Comment by diN0bot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by diN0bot | Hacker News Reader

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we could as a society pay (women) people for emotional labor and for taking care of children and elderly. we could choose to economically value teachers and nurses instead of economically devaluing "feminine" roles -- and creating economic value specifically for masculine-branded roles. (those moments when piloting and programming became branded and $$ as male professions)

in order to end professional segregation, we need not end capitalism so much as the patriarchy. we could redefine "masculinity" as cooking for one"s family, providing emotional support, and other domestic labor -- and stop assuming women need to do it or that a "masculine" worker's time is too important for doing their own laundry or their own dishes.

it's complicated, and testosterone may even be a disability in a sense, but many of the differences between genders are not biological so much as social constructs that re-enforce constructed economic inequality.

we can stop accepting and propagating a narrow status quo.

we could as a society pay (women) people for emotional labor and for taking care of children and elderly.

This tends to not work. Paying people to care often means paying people to pretend to care. This often goes bad places.

Furthermore, the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing and we shifted "jobs" (gender based work) around to make family life still function while freeing up men to go do paid work in order to benefit all involved parties. Until around 300 years ago, most people were literally and directly working to put food on the table. Men hunted or raised crops. Women had vegetable gardens and did the cooking. Women did the sewing to provide clothing. Etc. Money was generally in short supply.

I write at times about such things on my blog. I hope we can find better solutions than what we are doing now. But your position is not really all that well thought out or researched. Reactionary stuff of this sort is not helpful. It tends to just entrench the problem.

"the history of paid work suggests that the unpaid labor of mothers in the family is the critical thing"

Thank you for this much needed shift in perspective. It should be obvious: mothers' work has been on the critical path for humanity, and other work has shifted around to accommodate it. This is such a forehead slapping observation.

You might enjoy the book More Work for Mother. (I don't know why this is being downvoted, but the book is about the history of how domestic labor was shifted off men to women to free men up to get paid jobs.)

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-history-...

Thanks, will check it out.

>we could as a society pay (women) people for emotional labor

They already get paid for emotional labor with emotional reward.

>we could choose to economically value teachers and nurses instead of economically devaluing "feminine" roles

Maybe you could stop being sexist and calling things like education and nursing "feminine."

>in order to end professional segregation

If you can point out actual instances of sexism in professions I'll be happy to back you up. Differential outcomes is not sufficient evidence of sexism. There are sexist people out there, and I'll be happy to metaphorically march alongside you against any of them.

>it's complicated, and testosterone may even be a disability in a sense

LOL, testosterone is a disability? According to you testosterone lets one gender "win" so it sounds like estrogen would be the disability, right?

>, but many of the differences between genders are not biological so much as social constructs that re-enforce constructed economic inequality.

Maybe money isn't the most important thing in the world? Maybe instead of complaining that there aren't more women at the top of the income food chain, we should be asking why any men at all are willing to work themselves to death to get there? Maybe women enjoy better lives than men because they realize earlier on that it's our connections and family that matters the most in life and they live their lives accordingly while men generally don't figure that out until much later in life. Maybe the reason why reported happiness among women has been on the decline since we wrote all these laws encouraging families to break up and shoving women into the shitty corporate ladder lifestyle men have been on for longer should tell us something about life.

> They already get paid for emotional labor with emotional reward.

Great, so they can just pay the rent with emotional reward then.

> Maybe you could stop being sexist and calling things like education and nursing "feminine."

Clearly these occupations have a larger percentage than average of female workers, they're associated with women, and probably not coincidentally, they also have low pay and low prestige. I don't know why it's the "enlightened" move to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that's not the case.

>Great, so they can just pay the rent with emotional reward then.

Keeping with gender roles... should we pay men to mow their own lawn? Of course not, people cut the lawn themselves to save money when compared to hiring a lawn service. Every dollar a family doesn't spend on lawn service or daycare is a dollar that can be spent on food or shelter. We do put an economic value on the domestic work that women do and every family I've ever known has seen it exactly that way.

>Clearly these occupations have a larger percentage than average of female workers, they're associated with women, and probably not coincidentally, they also have low pay and low prestige.

I feel like you just have a complete lack of understanding of how market value for skills and labor is determined. Picking crops is a field of work that has a larger percentage than average of male workers, it's associated with men, and probably not coincidentally, it also has low pay and low prestige. See how silly that sounds? The only thing that matters is whether or not women are intentionally being kept out of fields they're qualified for. Find specific instances of sexism, let's go get them! If salaries of teachers are too low it's only because there are too many qualified people in the market willing to perform that labor.

>I don't know why it's the "enlightened" move to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that's not the case.

The fact of the matter is that sexism has a real economic cost. If it's true that women are underpaid then hiring men comes at a premium. If it's true that women are being undervalued in the market then certainly there's at least ONE business owner who can hire up all these women and take over any given market because they can keep all that extra profit, right?

Look, I'm not saying there's no such thing as sexism. I'm not even saying that there aren't likely many cases of sexism in employment. But we know rather scientifically that after a relatively low income level more money doesn't increase your happiness. Maybe women are wiser than men and choose career paths which afford them a better work life balance so they can spend their time doing other things that matter to them. Maybe being a top tier lawyer where a client can call you a 3am on Christmas morning and expect you to work for the next 12 hours because they have $100 million on the line is a shit way to live, and maybe we shouldn't be all that concerned that women tend to choose a different path in life.

> If salaries of teachers are too low it's only because there are too many qualified people in the market willing to perform that labor.

Alas, in the environments I've been in, that's definitely not the case. A shortage of qualified teachers doesn't trigger pay rises, it triggers a change in the qualifications required to be considered a teacher. 15 years ago, my Biology teacher was a fresh-out-of-university BioChem major and graduate, with no teaching experience or qualifications, but a nice enough personality and thrown into teaching sixth form A-level Biology (last 2 years of school before university, for which the results are used to determine whether or not you get into your chosen university or not)

I got lucky, and still managed to pass my exams and get into university, but he's the first to admit he wasn't qualified for the job, and that we all succeeded mostly in spite of him, rather than because of him.

The point being is that salaries are not just a pure function of supply and demand. There are many other factors at play. The markets are not always right.

>The markets are not always right.

"Right" is kind of a loaded word. The markets may not reflect your personal values towards education, and also don't really reflect mine either in this case. But I suspect that the market still reflects the aggregate value society places on education. There's a small caveat here for government legislated requirements and salaries will lag because government is slow to react. For what it's worth though, my understanding is that private school teachers, whose salary and benefits are not legislated, tend to be paid less than public school teachers. They are probably a more accurate reflection of the market value of teachers.

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