Installment 13. If Men Have All the Power How Come Women Make the Rules?
Share this compelling intro to the Men's Movement with your skeptical friends.
Equal Options for Men in Jobs and Money
The economy was the very first equal opportunity project. It evolved to help us match the power inherent in women’s biological advantage in reproduction.
We earn more money because we focus more on earning money. We need to buy things women don’t, like the love and affection of the other sex.
“Only 14 percent of female middle managers aspire to be CEO; the figure is 45 percent for middle managers who are male.”
— Newsletter of the Women’s Freedom Network, Spring 1997
Most of us would be happy to say, “Sure, come on, share my money-making. And tell me you’ll love me no matter how much money I make, no matter what kind of car I drive.”
The price of her love. The love of her life.
“There was a struggle going on inside of me. I mean, he lost his job at the auto body shop when they went [bankrupt] and closed down. Then he couldn’t find another one. But it was months and months, and I was trying to live on my welfare check and it just wasn’t enough. Finally, I couldn’t do it anymore [because] it was just too much pressure on me [even though] he is the love of my life. I told him he had to leave even though I knew it wasn’t really his fault… I couldn’t take it, so I made him leave.”
— A woman interviewed by researcher Kathryn Edin, reported in The American Prospect, January 3, 2000
It’s only natural?
Hard economic times in Japan have spurred more and more middle-age wives to cash in their husbands. A divorce consultant in Tokyo said, “Many women believe a husband’s job is to be the breadwinner. It is natural for women like that to make the first move in seeking a divorce if they realize that their husbands may not be able to guarantee financial stability and a secure income in the future.”
— derived from The Daily Yomiuri, December 6, 2000
We know that male doctors marry female nurses. How many of us can even imagine a female doctor marrying a male nurse or a talented poet struggling to get by?
“No matter how strong a woman is, no matter how much of a feminist a woman is, she still tends to look down on men who are not sufficiently aggressive and successful… We still want men to achieve as much or more, and we have contempt for those who don’t. They’re marginal; they’re losers.”
— writer and professor Jane Young in Good Will Toward Men by Jack Kammer
“The divorce rate might be lower if women placed more emphasis on men’s character and less on their paychecks.”
—Donna Laframboise, author of The Princess at the Window
The 1980 version of the Report of the NOW Project on Equal Education Rights (PEER) talked about how good it would be if “a man could quit a job he hated and take time off to retool, counting on his wife’s salary to provide a psychic and financial safety net.”
In the 1981 issue of the PEER Report, that male-friendly sentiment was nowhere to be found. Apparently NOW decided that full options were for women only.
This is the first clear fossil evidence I’ve found of where feminism shifted to pheminism. Women realized that their ability to enjoy many options depended on men enjoying few.
The idea of equal sharing seems to have escaped them, though the rhetoric of equality still echoes loudly through their cant.
They say a woman’s work is never done. But if a man is a primary breadwinner, when can he ever say he has won “enough”?
At a party ask your friends, “What’s the most valuable thing in this room?” They’ll mention expensive things: the stereo, the sofa, the TV. But a much more valuable thing is the air. Remind your friends that at least some of the best things in life are free and there are some priceless things that we might be lacking—despite the fact we earn more money.
There is a difference between something that society values and something that society pays for. Could it be that money is merely artificial valuation for work that is not intrinsically very attractive?
The Number One Reason we earn more money than women do: we have little choice.
Warren Farrell, author of several outstanding books on men and men’s issues, was at one time a devoted and loyal supporter of the women’s movement and was elected three times to the board of New York City NOW. In The Liberated Man, his first book, published in 1976, he urged us to support “women’s liberation” on the expectation that as women made their own money they would be less financially dependent on us to support them and we could enjoy some liberation of our own. Sadly, Warren has seen that his prediction has not been borne out. He now observes that as women make more and more money they look more and more upward financially for men they deem worthy. The result has been only more and more economic pressure on us to earn money so women will see us in their rising economic field of vision.
“[S]leek young women in the Prada-handbag crowd… cast chilly, appraising glances around the room at power-lunch restaurants and dot-com launch parties. You can almost see the thought-balloons over their heads: ‘Anyone here making more than me and worth talking to?’ Most of [the] female clients [of one professional matchmaker who worked at two dating services in San Francisco for ten years] were over 30. They made a lot of money but were determined to find a man who made even more. Their happiness seemed to depend on it.”
— columnist Sue Hutchison, San Jose (California) Mercury News October 1, 2000
If a man is with his wife when she sees a big, beautiful, expensive house and swoons aloud, “Oooh, I could live like that,” the man should spot a woman with a great figure and say, “Oooh, I could make love to her.” Call it sensitivity training.
Imagine a women’s prison on a hillside. There’s a rebellion going on. The inmates are breaking free.
Up the hill is another building—stoic, imperturbable. From inside comes the calm, controlled, orderly chanting of deep, male voices. Nobody’s leaving. Must be an Old Boys Club, the women conclude. A real male bastion.
The escapees surge up the hill. “We’re going in there and nobody’s going to stop us!”
They climb a ledge and peer through a grate. They see men with glazed eyes, straining to turn the heavy wheels of mammoth machines. Now they hear the words of the men’s chant. “Man’s world. No problems. Man’s world. In control.”
On the ledge, one of the women snarls, “Look at those jerks! They think they’re better than us!”
Another woman asks, “What are they doing?”
A third woman gulps. “That must be how they generate power.”
“Oh,” the second woman responds as she first notices the transmission lines running down the hill to the pastel prison from which she has escaped. “Good! It’s getting dark and I’m cold. I’m going back.”
The woman who gulped speaks up, “No! We have to help them get out of there! Don’t you see? They’ll never do it by themselves!”
“To hell with that,” the other women shout back. “Where were they when we needed them?”
Just as it takes money to make money, it takes freedom to make freedom. That’s why there has been a women’s movement and nothing much to speak of for us. Women were held in minimum security. But men are at hard labor. Society needs to keep us under tight control so we don’t get away from our “important work.”
“Nothing against work, money and power, but a ‘man’s world’ just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be… [T]here’s a reason it’s called ‘work.’ Women aren’t the only ones who don’t make it to the top; most men don’t either… I’ll teach my daughter she can be anything she wants: the president of the United States, or the class mother, or maybe someday, both. Should my son have fewer choices?”
— Susan Estrich, USA Today, March 14, 1996
Maybe it’s true that in a race from New York to Los Angeles we get a headstart by being in Cleveland. But what if where we really want to go is Paris or London or Istanbul?
At what point does an advantage become an obligation?
In a car, the engine would be considered “more important” than the stereo. But where would you rather be, under the hood where it’s hot, greasy, noisy and dangerous or in the passenger compartment where it’s cool, comfortable and safe?
Which would be granted its choice, a stereo that wanted to ride along under the hood for a while or an engine that wanted to sit in the back seat and take it easy for a spell?
Being “more important” can be the exact opposite of a privilege.
Some supposedly intelligent women apparently believe that only women have to make “tremendous personal sacrifice” in order to succeed.
“Women lawyers who have succeeded often have done so at tremendous personal sacrifice. Many attribute their achievements to a willingness and ability to adapt to a work culture that is defined by and for white men. Many placed family or personal life at risk as they emulated the male model of ‘commitment’ to the law… By refusing to play a role created by and for men, women will ascend the mountain free of constraints.”
— “Unfinished Business,” American Bar Association Report on Women in the Legal Profession
Do the womenfirsters who wrote this report actually suppose that men are “free of constraints”?
What makes the “male model” male other than men’s willingness to submit to it?
Saying that we shape business and industry to suit our needs is like saying that water makes the bucket round.
To give ourselves purpose and value, we took on the difficult mission of economic production and we adapted ourselves to accomplish it.
An especially ludicrous example of the idea that we shape the world to suit ourselves was in Time magazine’s Special Issue on Women in the Fall of 1990, which said that prison is “a system designed and run by men for men.”
In his 1997 book I Don’t Want To Talk About It, Terrence Real says that his father, who grew up poor, worked his way through art school with the help of the GI Bill. When two children were born the man added two paying jobs to his school workload and got little sleep for three years. Yet he made the dean’s list and his art work was widely praised and admired. But since he had a wife and two kids depending on him for income he switched his major from fine art to industrial design. “Years later,” writes Real, “he told me that a part of him had died on the day he went to the registrar’s office to make the change.”
That was years ago. Have things changed? In Reason magazine, June 2001, writer Cathy Young observed, “In one couple I know, the father had to drop out of a graduate program in music when he learned that a baby was on the way; he finds his current corporate job boring and exhausting and hates the long hours away from his son. The mother, who quit an office job she never much liked, seems to be enjoying her time at home. Who’s making the sacrifice?”
“I’ve sacrificed a lot of stuff for my family because I had to go to work. I missed a lot of stuff in my life. And this is what we get out of it right here. It really hurts. It really does hurt bad.”
— A 55-year-old man who was on strike against a paper mill where he had worked for 25 years; NPR “All Things Considered,” August 21, 2001
Options are commodities that come with a price whether they are exercised or not. Women can’t demand more options and also demand equal pay.
Oh, but they can if they want to. And they do.
And it’s no coincidence “women’s work” pays less
“In the 1960s, when women first muscled into the work force, at-home moms all but apologized for what they did. But once those same boomer women started families (often late in their 30s), staying home with the kids became the preferred thing to do… ‘A lot of women my age don’t feel a big need to work because they know they can if they want to,’ says… a [32-year-old] mother of two… [Barnard College economics professor Diane] Macunovich says… ‘[W]omen are using their earnings to buy back personal time.’… A higher portion of women are choosing ‘women’s work,’ such as nursing and teaching. It’s no coincidence that these jobs offer many options for part-timers.”
— Jane Bryant Quinn, Newsweek, July 17, 2000
“As women”? Didn’t they say they wanted to come to work “as equals”?
“Why should commitment [to work] be demonstrated by working 100 hours per week? As women, we have other options to explore… ”
— Laura Bellows, chair of the American Bar Association, Commission on Women in the (Legal) Profession; Ms. Magazine, November 1995
“The most important reasons for the ‘gender gap’ have little to do with employer bias. Increasingly, the gap is the result of choices women make as they seek to maximize their own happiness and achieve a broad mix of life goals.”
— Katherine Kersten, Newsletter of the Women’s Freedom Network, Spring 1996
“Economist Nancy Pfotenhauer … said women often choose to take jobs that pay less for flexibility and time for children and family…
‘Women make decisions all the time based on things other than salary—enjoyment of the job and ability to have time with their families,’ she said.”
— Associated Press, April 3, 2001
“Single women who have never married, live alone and have full-time jobs earn more than their male equivalents by 28 cents per hour… [S]ingle women earn 101.6 percent of single men’s hourly earnings across the full spectrum of occupations, education levels and age.”
— press release from the Employment Policy Foundation; April 2, 2002
Here’s a deal: we’ll make sure that women are equally represented in corporate boardrooms when they make sure we are equally represented among employees who take Family Leave.
The Men’s Bureau
The Women’s Bureau of the US Department of Labor has a budget of $8.4 million and 72 full-time personnel in its DC headquarters and ten regional offices around the country. Its mission is “to formulate standards and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment.”
It is time now for a parallel body for men. The Men’s Bureau’s mission would be “to formulate standards and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning men, improve the flexibility of their working hours, enable their equal involvement in parenting, and advance their opportunities for rewarding parenthood and a healthy family life.”
How is that a concern of the Labor Department? For one thing, unless we’re going to impose artificial quotas, women’s equality in the workplace depends on our equality outside it. And the Men’s Bureau could help workers be balanced and healthy. Harmonious family life is the most effective and least expensive Employee Assistance Program of all.