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But my own belief system is not at issue here. What is at issue is your strange refusal to accept the fact that northern Europeans and Americans, despite similar education levels, have differing views on the role of women, single motherhood, etc. with consequently different politics, including the number of female politicians.
So to boil it down, women have second class political status here because of religion. If so, I'm heartened by the fact that this is probably a "pig in the python" phenomenon driven by the protestant evangelicalism that sprang up in the 70s which is beginning to die out (and will be dead with the passing of boomers and early gen-X). Fortunately the current generation of educated women coming of age has little use for such beliefs and has a more Northern European view about family and gender equality. I'm confident this will produce more women politicians in VA in the years ahead.
I would say sexism is, simply put, prejudice or discrimination based on, indeed, sex, where an individual is judged solely based on his or her sex rather than his/her qualities. For example, "so-and-so can't be a good political leader, because she is a woman" would be sexism (Thatcher anyone?).
And that is clearly wrong.
However, a positive form of a traditional belief in sex roles would be believing that men and women have equal rights under the law, but are generally suited for different roles in family (i.e. men do not make as good mothers while women don't make as good fathers).
It is based on this type of traditional belief that in this country custody of children are often awarded to mothers in many divorce cases, because there is an a priori assumption that, holding all other variables constant, children are better served by the nurturing and more constant presence of their mothers. In fact, courts often "favor" women by not only awarding the custody to mothers, but also forcing fathers to pay for their upkeep (former wives AND children).
We may disagree (or agree), but some fathers' advocates believe that this is sexism and legal discrimination pure and simple. If you believed in strict "sameness" of men and women, that might be true. But if you believe in traditional male/female roles, this would not be sexism, but merely what is natural and better for the kids.
So to boil it down, women have second class political status here because of religion. If so, I'm heartened by the fact that this is probably a "pig in the python" phenomenon driven by the protestant evangelicalism that sprang up in the 70s which is beginning to die out (and will be dead with the passing of boomers and early gen-X). Fortunately the current generation of educated women coming of age has little use for such beliefs and has a more Northern European view about family and gender equality. I'm confident this will produce more women politicians in VA in the years ahead.
Good grief, you don't listen (or read), do you?
I got news for you. "The current generation of educated women coming of age" are more likely to stay home after their expensive education and early, pre-martial careers than their mothers! There have been loads of articles in the newspapers about this "post-feminist" generation rising in reaction to their mothers' version of more militant feminism.
Also, evangelical Protestantism is hardly dying down. In fact, some observers of religious scene in America think another wave of the Great Awakening is coming. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is becoming more traditional (Latin Mass, etc.) with a more traditionalist Pope at the helm. And, of course, the Mormon church is growing in leaps and bounds and Mormons are exceptionally traditional about sex roles.
Lastly, traditional views on sex roles do not make women "second class". (many traditional men would vote heartily for a female political leader like Margaret Thatcher). Women are equal with men under the law. Traditional views merely recognize that biology has an impact we can't legislate away or socially engineer away.
I got news for you. "The current generation of educated women coming of age" are more likely to stay home after their expensive education and early, pre-martial careers than their mothers! There have been loads of articles in the newspapers about this "post-feminist" generation rising in reaction to their mothers' version of more militant feminism.
You must not have kids or at least any older ones. As the parent of a daughter in her mid-20s I can tell you that's a load of b.s. you probably heard on Fox. She and her friends are getting married later, having children later and establishing careers first. The only reason anyone's staying home right now is because the economy isn't at full employment. Most of those are not college educated. I'd love to hear from any college educated career women who think their daughters are going to stay home and be Susie Homemaker. Not gonna happen.
You must not have kids or at least any older ones. As the parent of a daughter in her mid-20s I can tell you that's a load of b.s. you probably heard on Fox. She and her friends are getting married later, having children later and establishing careers first. The only reason anyone's staying home right now is because the economy isn't at full employment. Most of those are not college educated. I'd love to hear from any college educated career women who think their daughters are going to stay home and be Susie Homemaker. Not gonna happen.
You do realize 1) I don't watch TV (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc.) and 2) your daughter's particular situation may have nothing to do with overall social trends in the broader society.
Also, by this:
"The only reason anyone's staying home right now is because the economy isn't at full employment."
Are you suggesting that highly educated women who choose to stay home are simply doing so because of their alleged inability to find jobs? Because I think these women would find that HIGHLY offensive, especially since their decisions pre-date the recession.
It seems to me that you and I run in very different social circles and you are simply unable to do anything but generalize your own circumstances to everyone else's. At my church, there are lots of women who stay home or have significantly cut back their careers -- women who have Wharton MBAs and graduate degrees in hard sciences/engineering who can easily find jobs.
Could it really be that this generation of women, the first to achieve success without having to fight for it, is now walking away, willingly, and without regrets? Census bureau statistics show a 15 percent increase in the number of stay-at-home moms in less than 10 years.
Linda Hirshman is a lawyer, philosophy professor, and author. She didn't believe it, until she started researching the high-powered couples who announced their weddings in The New York Times in 1996.
"The first man I called answered the phone, and I told him what I was doing, and I said, 'Where's your wife?' And he said 'She's at home in Brooklyn taking care of our daughter.' And it turns out, so are all but 15 percent of the women I interviewed," says Hirshman. "Eighty-five percent of the women in my sample are staying home either full-time or part-time."
She's still in the early stages of her research, but the trend has been documented by other studies. And she's convinced it's going to be the 1950s all over again.
Why does it matter?
"These are the women that would have gone into the jobs that run our world. These were the women who would eventually have become senators, governors. These women would have been in the pipeline to be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies," says Hirshman. [snip]
She says she's also different from many in Stahl's generation, who were determined to stick it out no matter what. These women say they don't feel they have anything to prove. They have been successful, and if they want to take some time out to be with their kids, why shouldn't they?
"I think there's a lot of focus on what I'm sacrificing by staying home. And what's hard to articulate is how much I get back," says Hall. "I do it really-- a lot of it is for me. I enjoy seeing and being with my children." [snip]
Adds Hall: "I think there's some people with preconceived notions that because I'm at home with my children all day, I must be preparing husband-delight casserole in a cocktail dress. … The mothers groups get together and talk about Iraq policy."
Uneducated women who can't get jobs, huh? That remarks says more about you than about the women you purport to describe.
Finally, I note that the piece is from CBS News, not Fox, dated 2004, four years before the 2008 recession. There have been lots of reports (and academic studies which are the foundation of those stories) like this in the past 10 years or so. Feminism has been undergoing a paradigm shift while you've been watching TV.
Feminism has been undergoing a paradigm shift while you've been watching TV.
Perhaps we do run in different circles and I don't get my information from TV but rather from personal experience. I work for one of the largest companies in the world and have not noticed any decrease in the proportion of women seeking employment with my company. In fact just the opposite. I doubt my company is unique to the rest of the economy. I do know that younger people, both men and women value things differently than their elders. They don't care to work long hours, they're more social, and they prefer a more urban lifestyle over the big house and SUV out in the burbs. They're much more like Europeans in their lifestyle choices. In fact my company has noted this change as is seeking ways to address it. Can I generalize from this large corporation to the rest of the economy? I think so.
Can I generalize from this large corporation to the rest of the economy? I think so.
The correct answer is "not necessarily."
One of the signs of intelligence is to understand that there is a world beyond our own gaze and that it may be very different from our own.
Here is something for you to chew on since you seem insistent that we Americans are becoming more like Europeans simply because you claim to see a subset of people like that: Fertility rate still rising. (http://www.fertilitycommunity.com/fertility/fertility-rate-still-rising.-.html - broken link)
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Women in the United States are having more children than at any time in the last 30 years, the latest federal statistics show...
Increased fertility was reported in 2000 for every age group except teenagers: Among 15- to 19-year-olds, there were 22% fewer births in 2000 than in 1991, according to data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics.
In other words, American women are having more babies while our teens are having fewer. In contrast, in Europe the fertility rate is still extremely low (around 1.5 per woman, well below replacement rate) and in East Asia it has crashed to all time lows.
In some ways (but not all, of course), our society is becoming more traditional, not less so and certainly is on a different trajectory than many European ones.
Having seen and experienced that social-democratic, low church attendance, low marriage rate, statist, institutionalized welfare European lifestyle up close and personal, I think America's separate trajectory is very salutary.
You might note, too, that in several European countries, center-right coalitions are in power now, because many Europeans are beginning to see the urgent need to reform several aspects (serious flaws) of their societies. Some of these coutries have been coasting on a vast social capital their ancestors built up over 300-400 years and have begun to realize that the policies of the past 40-50 years have eaten away much of that social capital.
Here is something for you to chew on since you seem insistent that we Americans are becoming more like Europeans simply because you claim to see a subset of people like that: Fertility rate still rising. (http://www.fertilitycommunity.com/fertility/fertility-rate-still-rising.-.html - broken link)
In other words, American women are having more babies while our teens are having fewer. In contrast, in Europe the fertility rate is still extremely low (around 1.5 per woman, well below replacement rate) and in East Asia it has crashed to all time lows..
You're mistaking cyclicality with a long term trend. Any decent demographer will tell you that since WWII American birthrates have risen and fallen pretty much in sync with the performance of the national economy but have stayed within a range of about 65 to 70 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age in the 70s. This is far below the 100 per 1,000 during the baby boom. Actually since 2008, birthrates in the U.S. have fallen along with the economy. Feel free to chew on this:
Women are also becoming much more educated, almost to the point where the future is starting to look pretty bleak for American males. I'm convinced that women are going to be running the show here pretty soon and you'll find that more and more of them won't really cotton to your traditional views on gender roles or social policy.
Perhaps you've not had the experience of raising children to adulthood as I have but I can tell you there's not a whole lot that goes with child rearing that's particularly gender specific. From what I'm seeing from my limited vantage point, men are taking on much bigger parenting roles than when I was a child. Perhaps this will free more women up to seek public office along with fulfilling careers.
Ah, but once you adjust for the economic factors, is the fertility rate constant? In other words, once you compare the fertility decline during this recession with fertility decline in other, past recessions, would there be a difference?
If, for example, the fertility dip is more shallow during this recession than during milder recessions of the past, your claim would be nonsensical. And there would have to be other explanatory variables like cultural changes or rise in religiosity for example.
Quote:
Women are also becoming much more educated, almost to the point where the future is starting to look pretty bleak for American males. I'm convinced that women are going to be running the show here pretty soon and you'll find that more and more of them won't really cotton to your traditional views on gender roles or social policy.
While it is true that the level of education defined by college degrees and such for women is on the rise, the rest of your statement is made up of assertions without evidence. For example, despite affirmative action and all kinds of other gyrations of social engineering, the gap between men and women in hard science Ph.D. is not narrowing significantly. There are so many variables in predicting the social trends of the future that the kind of claims you make is simply outlandish.
All we can say, for now, is that the empirical evidence is against your assertion. American women are having more babies and are more likely to stay home than their mothers. You're just going to have to accept that fact of life.
Quote:
Perhaps you've not had the experience of raising children to adulthood as I have but I can tell you there's not a whole lot that goes with child rearing that's particularly gender specific.
I don't particularly care to discuss my particular experience, including parenting, partly out of privacy concerns and also because I do a lot things that are out of the norm. I can tell you, however, that many parents disagree with your assertion of non-gender specificity in parenting... as does the legal system.
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From what I'm seeing from my limited vantage point, men are taking on much bigger parenting roles than when I was a child. Perhaps this will free more women up to seek public office along with fulfilling careers.
The first sentence is very true. The current generation of fathers do spend more time with their children and they are also physicially more affectionate than fathers of past generations. However, that does not necessarily lead to "free[ing] more women up to seek public office along with fulfilling careers." It may simply mean that BOTH parents spend more time with the children. You have a habit of making unwarranted leaps in reasoning.
Lastly, many highly educated women consider mothering a perfectly fulfilling calling. I don't know why you hold it in such contempt ("Susie Homemaker. Not gonna happen"). That's straight out of the 1960-70's radical feminist doctrine that women have to do exactly what men do to be fulfilled.
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