From: muffy@mica.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: (none)
Date: 28 Aug 1992 20:51:59 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

wewsgroups: soc.feminism
From: pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich)
Subject: Re: Preventing Female Children - in India
Organization: Trivializers R Us
Distribution: world

[Moderator's note: excessive included text trimmed.]

In article <17jgngINNpo2@agate.berkeley.edu> aap@wam.umd.edu (Alberto Adolfo Pinkas) writes:
>In article <2A9D2E41.13106@ics.uci.edu> tittle@alexandre-dumas.ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore) writes:
>>I *don't* think the problem is *just* economic.  I think it is
>>symptomatic of the continual dismissal of the value of the work
>>that women do, which is true here as well as there.
[...]
>In Third World countries, the value of women's work is not really dismissed,
>but it is related to the "survival" form of economics that is neede just to 
>eat in those countries. There, large families are needed to work in the 
>land, and women have, as a primary function, the care of the family. 
>Daughters, then will result in a burden for the family.

Depends very strongly on the country (not to mention the assumption that
one woman can cook, clean, gather firewood and otherwise keep house for
any number of men). In some african countries, women are right out there
tilling the fields with (in extreme cases instead of) men. Indeed, in
some parts of the Caribbean, women carry out such a large proportion of
economic activity that international development agencies managed to
lose tens of millions of dollars by running grant projects targeted to
men only. Daughters are only a burden to the family where the social
system in place prevents them from making an equal contribution to the
family's survival.

meanwhile, bhattach@dip.eecs.umich.EDU (sayan bhattacharyya) writes
>I have to disagree with you.(CTM, that is)
>
>Recognition of the the work that women do , or creating an
>environment congenial to working women, is I think ineluctably
>related to the economic situation of the society.
>
>I think a big flaw in the feminist debate is that feminists
>implicitly assume (as an article of faith) that the problems
>women face (and the causes of these problems) are exactly the same
>everywhere in the world. [...discussion of Cindy's "beliefs" being 
>expressed with no proof to back them up...]

[...]
>Western feminists are westerners as well as feminists. By pretending
>that the misery of third world women is entirely caused by 'society',
>i.e. the relevant third world societies, these feminists are probably
>trying to evade the responsibility of the West for the glaring
>economic disparities among the world's countries. This of course is
>an old game .

I think western feminists, as all westerners, do tend to be a little
myopic, and certainly western imperialism has a lot to answer for.
Nonetheless the feminist analysis does have a point: Rich countries,
women tend to get the short end of the economic stick; poor countries,
guess what, women tend to get the short end of the economic stick.
Somehow I think there's a cross-economic factor going on here -- no
natural law says that women's lot has to be poorer than men's lot in
developing nations. Blaming economic factors for relative (rather
than absolute) poverty is a way of evading a close look at cultural
factors -- also an old game.

Indeed, you can make the argument, if you will, that disinvestment in
women has helped to maintain poor economic conditions. There is strong
statistical evidence that educating women helps reduce population
pressures, and there is even evidence that helping women contribute
to an economy is highly profitable: to wit, one for-profit community
banking organization, operating in southwest asia, lent out more than
$50 million last year to women (in areas where per-capita income hovers
below $200 a year, that's roughly equivalent to lending $2.5 billion
in the U.S.) at interest rates of 22-30 percent -- over 98% of the
loans were repaid, a figure that many S&L's would envy.

paul



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