a birth control accident.
When you take away a woman’s right to choose, you get resentful bad mothers raising criminals, drug addicts, and bad citizens in general. You also get a lot of women not living up to their full potential because they suddenly have to deal with baby.
There is a tale that if abortion were around when Beethoven was born, his mom would have aborted and we wouldn’t have the ninth symphony. I love to retort that if Ludwig’s mom had been able to abort she may have written all those symphonies and more.
Its like what Ryan pointed out – feminism now can benefit everyone because it is about people living up to their full potential regardless of sex instead of living up to societies crazy (and at times unrealistic or unsatisfying) ideals of what a *man* and *woman* should be. Part of making that happen is coming to terms with how years of sexism has opressed both sexes. Removing the stigmatism of abortion, and the idea that all women will love their children eventually is one aspect of that.
Part of freedom is responsibility – not all women will be happy with the choices we make but I don’t think that means we shouldn’t be allowed to make them.
Sorry, paragraphs were screwed up. Let’s see if this is any better…
What do you think of this framework for coming to a determination on a controversial decision, such as whether to legalize or criminalize abortion?
Examine the perceived (bad) consequences of legalizing (L) or criminalizing (C) abortion.
L – many, many people would be murdered (~million a year)
L – many potential people would not have the chance to live (~million a year)
C – you would have resentful bad mothers raising criminals, drug addicts, and bad citizens (less than but possibly close to a million new ones a year)
C – you would have a lot of women who would not live up to their full potential (~million new ones a year)
Now, don’t just take the perceived consequences, but try to examine these consequences by comparing their badness and also comparing their likelihood.
You are not directly comparing the sides of the issue itself. That is, you are not saying “Should abortion be legalized or should it be criminalized?”. Instead you are comparing people’s perceived consequences of each possible decision, and you are comparing them along the dimensions of likelihood and badness.
Both things are difficult to arrive at a “right answer” for but they are much more concrete and less tangled-up decisions than trying to arrive at the “right answer” for the whole issue without breaking it down first.
For example, with the badness dimension, you are looking for an objective (not *necessarily* “correct”) answer to a question that looks like this: “Is it worse for ~1 million people to be murdered each year or for society to gain almost a million resentful bad mothers raising criminals, drug addicts, and bad citizens each year (and all the consequences that would bring) ….. ?”.
The likelihood is probably the most subjective of these comparisons but there are ways of performing an “objective” comparison of the probability of these consequences if you don’t insist on perfection (which I think it is pretty much proven you’ll never get).
There are different ways of performing an objective-though-imperfect comparison.
A good one is to poll a set of people. Maybe every person of a certain age, or maybe elected representatives.
The end result of this exercise is to arrive at a determination on the entire issue, in a way that is more reliable than each person deciding for themselves without such a structure.
—
What do you think about this framework? Do you think that it is better for us to have each person “going by their gut” or going on their own education/reasoning? Do you see improvements, elaborations, or simplifications that should be made?
The question of whether abortion should be legal or not is off-topic (and my own opinion is certainly irrelevant). Legalized abortion was an objective of most feminists in the 1960s. It was attained (though remains under attack). So, aside from the effort required to defend already conquered territory, this should leave some space for feminists in 2005 to think about other issues.
Personally I like echan’s comment the best. One can argue whether American women are getting a fair deal in 2005 compared to American men. But women in many non-Western societies are basically property and their condition is comparable to that of cows and horses. Here in Cambridge, MA there are quite a few women who spend their time complaining about George W. Bush and singing the praises of African and Islamic culture. But in those cultures they’d be, at age 13, sold by their father to become the 3rd or 4th wife of a 50-year-old guy. I can understand how a man, especially one who is interested in having sex with 13-year-old girls and not being imprisoned, might see a lot of value in, say, the Saudi way of life. But I’m not sure why these kinds of societies appeal to Western women.
Compare women’s status in the US to, e.g. Scandinavia, to see what can be learned from other western countries. Work on improving women (human) rights in non-western countries is a quite worthy cause.
Yes, many other countries treat women like dirt — like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Iraq, ironically one of the more enlightened ME countries in this regard under Saddam, is reverting to the Iran model.
You spend a lot of time lambasting the hypocritical lefties you encounter in your line of work, and I won’t deny the type, but I think you exaggerate their prevalence or importance, even if they are well-off professional/academic types. And I definitely agree that women still have a ways to go in this country toward equality. Better than most of the world doesn’t cut it. And, in the case of abortion rights, I see some serious slippage even before Roe is overturned.