supiluliumas rants about sexism

[lauralh]

"If I may get on the soapbox for a second, you know, there is nothing in the world so self-serving and cynical as sexism, and this is coming from a human being who is nothing if not self-serving and cynical, so I know what I'm talking about.

"Take the animal kingdom. The division of labor between male and female, the way it seems to me, is sometimes almost arbitrary. But I'm not a zoologist.

"In the early Suffragette movement, a group of hecklers at a rally were trying to shout down speakers who were attempting to make the radical assertion that women were as capable as men in most occupations; said hecklers apparently felt that women were simply too delicate for man's work. The great Sojourner Truth, a former slave, mounted the stage and pointed out to these men that in her youth she had worked from sunup to sundown performing the most backbreaking labor imaginable with nothing else to sustain her save a pot of gruel, a slab of hardtack and some cornbread, with nothing to look forward to (at least, thankfully, until the Civil War) save the fact that she might die someday, and she had done all this even with what the heckling gentlemen claimed was an inescapable defect in performing manual labor, the fact that she was a woman. No one had anything witty to reply to the assertions of Sojourner Truth.

"We knew at the end of World War II that women were as perfectly capable as men in the heavy machinery industries - they built our bombers, tanks, ships, and artillery. But when the men came home, back in the kitchen they went, and once again were fenced behind the comfortable delusion that such things were "a man's job" and women were too delicate for that sort of thing.

"The same thing here! Women clearly demonstrate computing and mathematical ability on a par with men, but once the computing occupation was taken over by machines, suddenly, somehow, mathematics was once again beyond the female ken. "Dizzy dames" didn't do math, they collected recipes or some such thing.

So despite the fact that knowing women are as capable as men in all these professions, still, these myths are perpetuated and these stereotypes reinforced because somebody felt it was somehow in the best interests of society to do so, and the gullible hoi-polloi - and a certain segment of the male gender who were only too willing to play along - swallowed it hook, line and sinker."

Comments

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

did you read the article?

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Even into the 1950s some women continued to be involved in the forefront of computing. My mom was one of the first computer programmers on punch-card machines in the 1950s. Not too many people at all had the mathematical skills to even work the machines back then. She was sufficiently valuable to not be let go when she was married, though by 1963 she was laid off for her first pregnancy, as was routine in those days.

[ernunnos.livejournal.com]

I didn't. Does it explain why, when I put out an ad for a physically easy computer-related job, I got exactly zero female applicants?

They may be able, but they sure as hell aren't willing.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

no, the article is about the '40s.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[kirinqueen.livejournal.com]

Preach it, sister!

(ikilled007 is getting his troll on)

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

yeah, someone else can bite.

[ernunnos.livejournal.com]

Well we all know '40s woman rocked. That's not news.

[henry.livejournal.com]

you're hanging out with all the wrong women then

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

We knew at the end of World War II that women were as perfectly capable as men in the heavy machinery industries

Speaking as a man who's actually WORKED with women in heavy machinery industry:

Bull. Fucking. SHIT.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

yes yes, upper body strength, but the shit got done and we beat the nazis

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

There's a more-than-merely-significant difference between "if you drastically scale down efficiency or drastically scale up the manpower requirements, you can get the job done with female workers" and "female workers are as perfectly capable as male workers".

There really are jobs that really do require a lot of physical strength, and women really do suck at them in comparison to men. I know that's all politically incorrect and shit, but there's no getting around it. Not unless and until some pretty major genetic alterations get made to the species, anyway.

As for math and engineering, I have no opinion. There don't seem to be many women in those jobs, but I haven't the foggiest whether that's due to any kind of inherent tendency or due to cultural conditioning or what. As far as I'm concerned, if a woman can do the job, why not let her?

My gripe is just that "let women into this line of work", when it comes to jobs with physical requirements, means "drop the standards so that average women can get hired", and that sucks.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

I'm with you.

[bewing.livejournal.com]

From what I've seen (and ignoring any chicken & egg "causation" arguments), the average geeky woman just doesn't ENJOY math / science / engineering / programming as much as the average geeky guy. So they choose not to get into those fields as much, it seems. I deny that it's sexism keeping them out. That's just scapegoating.

[flossfestival.livejournal.com]

I skimmed it and it seemed to be making the error of equating calculating ability with math ability. Calculation is not math. Even in the instances where it mentioned women who did real math work, they didn't seem particularly special amongst mathematicians. There are thousands of male mathematicians throughout history who made significant contributions to the field. Citing a handful of women who made significant contributions only implies that nothing stops a handful of women from being pretty good. It doesn't mean that women in general tend to be as capable as men in such areas.

Why do women have seperate chess leagues from men even at the highest levels?