From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Subject: Re: women in engineering ( help..)
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 22:11:40 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <1992Sep14.164108.4234@panix.com> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>| >Paradoxal though that it is both men and women who seem to emphasize
>| >the value of men's work and disparage women's work. 
>
>farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf) writes:
>| Yes.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.  ...
>
     No, Farthing didn't write that, I did.

>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. 

No, I said that MEN will "knock themselves out" to do it, in much greater
numbers than women will. Obviously, some members of both sexes will be
represented in all positions, except where prohibited by law. But what
Goldberg is attempting to do here is to explain the sexual disparity
in the high prestige/low prestige jobs.




>The real key to role prestige seems to me to be the role's
>relationship to violence.  If the role commands a lot of
>violence, like President of the United States, it commands a
>lot of prestige.  Knocking oneself out has little to do with
>it.  I've done a lot of kinds of work, but the most
>difficult was taking care of children and the second most
>difficult was keeping house, and I didn't get any prestige
>for doing either.  As far as I can see, the "inevitablility
>of patriarchy" has more to do with who has the muscle tissue
>and the combative hormones than anything else.

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

>
>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.

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!

-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

       "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
        Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has
        broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or
        where it will end."
                               - Emerson: Essay, "Circles"
Xref: sparky alt.feminism:849 soc.women:16322