April 30, 2013

New Reader Alert – this blog is a sequential release of a longer written piece. Each segment works hard to ‘stand alone,’ but inevitably, they make more sense in context, which means reading from the beginning post through to the latest post, which is actually the current ‘end.’ Thank you for stopping by – please leave a comment; it would be great to hear what you think about these ideas.  With appreciation, Laurie

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

On Feminism: From Equal to Angel to Workhorse

Equity Feminism is rooted in classic liberal Enlightenment doctrines and aims for full civil and legal (sociopolitical) equality for women. Equity Feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment with no reference to biology, and most efforts by first wave feminists can be safely included under the equity umbrella, rather than the more contemporary gender feminism umbrella.  (Great quick read on Equity v. Gender Feminism for quick contextualization here.) 

First Wave equity feminists were responsible for most of the reforms to working conditions that affected poor women and children who had no legal protections from abuses by employers. Unfortunately, suffrage had barely been won when a new and radical form of feminism, Gender feminism, would change the nature of feminism (which had evolved to be a flourishing and protective union of women demanding sociopolitical equality) to the forebearer of what we see today.

Gender feminism, the darling of the second wave feminist movement, by contrast, is the “genocentric and misandric branch of feminism,” according to Christine Sommers, a contemporary equity feminist who believes that “most American women subscribe philosophically to the older first wave feminism whose main goal was equity for women, especially in politics and education.” Sommers faults contemporary (gender) feminism for ‘its irrational hostility to men, its recklessness with facts and its inability to accept that the sexes are equal but different.” Sommers, of course, is viciously attacked by the majority of gender feminists who currently monopolize the academic field on this subject.

By the time women had won suffrage, Alice Paul (a radical early gender feminist), leading the Women’s Party engineered the first version of the ERA in 1926 and suffrage leaders were outraged. Carrie Chapman Catt, a key coordinator of the suffrage movement, claimed it would strike down much of the needed protective legislation which protected women and children from working conditions in factories. Obtaining this much-needed legislation had been a life-long struggle for many of these women, who believed women needed special consideration because of their role as mothers. The ideal of women’s rights recognizes and promotes the role of motherhood and family in the lives of women; "equal rights" do not.

Fifty years later, inspired by the rhetoric of civil rights, and encouraged by a market-place that courts them, the great majority of feminists now believe that women should be treated as individuals, not as a sex, and that free and open competition with men in the market place is the goal. Gender feminism is a competitive model which asks for no special favors. Unfortunately for the majority of women and their children, the fact is that women cannot, ever, earn as much as men do in a market place where male wages are the standard unit of currency - ie - it takes $1000 'male' dollars to rent an apartment, but takes $1300 'female' dollars (courtesy of the wage gap and how much more time it takes her to earn an equal amount of spending power). 

Until women take the reins and use the suffrage that their equity feminist fore-mothers fought for, they are doomed to earn 'female' wages. Until and unless that happens, and I do not believe it will, we need to honestly appraise the landscape of biology, personal choice and family necessities and arrive at strategies that will give women and children, and families, a better cultural model which embraces the necessity and rewards of a culture which supports homekeepers.

April 27, 2013

New Reader Alert – this blog is a sequential release of a longer written piece. Each segment works hard to ‘stand alone,’ but inevitably, they make more sense in context, which means reading from the beginning post through to the latest post, which is actually the current ‘end.’ Thank you for stopping by – please leave a comment; it would be great to hear what you think about these ideas.  With appreciation, Laurie

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains
On Feminism - From Equal to Angel to Workhorse

First Wave feminism, more aptly described as Equity Feminism, was a high-minded response to a need which grew out of the changing economy which allowed serious abuse of workers in factories. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most work was done within the construct of the “Family Economy,” where all members of the family made their own contributions to the unit’s survival. Work in a Family Economy could be gendered, but not rigidly, and female work was not immediately devalued because it was done in the open and was ‘visible,’ as was all other work in this economy. 

In a Family Economy women’s work was often associated with the generation of cash, and with very high public visibility; in a barter society women developed streams of industry (raising poultry, selling excess butter, weaving cloth at home) which brought cash into the family economy. This work was often done communally, with many women working together, even occasionally to benefit one of the group at a particular time – such as would be the case with many women working together to construct a woman’s dowry or trousseau, those household items she would need to bring with her into a marriage in order to establish her new home. On the whole, women were seen in a far more positive light than they soon would be with the origin of a wage economy where they would forever and ever, amen, earn less than men (at least for the almost 200 years so far since this experiment  began).

With the emergence of wages and the transition from the Family Economy to the Wage Economy, during the IR we see an entirely different dynamic begin to control the perception of the value of ‘women’s work.’ Ironically, the emergence of a wage economy devalued female domestic contributions by making them invisible to society and to their families. Factory and mill owners needed the cheap labor these females represented, and lured them into low-paying jobs; however, female work was always considered temporary and was always done in addition to responsibilities for domestic work on behalf of their families. 

Even though women could go ‘out’ to earn a small wage, rather than produce a product or service at home for cash, that work took second place to their unpaid, unwaged domestic responsibilities at home, which were now done by women alone, rather than in concert with other family or community members (by now other women and most men had now entered factory work and domestic work became a solitary labor for the most part). At this point lower female wages, or lack of wages, ironically contributed to the devaluation of their efforts on behalf of the family, and their attendant loss of status,  as the new ‘wage’ mentality automatically devalued work for which no wage was earned, which now  meant the majority of all household work. Ominously, women had more access to cash in a barter economy than they would have in the new wage economy.

Another dynamic which emerged as the result of the new wage economy was a change in how wages were apportioned between men and women and how that structure reflected the changing nature and purpose of dowries. Traditionally, dowries were that portion that a woman brought into her marriage. Immediately prior to the IR that would have been possibly a small amount of cash, along with the household objects and items that were invariably provided by the new wife upon her marriage to her new household economy. As women began to enter the factories and earn wages their paychecks began to replace their dowries as they saved their earnings for future marriage. 

April 26, 2013

New Reader Alert – this blog is a sequential release of a longer written piece. Each segment works hard to ‘stand alone,’ but inevitably, they make more sense in context, which means reading from the beginning post through to the latest post, which is actually the current ‘end.’ Thank you for stopping by – please leave a comment; it would be great to hear what you think about these ideas.  With appreciation, Laurie

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

On Feminism

From Equal to Angel to Workhorse

A History of the Recent Rights of Women

It would be impossible to write a manifesto calling for women to return to their home fronts without including a discussion of feminism. I quickly discovered that the problem with that proposition is to know whose feminism, in which century, and most importantly, for the benefit of which group, I would discuss. Because there are two diametrically-opposed movements which occurred in the United States across two different centuries with the interests of two entirely different classes of women at their heart, it soon became clear that a simple discussion of “feminism” would be anything but simple.

In order to provide some clarity I will outline “feminist” activity in terms of “waves.” First Wave and Second Wave feminism refer to mostly female-driven social movements during the 1800s, in the case of the former, and in the mid-1900s for the latter. I will discuss how First Wave and Second Wave feminism are polar opposites of each other, and how they should in no way ever be confused as having even remotely similar goals, or target beneficiary populations. Unfortunately, in the rare instances that most people are even aware of First Wave feminism it is unlikely that they would resist the natural temptation to believe it was merely the ideologically similar precursor to Second Wave feminism – known now by the sadly ironic moniker “Women’s Liberation.”

There were significant events leading up to First Wave and occurring long after Second Wave that must be considered in order to begin to see the full picture of where feminism has been, what its separate camps’ goals are, what was accomplished (and how), where both went wrong, and where both are now. Where feminism will go from here is a matter which will deeply affect all Americans in the near future and we all have a vested interest in defining and supporting a type of feminism that strengthens women and families.  

In order to do that we need to understand that feminism in one form is good for society, and that other forms of feminism – such as 'Women’s Lib,' the lable applied to Second Wave feminism - is not only destructive, but is not actually true feminism at all (if female-friendly is part of your definition, at least).  This mis-named movement has caused almost unimaginable harm and destruction to our families and communities by propagandizing the ‘progressive’ society where both parents in a family work for wages. Sadly, the people who have been most harmed by this powerful, intellectually-dishonest, wrong-thinking movement have been women themselves, followed closely by their children.

A look at the goals of the original feminists will demonstrate that the vast majority of their activism was in pursuit of protective legislation in the Industrial Revolution marketplace for women and children. As the weakest members of society they were naturally exploited by the new manufacturing industry, abuses which were well-documented in the literature of the era. With no laws to regulate wages or working conditions these vulnerable populations were reduced to grave poverty and exposed to significant danger in the workplace. 

The early feminists were middle class women who saw these abuses and organized together to persuade male legislators into crafting laws such as the ten hour work day, a minimum age at which children could work, and workplace safety regulations. Many of these early women, such as Annie Besant, took an active role in organizing strikes in factories which led to early forms of unions which gave workers a slightly more fair, slightly less dangerous shake in the workplace.

First Wave feminism originally grew out of the abolitionist movement in the Northeast, and continually championed the causes of oppressed groups as it gathered strength through the 19^th century, ultimately culminating in winning suffrage for women in 1920 with the enactment of the 19^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Women had not originally sought suffrage, and in fact the majority of women who attended the first Women’s Convention in Seneca Falls in 1854 were shocked and actually appalled when Elizabeth Cady Stanton first called for the group to strategize toward that end.  

April 21, 2013

New Reader Alert – this blog is a sequential release of a longer written piece. Each segment works hard to ‘stand alone,’ but inevitably, they make more sense in context, which means reading from the beginning post through to the latest post, which is actually the current ‘end.’ Thank you for stopping by – please leave a comment; it would be great to hear what you think about these ideas.  With appreciation, Laurie

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

Homekeepers bore the children that would support their generation as it aged. They kept their own houses, socialized their children, cooked their family’s meals, made certain the children went to school clean and fed, volunteered in their local communities, and watched out for problems in their neighborhoods such as sick or elderly neighbors who might need help. By not hiring help, they were able to live on one income, raise their own children and be a benefit to their families and their communities.

One of the most valuable parts of this arrangement was that if something were to happen to the key income earner in the family the mom could work part time until the family situation stabilized before returning to the home that she had been able to help preserve through a lay-off or sickness. She was a blanket insurance policy for her family, in effect - she was a “card up the sleeve” during times of family adversity. Until the 1970’s there was no stigma attached to this sort of traditional lifestyle, and it was considered an honorable and sensible way for a woman to “support” herself, through her service to family and community, in addition to realizing the benefits of raising her progeny in the most supportive available construct. Contrary to the home being the site of oppression, home was the site of a small family business, with women managing and caring for family assets.

These women would typically marry men from their same social and economic class, and typically men who would be involved in some form of blue-collar factory work, or low-level service field such as mail carrier or bank teller. The men did not have college educations, but they had skills and increasingly well-paying jobs as America roared back from World War II.

Union membership strengthened the sector that worked for it and during the fifties and sixties the working class family was making more money than ever and was now realistically able to send their kids – boys and girls - to college for a very brief and fleeting moment in history. And then the ride ended. Manufacturing work in the U.S. declined abruptly and dramatically between 1960 and 1975, with the new practice of corporate “outsourcing,” which meant sending millions of jobs that had previously been performed by Americans to countries with more cheaply priced (and far less protected) labor pools.

At that point the scarcity of jobs put downward pressure on the family wage and the loss of buying power began to force these women, these providers of all things domestic and these insurance policies against disaster, out of their homes into low paid ‘pink collar’ jobs. Their budgets became pinched to the point that they no longer had a choice: they had to enter the labor market, increasingly on a full-time basis, as periods of under- or un-employment occurred in their husbands’ work lives.

As the economy worsened (ironically the flood of new workers could only have the effect of pushing down wages while raising prices for goods and services), as the inflation of the 1970’s stripped more and ever more buying power from the family budget these families had to send out their women to work and saw their quality of life seriously deteriorate as a result. 

http://livingwage.mit.edu/

April 20, 2013

New Reader Alert – this blog is a sequential release of a longer written piece. Each segment works hard to ‘stand alone,’ but inevitably, they make more sense in context, which means reading from the beginning post through to the latest post, which is actually the current ‘end.’ Thank you for stopping by – please leave a comment; it would be great to hear what you think about these ideas.  With appreciation, Laurie

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

There is another very real social tension over the worth of a supported woman who doesn’t “work,” whether or not she must to survive, as seen in the recent case of Anne Romney being called out for ‘never working a day in her life.’ That tension is part and parcel of the social culture of gender-feminist-driven “choice,” and “individualism” that has permeated society for the last fifty-plus years. Its propaganda clouds our thinking when it comes to homekeepers, casting them in the roll of an almost willful parasite - unemployable at best, weak or stereotypically self-indulgent or lazy,  at worst - rather than as some of society’s toughest and most valuable human capital.

In short, we have confused the value of women’s actual contributions to their families and communities with the act of earning income, mistakenly assigning value in direct proportion to earnings, somehow managing the mental acrobatics necessary to ignore the numerous services the homekeeper provides when we assign ‘worth.’ Because of this we value women who do not earn income less than we value those who do, which is not exactly an incentive package for these women to jump into the unpaid avocation of homekeeping. At a time when we need to woo women across all economic and educational sectors back into the home we need to do better by them in terms of respect, at the very least.

And while we are examining our values and beliefs, how did it become an accepted part of who we are and how we live that we farm the majority of our children out to so-called “child care,” rather than pay ourselves to raise them at home? Although I make the case that child-caring is only one facet of homekeeping, it is nonetheless one of the most important jobs a homekeeper performs, and the results of how that job is done resonates through our culture. Therefore, I ask:  How can we thrive as a democracy when the lowest paid members of society are the main care-givers during infancy and early childhood for our future voters and decision makers? Why do we allow our children’s values to potentially be shaped and formed by the least educated, lowest paid and most transient members of the workforce? Why do we accept the “inevitability” and consequences of stranger childcare as if there were not a perfectly good alternate solution to raising children – a model that worked very well for millennia?

I also want to ponder our actual quality of life in the United States in 2013.To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, are you better off now than you were fifty years ago? Is life better now by measurable indicators? I would argue not. We have gone from being one of the healthiest countries in the world to one that is raising children who are currently projected to have shorter life expectancy's than their parents, courtesy of a raging epidemic of self-induced obesity.  

We are now a country where appointed Supreme Court justices uphold the rights of corporations, whose lawfully mandated goal is to create profit, to spend without limit in elections (predicated on the farce that corporations are people, fully imbued with 1^st Amendment rights), thereby allowing elections to be sold to the highest bidder, regardless of whether or not that will result in policies that will make life better or worse for families. 

Women and children are poorer now than they have been in the last 90 years in this country. I want to repeat that: Women and Children are poorer now than they have been in the last 90 years in this country, with 22% of children living under the laughably defined Federal Poverty Level. In short, we have lost ground in every way that matters. We are poorer, sicker and less protected than ever from instability in our home and national life. We did not do what we needed to as a society to retain our homekeepers, and we are suffering the consequences. 

http://livingwage.mit.edu/