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From: crs@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics,net.social
Subject: Re: Discrimination against women and statistics
Message-ID: <28097@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 10-Jul-85 10:32:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: lanl.28097
Posted: Wed Jul 10 10:32:18 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 14:12:45 EDT
References: <482@ttidcc.UUCP> <8203@ucbvax.ARPA> 
Distribution: net
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
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Xref: watmath net.women:6366 net.politics:9898 net.social:819

> 
> The problem is that currently, most women who choose not to work do it
> for the wrong reasons. 

Perhaps they are the wrong reasons for you but how do you know that
they are the wrong reasons for them?

> They choose not to work because they haven't been
> brought up thinking that that's what they *should* do, rather that what
> they should do is stay home, care for the family, and pursue hobbies.
> This isn't *necessarily* wrong, but so far as I can tell, there are
> some *very* large pressures on women to take this course.

I get the strong impression that many on the net (not necessarily Ed)
would *now* like to put "some *very* large pressures on women" to take
the alternate course, ie a "career".  I get the same impression from
other areas as well as the net.

Is it really a good thing to replace one form of brainwashing with
another?

> If there weren't a societal predisposition for women to care for the home
> and family - and if correspondingly there were an equal societal desire
> for men to do the caring - then it would be easy to accept that a woman
> made the choice freely.  As things stand now, it's very unlikely.

It appears to be very easy to forget that this "societal predisposition"
is the direct result (and not the cause) of biology and evolution.
This is not a criticism of what Ed is saying but a gentle reminder to
other posters, many of whom seem to blame *men* for what was done by
*mother* nature.  [Sorry, I couldn't resist.]

> Let me illustrate a bit with a comment about a friend, who is now
> in her early thirties, is trained as a carpenter, has a Bachelor's
> degree from Radcliffe, and has a two year-old child.  Before having
> the child, she worked full time, and made a reasonable amount of money -
> a comparable amount to what her husband, a research neuro-biologist
> doing post-doc work, made.  All was well, everybody was making money,
> and everybody was happy.
> 
> At about the same time the child was born, or perhaps shortly before,
> her husband gave up research (for a variety of reasons, one major one
> was that to get a reasonable job in his field he would have had to move
> away from where they were living) and went into (what else?) programming.
> My friend stopped working shortly before the birth, and stayed off work
> for a couple of months after - so far, so good.
> 
> When she was ready to return to work, she found it very hard to go back,
> mostly because, as she realized, "his desire [to work] was much greater than"
> hers.  It seems to me that this incident illustrates the problem very well.
> She had trouble going back to work, not because she didn't like what she
> had been doing, not because she hadn't made enough money, but because she
> didn't have the career drive that he did.

[I really wanted to shorten that passage but it all seems relevant.]

It seems to me that *both* made sacrifices for what *they* wanted.
First, the husband sacrificed a career in neuro-biology, a field in
which, one must assume, he had more than a passing interest if he had
progressed all the way to post-doc work.  She found it "very hard to
go back [to work] because her desire to do so was less than his.  I
know you are just trying to illustrate your point that "society"
brainwashes women but it seems to me that she wasn't very well
brainwashed if she was a "trained carpenter" with a "Bachelor's degree
from Radcliffe."  It seems to me that a woman who has been able to fly
in the face of societal pressure to this extent and then *chose* *not* 
to return to work after their child was born did so precisely because
that is what *she* wanted from life.

Before you turn on the flame throwers, allow me to say that I am *not*
arguing against the reduction of societal pressures that cause women
not to choose nontraditional careers.  I do think, however, that we
had best think long and hard before we replace one form of
brainwashing with another.  The problem is, it seems to me, that of
societal pressure for *all* of us to fit into the same mold (actually,
there are two molds, I know) and the effort should be to reduce the
pressure to fit people to the respective mold rather than to merely to
reverse the direction of the pressure.  Again this is not directed so
much at Ed as prompted by his article.  Many seem intent on applying
as much pressure on women to have careers and "productive lives" as
has been applied in the other direction in the past, another
manifestation of the two wrongs make a right philosophy.

A matter of practical concern:  Several have suggested that after a
woman has interrupted her career to have a child, she should return to
work and the husband should now interrupt his career to care for the
child for a while.  This sounds good on the surface and in a utopian
world, it probably would be.  Certainly it would be fair but would it
be practical?  In this competitive world of ever rising cost of
living, does it make sense to interrupt *both* careers?  Think about
it before you start flaming at my "male arrogance" and remember that
neither I nor any other male designed the "plumbing" of either sex.
(:-})

Lets work for positive changes, not just changes.

> Ed Gould                   mt Xinu, 2910 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA


-- 
Charlie Sorsby
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