From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.women
Subject: Re: women in engineering ( help..)
Date: 16 Sep 92 02:31:11 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer) writes:
| >| .Steven Goldberg deals with this apparent paradox in his "The Inevitability
| >| of Patriarchy." In a nutshell, his explanation is: whatever society values
| >| the most highly, that is what men will practically knock themselves out
| >| to do. In some societies, a particular task may be done by men, while
| >| in other societies that same task is done by women. And in societies
| >| where it is done by men, the task is valued highly, while in those
| >| where it is done by women, it is not.  ...

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >It seems to me this sort of explanation simply begs the
| >question.  When we say that a kind of work (or role) has a
| >high value, we mean exactly that people will "knock
| >themselves out" to do it. 

rs:
| No, I said that MEN will "knock themselves out" to do it, in much greater
| numbers than women will. ...

gf:
| >The real key to role prestige seems to me to be the role's
| >relationship to violence.   

rs:
| So, stockbrokers, accountants, engineers, and physicians are
| paid so much because their work is so violent?

The traditional professional is one who has a license from
the state to perform a certain role closed to others.  The
state is force; that is, it is the community's "monopoly
of force."  In addition, the professional is expected to
have a lot of money (or other property); those who do not 
are generally not respected.  The idea of property is 
intimately connected with the idea of force; it refers, in 
fact, to those things which a person may control, by force
if necessary, within the sanction of the state.   

So in two related ways, the bourgeoisie or managing class 
and their immediate servitors, the traditional professionals, 
base their status on force.  The difference between force and
violence is mostly one of connotation; "force" is neutral,
"violence" bad or illegitimate.  The violence implicit in the 
state is generally hidden, but it manifests itself quickly 
enough when necessary.

Prior kinds of state have been much more overtly based on
violence.  Classical slavery, as exemplified by the Roman
Empire, was almost purely an organization of violence.  The
empires go back to the original patriarchal tribes, groups
of men who evidently found that a few ounces of extra muscle
tissue enabled them to enslave -- objectify -- women and
appropriate their production -- children and probably food.
A talent for physical combat is all that is required to give
men individual supremacy; the invention of military
organization and slavery turns this talent into the state.

Recognizing that time and chance happen to all, the more
sophisticated participants in the state have made an effort
to solidify or institutionalize the state.  This effort
began with military and feudal rank, and exfoliated in the
modern era into complex laws of property and status,
including the invention of professions mentioned above.  The
rise of political, mechanical, and informational technology
have vitiated the supremacy of muscle tissue in personal
relations, but culture is slower to change than technology;
thus the conflict about gender roles.

The rise of patriarchy may have been inevitable, given the
pre-technological world and the mentality and physiology of
early humans.  Its demise, now that all the saber-toothed
tigers are long dead, and we have grown somewhat tired of
fighting one another from lack of anything better to do,
seems also inevitable.

gf:
| >It's not at all paradoxical for both men and women to value
| >men's work and disparage women's work if the men and women
| >have different social status.  It seems to be a human trait
| >to regard the preferences of the powerful as the right
| >thing; the most extreme example of this is the "Stockholm
| >syndrome."  The less powerful, those of lower status, tend
| >to internalize the values of the more powerful when they
| >can.

rs:
| Yes, the woman as victim of terrorism, and all that.
| 
| Betty Friedan in 1963 compared the plight of a woman who chooses
| to stay home and raise children in a new suburban house on a 1-acre
| lot to that of a Jew before Nazis, terming that house a "comfortable
| concentration camp." Of course, to today's career woman, that lifestyle
| (and especially that house!) are utterly unattainable. Yes, that 
| sure was a tough life back then!

Sarcasm is a closed form of discourse; all we know from
it is that speaker doesn't like something.  If you want to
challenge my assertion that the less powerful frequently
internalize the values and views of the more powerful, why
don't you say so?  Our readers will know from daily life
which one of us sees clearly.
-- 
 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )