In 1963, McLintock! included two scenes of adult spanking in which mother and daughter are each paddled with coal shovels. The scene was used in the promotion of the film: at first a poster with the shovel in hand was used but, after protests, a picture with an open hand replaced the original. (Also in
1963, John Wayne spanked Elizabeth Allen in Donovan's Reef.) Both McLintock[citation needed] and Kiss Me, Kate are loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew. In Thunderball (1965), James Bond threatens an uncooperative Miss Moneypenny with a spanking over the phone, "Next time I see you, I'll put you across my knee", to which Moneypenny replies, "I can hardly wait." The raising of her eyebrows indicates the threatened spanking is sexual in nature, not something entirely unwelcome.
The outcry over a flurry of misogynistic comments in the last few weeks – from shock jock Alan Jones accusing women of wrecking the joint to former political adviser Graham Morris describing Leigh Sales as a ‘cow’ – is only surprising for one reason.
The derogatory commentary about women, in this country in particular, is constant and normalised. The unusual aspect to this latest outburst is that a bunch of women called it and fought back. This is cause for great optimism.
Just like the reaction to radio host Kyle Sandilands’ comments last year about a woman journalist who dared to criticise him, the women who rallied around to protest these latest outbursts were making it clear. Enough is enough.
This kind of reaction is not only about women registering their protest at such casual sexism. Using social media and its considerable consumer clout, women are hitting where it hurts – at reputations and the bottom line.
Decades of observing and reporting on how women are faring in workplaces has made it clear to me there are some incredibly tenacious assumptions about women and their abilities that are still being recycled. Women leaders are routinely held to account in a way men rarely are and punished for lack of emotion, too much emotion or badly fitting jackets.
The pundits claim protests about the latest abuse are hypocritical but miss the point that this abuse is about generic gender stereotypes. In the workplace, meanwhile, it is still acceptable to overlook women with children for promotion, pay women 17 per cent less and tell them they can’t negotiate or network properly and lack leadership qualities (such as loud voices and height).
Hamstrung by the deficit model which maintains women need to act like men, and the penalties from being perceived as too aggro, no wonder women find their path through workplaces particularly fraught. No wonder 97 per cent of the top 200 company CEOs and 92 per cent of executive managers are men, while women make up the majority of higher education graduates and nearly half the workforce.
It’s time to skewer the myths: workplaces are meritocracies; the gender pay gap is exaggerated; women don’t want the top jobs; women with children don’t want a career; quotas and targets are dangerous and unnecessary; women should act more like men and are their own worst enemies; time will heal all.
Catherine Fox is the author of 7 Myths about Women and Work, published by NewSouth.
Catherine is deputy editor of the Financial Review's Boss magazine and writes a weekly column, 'Corporate Woman', for the newspaper. She joined the AFR in 1989 and has held a variety of positions, including marketing and Smart Money editor.
Before joining the AFR she worked in financial services and consulting in Sydney and London. She has worked for a range of large and small organisations, including two of Australia's largest banks, a university and an advertising agency.
Her second book, "The F Word - How we learnt to swear by feminism" (New South) with Jane Caro, was published in 2008. The book she co-authored with Helen Trinca, "Better than Sex: How a Whole Generation Got Hooked on Work'' (Random House) was shortlisted for the 2005 Blake Dawson Business Book of the Year award.
Her journalism has won several awards, and she is a regular speaker at seminars and conferences around the country. Catherine has a BA Communications (UTS) and MA Hons (UNSW) and lives in Sydney with her husband and three daughters.
Women on Boards, an organisation that champions the advancement of women into leadership and board positions recently held a breakfast at which this subject was the topic of discussion. One of the speakers, Catherine Fox, Deputy Editor of Australian Financial Review's BOSS magazine presented on the 7 Career Myths. Below is Part Two of a [...]
Women on Boards, an organisation that champions the advancement of women into leadership and board positions recently held a breakfast at which this subject was the topic of discussion. One of the speakers, Catherine Fox, Deputy Editor of Australian Financial Review's BOSS magazine presented on the 7 Career Myths. Below is Part One of a [...]
Many men are still asking young women out, going on dinner dates, calling, and adhering to the other “gentlemanly” rules established for them in a much older age and still outwardly pined for by certain female critics. What they’re finding is that young women are becoming less and less responsive to this behavior—the more serious the men get, the more distant the girls begin to make themselves, ostensibly fearing for their “independence”.
Given such a reality, what is the appropriate male response?
Quit going on dinner dates. Quit asking girls out in a formal manner. Don’t call. Cease all manner of “gentlemanly” behavior you may have learned as a child via your parents or the Disney Channel. Replace dinners and other traditional dates with bar/pong dates, and allow late night “booty-call” texts to supplant phone calls and traditional methods of asking a girl out. In short, do less.
And lo and behold, what do men find as they move to these more informal methods of courtship? Far more enthusiastic responses from their female peers and more sexual success. The girls may complain to their peers about a given man’s lack of commitment, but his low investment offers no threat to her perceived identity as a “liberated woman”, and is therefore more acceptable than anything else.
The adaptations we are seeing from men in the dating world are a natural response to female choice. The reality is that women have begun to vote with their feet. Their actions are sending the clear message that they do not want to be stuck in the trappings of traditional relationships, and they are running away from the men who threaten to offer them. They have fought quite vigorously to remove themselves from the confines of traditional dating, and continue to battle in order to maintain that distance.
We do not live in an age where the male retains unquestioned dominance/control over the sexual and social behaviors of his female peers, and it is for this reason that men have no choice but to respect these efforts and the decisions they seem to symbolize.
Girls not responding to traditional approaches about commitment and relationships? Well, you can’t make them want what they don’t want, so just don’t provide it to them. Problem solved!
Slowly, the reality of growing female aversion to commitment is dawning on society and more people are beginning to talk about it. Any discourse, however, will prove unproductive if people fail to acknowledge the fem-centric nature of the trend. Women are the gatekeepers of sex—men (at least in Western nations like the USA) do not get to directly control all aspects of female sexuality as they once did, and it is women who decide which men receive sexual companionship, when they get it, and on what conditions it is given.
Right now, those conditions are increasingly requiring young men to minimize investment. Female action has determined this, and only female action can reverse it. If young women want more male investment in relationships, then they’ll need to accept it more often when it is offered. Until such a time, men will just continue to do what works.
According to Evola, true femininity means devotion with, or without reciprocation.
The female egocentrism that Evola profiles comes to form a repulsive fusion with Western-style romance; men are told to make pathetic, emasculating displays of affection. American women have the gall to say that such men are ‘proving their manhood.’ Considering that this is what Valentine’s Day has become, it is easily the most wicked holiday on the calendar.
In case there is any doubt as to what Evola is referring to, consider these Rihanna lyrics:
So boy forget about the world cuz it’s gon’ be me and you tonight
I wanna make your bed for ya, then imma make you swallow your pride
Want you to make me feel like I’m the only girl in the world
Like I’m the only one that you’ll ever love
Like I’m the only one who knows your heart
Only girl in the world…
Like I’m the only one that’s in command
Cuz I’m the only one who understands how to make you feel like a man [.....Rihanna - Only Girl]
As Evola says, this possessiveness is a quintessentially masculine pose, and yet in modern America, only women have the license to do it. A man who takes a woman his as his own, who publicly and proudly, tells her she must show her love for him through regular cooking, cleaning and sex, is ‘domineering’ and ‘controlling.’
By Evola’s philosophy, for a woman to elect a priority above that of her lover or son is to suppress her femininity; devotion to her career over all is betrayal, an infidelity of which all polite people now approve.
A cyclist rides past an advertisement billboard in Beijing's central business district in September 2007
This fall, young girls in China's southern Guangdong province will be learning a new subject in school: how to avoid becoming a mistress. Although Chairman Mao kept a stable of women at his disposal, extramarital peccadilloes were frowned upon during China's more fervent socialist years. But as economic reforms have helped Guangdong become one of the nation's wealthiest regions, the province has been beset by a flood of ernai, literally, "second breast," as mistresses are commonly known in China.
In 2007, Guangdong passed a piece of legislation that outlawed the keeping of mistresses, but wasn't able to enforce it. The provincial government's new solution is a pioneering "female education program" across elementary and high schools that aims to teach girls to depend on themselves — not sugar daddies — for their future. "The education will focus on self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-improvement," Lei Yulan, vice governor of Guangdong, told a symposium when the initiative was announced in March.
But Li Yinhe, a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), says that education alone will not be the answer to a problem so deeply ingrained in Chinese culture. "This is a social custom, and it's well known that social customs are the hardest to change," Li says. "In traditional society, people believed that the more wives a man had the more successful he was. Now this tradition has found room to grow again."
Throughout China's dynastic history, keeping mistresses was not only tolerated, but actually had the official seal of approval from the men at the top. The country's emperors maintained legendary harems of concubines, as did noblemen, wealthy merchants and anyone seeking to enhance their social status. Indeed, the country's most famous classic novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, relates the story of an imperial concubine in the Qing dynasty who supports her entire family, including its own numerous concubines, thanks to the emperor's patronage.
That historical context has perpetuated the notion that having a mistress equates to having status and power. Now, in today's status-hungry China, keeping a mistress is once again the fashionable thing to do. In some cities, an entire ecosystem has sprung up to support the ernai industry. A recent online exposé revealed an ernai agency in Shanghai that provided a menu of potential college-student mistresses for men willing to pay. The annual maintenance fees ranged from just $3,000 for students in less renowned schools to about $26,000 for students from the best campuses.
That well-educated young women would be willing to forgo their careers to become ernais is, some argue, an example of the worst excesses of China's newfound fixation with the trappings of wealth. The trend also undercuts the country's socialist commitment to ensuring that women and men are treated equally in the workplace. What does it say that a young woman with a degree from an elite school could be just as likely to choose being a kept woman as a rising academic?
In China today, the search for a partner is often not inspired by love — but driven by a stark financial calculus. "I'd rather cry in the back seat of a BMW than smile on a back of a bike," is the common attitude of a certain segment of young girls when they are looking for wealthy partners. On the country's most popular online-dating sites, women cannot search for potential mates by common interests or hobbies, but they can select whether they require their prospective partner to have a house and a car, as well as the minimum salary level they would find acceptable.
At the same time, the booming economy means that many men now have the financial clout and disposable income to support another lover. "Economic growth has made some people rich, so they can afford to spend money on more women — especially since they have this traditional idea that having more women equates to being more successful," says Li. And With more and more women willing to play the game, social mores are shifting. While throughout the centuries men who kept mistresses have consistently been regarded as successful, attitudes toward the women who serve those men have become noticeably more lenient in recent years.
No one typifies this better than pseudo celebrity Li Wei, the self-styled "Queen of Mistresses." Arriving in southwestern Yunnan province as a penniless refugee from Vietnam, Li managed a series of affairs with ever more senior politicians. She then parlayed her charms into a vast empire of property and stocks. When it inevitably all came crashing down, Li cut a deal with prosecutors and turned in her many past lovers for lengthy sentences, while she herself served just a short sentence and emerged with most of her wealth still intact. Her conquests included Li Jiating, governor of Yunnan, and after Li was jailed, Du Shicheng, Communist Party secretary of Qingdao, who enabled Li to make a fortune from Qingdao's role as a host city for the 2008 Olympics.
Yet for all her corruption, deceit and treachery, Li has earned as many admirers among the Chinese public as she has detractors. Some delight in the power that a commoner wielded over corrupt officials, while others respect her for having made her way to the top from humble beginnings. "If she only had a pretty face, and nothing else, there is no way she could have tempted all those officials," said one poster on popular online forum Tianya. "She must have had something that other girls didn't — maturity, tolerance and knowledge."
With respect for ernais on the rise, and attitudes toward cheating men unchanged through the centuries, CASS's Li argues that focusing on female education alone is not going to solve the problem. "You can't only educate the females and expect to solve the problem. Why not educate the men as well?" she asks. "After all, they're the ones who go looking for mistresses."
Outside the Marriage Registry Office in Beijing's Chaoyang district, it is easy to spot the men and women who make up some of the estimated 5,000 couples a day who divorce in China.
Chinese newlyweds in BeijingPhoto: AFP
By David Eimer, Beijing
7:00AM GMT 30 Oct 2011
A few are still arguing as they leave the building; others stop before going in while one of them makes a last-ditch plea to save the marriage.
Most, though, simply have downcast faces indicating they are here to get the stamp on their marriage certificates – which in bureaucracy-obsessedChina are actually little red booklets – that says they are now officially divorced.
Since August 13th, when China's Supreme People's Court reinterpreted the country's marriage law, many of the women leaving marriage registry offices like the one in Chaoyang have more than just the end of their marriages to bemoan. According to the new law, residential property is no longer to be regarded as jointly owned and divided equally in the event of a divorce.
Instead, whoever paid for the apartment or house is the legal owner and gets to keep it in its entirety.
In China, the rulings of its most senior judges automatically replace existing law. For the male-dominated Supreme Court, which features just one woman amongst its 13 judges, the new ruling is a brutal attempt to shore up the crumbling institution of marriage by making divorce less attractive. It is also a ploy to end the obsession with property ownership which has gripped China in recent years as house prices have skyrocketed. But for those who have made it the most talked about subject amongst female users of Weibo – the Chinese version of Twitter – it has been dubbed 'The law that makes men laugh and women cry'.
Yang Yiyan is one woman who could be forgiven a few tears. The 31-year-old travel agent came out of the Chaoyang office with her now former husband, but they went their separate ways immediately after two years of marriage.
Now, she is homeless. "My ex-husband bought the apartment before we were married, so under the new law I'm not entitled to anything," said Mrs Yang.
"I'm hoping to get the car and half the money I paid towards the mortgage for the last two years. It's quite a burden for women, but at least I have a good job. It would be much harder if I was a housewife in the country."
There is no doubt that marriage is in crisis in China.
Once a dirty word, divorce is now so commonplace that in the first half of 2011 almost one million marriages ended, a jump of 17.2 per cent on last year according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Amongst Mrs Yang's generation, the 18-30 age group, and in the major cities, around one-third of all marriages fail. But it is not just the young and the metropolitan middle classes who are walking away from wedded bliss. In the first quarter of 2011, the biggest rise in divorces was in the southwestern province of Sichuan and eastern Shandong Province.
Yet, the way the Supreme Court is trying to stem that rising tide has ignited a furious debate about the status of women in a country where, according to Mao Zedong's famous quote, 'Women hold up half the sky', as well as highlighting the still significant wealth gap between the sexes.
"I think it is very obvious that the new law favours the richest person in any marriage," said Li Chunyan, the head lawyer at lihun.net, China's biggest divorce website.
That is nearly always the man, because Chinese women earn on average just two-thirds of mens salaries, according to a 2008 study by Beijing's Renmin University.
For "Mrs Zhang" - who asked for her full name to be withheld - who is divorcing her husband after 12 years of marriage, the new law is an insult because it ignores the role of women as wives and mothers.
"It doesn't take into account a woman's contribution to the family, and especially the raising of children," she said. "In order to take care of my son and give him the best possible environment to learn in, and to allow my husband to concentrate on his work, I gave up my job two years ago to be a full-time housewife. Everyone in the family has benefited from that: my son, my husband, my parents-in-law. But I don't see any recognition of that in the new law."
The 36-year-old and her 10-year-old son are now living with her parents. She has no cash to buy a new home, even though the apartment in Beijing she lived in with her husband is valued at two million RMB (£200,000).
"My husband's parents bought it when we married. It's in my husband's name so he and his parents-in-law are saying that under the new law I am not entitled to half of it," said Mrs Zhang.
"My lawyer thinks I can get maybe 200,000 RMB (£20,000) based on money I paid towards the mortgage. That's ridiculous, because I think the effort I put into the marriage is priceless."
A major reason why the new law is regarded as unjust by most women is that in China men, or their parents, traditionally buy the family home. Indeed, many women will refuse to marry until that happens.
It is such a custom that tying the knot with a man who doesn't own a property is known as a 'naked wedding'. But as house prices have accelerated, there is now a widespread perception that some women have been marrying solely because they know it will guarantee them the right to half the home's value if they divorce.
It was in order to challenge that convention that the Supreme Court changed the law back in August. Yet their decision will leave many women with nothing to show for their years of marriage.
"The general idea of the new law is to protect the property owner. The Supreme Court doesn't want people to get married just because they can profit if they divorce. But the social security system in China doesn't really exist, so we have to consider how to protect the people who are going to be disadvantaged in a divorce," said Li Mingchun, a law professor at China Women's University in Beijing.
Family lawyers across the country have been flooded with business since the new law took effect, as anxious women have realised their husbands are now effectively their landlords.
In some cases, men who already own a home have been told by their fiancées that they will refuse to have children, or care for his parents – the traditional duty of wives in China - unless they are registered as the co-owner of the property before they marry. Doing that is the only guaranteed way to ensure they are legally entitled to half the home.
Many women believe the law will further encourage the already rampant mistress culture in China.
"We've received a lot of inquiries from women who are panicking," said Wang Xiuquan, a family law partner at the Beijing Chang'an Law Firm.
"They think the new law means their husband can take a mistress without anything happening to him, because if the wife threatens him with a divorce he will get to keep the house. Even women in good marriages are suspicious and calling us about the implications of the new law."
Above all, in a country where women are barely visible in the higher echelons of the ruling communist party and there is no specific legislation outlawing gender discrimination, the new law is being seen as proof that China is still a man's world.
"I think the status of women is even lower than in the old days, when women didn't work and stayed at home. At least, they were protected then.
"Now, women face a lot more pressure than men in the workplace but their obligation to the family is the same as it was in the old days," said Mrs Zhang.
A contestant on a popular matchmaking show on Chinese television once dismissed a male suitor by telling him she “would rather weep in a BMW than laugh on a bicycle with you.”
Now, following controversial changes to China’s Marriage Law, she’d better make sure she at least has some kind of transportation that she paid for herself.
The words of Ma Nuo, the notorious dating show contestant, not only ignited a blaze of controversy about the materialism of young Chinese, they might have motivated the Supreme People’s Court to re-interpret the country’s 31-year-old Marriage Law. The changes th at the court introduced this week are nearly as controversial as Ms. Ma’s remarks, seen by many as a male-dominated court stepping in to protect the rights of men as China’s divorce rates rise.
The key change specifies that whichever side makes the payment on a couple’s house will now keep the property following a divorce. That’s no small tweak in a country where it’s traditional for the groom’s parents to purchase the home, and the bride’s family to furnish and decorate it.
A cartoon published on the front page of one daily newspaper in Yunnan province showed a man clutching his thinner- and younger-looking mistress while laughing at his wife’s demand for a divorce. “I’m not scared. There’s no way you’ll get the house,” he says, clutching a red booklet with the words “Marriage Law 2011” written on it.
Divorce, once extremely rare in Chinese society, is on the rise. There were nearly two million registered divorces in 2010, up 14.5 per cent from the previous year. The country’s divorce rate has more than quadrupled – from 0.4 per 1,000 people in 1985 to 1.85 per 1,000 in 2009 – since the country began a jarring economic transition that has put far more money, and all the issues that come with it, into the hands of ordinary Chinese.
Divorces are still less common in China than in Canada, although the trends are heading in opposite directions. Canada’s divorce rate was 2.2 per 1,000 in 2005, down from over 3.6 per 1,000 in 1987.
Owning your own house has long been seen as a prerequisite to getting married in China. A survey released on Valentine’s Day this year found that only 38 per cent of women would be willing to enter a so-called “naked marriage,” the popular term for a wedding held without first purchasing a house and car.
But skyrocketing real estate costs have forced more and more young Chinese to turn to their parents for help in achieving that goal, and the court hinted that its real aim was to protect the rights of parents who invested their life savings in a home for what is often their only child. “Parents who buy their children houses used to worry that their children's divorces could result in the loss of family property,” Supreme People’s Court spokesman Sun Jungong said, adding that the court heard nearly 10,000 public views before making its decision.
“(The changes) may push the two sides to consider more before getting married… many people are worried that once they get divorced, they might end up leaving the house with nothing,” said Lu Mingsheng, a divorce lawyer in Beijing. He said the new rules are jarring for some because China’s lacking social security net leaves many expecting their spouses – or ex-spouses – to take care of them financially.
But others – including many women – see the Supreme People’s Court’s intervention is a less favourable light: In the words of one outraged female microblog user, the new guidelines “sweep aside the last obstacle against men being unfaithful.” (The taking of mistresses has become so common in China in recent years that the government in the affluent southeastern province of Guangdong announced this year that all girls in elementary and middle schools would be required to take a course aimed teaching them “self-esteem, self-confidence and self-reliance.”)
Another user of the popular Sina Weibo social networking site wrote: “The new Marriage Law tells us, we women should earn our money, buy our own house, get artificial fertilization in the hospital and have a baby by ourselves.”
"It appears that though women continue to bear the burden of most household chores (and childcare*), they are spending far less time actually doing said chores now than they did in 1965. In 1965, women were averaging 25.7 hours per week on housework. By 2010, that number had whittled down to just 13.3 hours. Now hold on, nobody is accusing you of whiling away the hours with your hair in curlers while you watch the soaps (yet). Continuously advancing technology has played a huge role in making housework infinitely more time-effective and easy to complete. Think of your grandmother’s ancient vacuum cleaner- that thing probably weighed as much as your average adult in 2010! "
Ok ladies. I’ll tell you straight up, I’m a feminist. At least I’m pretty sure I am. I dunno, I never went to college and took a women’s studies class, but I did grow up with a strong, working woman in the dominant role in my household. I never for a second believed my ovaries to be a hindrance to anything I should want to do, besides maybe pee on a wall. I’m in my late twenties, don’t have much interest in renting out uterus space to any would-be dependents and I see no problem whatsoever in demanding my boyfriend wash the dishes. In fact, I expect it. I have always encouraged my girlfriends to assert their independence within their relationships, which, I can assure you, has earned me the ire of more than a few of their gentleman callers. In fact, were I drunk enough, you could probably talk me into getting a tattoo proclaiming “Down With The Patriarchy” in huge letters across my bosoms. You know, if it was tastefully done.
So it’s because of that that I feel weird about what I’m about to tell you, but I’ve got some bad news, girls. That spare tire around our collective mid-section? It’s probably there because we aren’t doing enough housework. So get in the kitchen and make your man a sandwich. That’s right, hop to it, Toots. Put some muscle in it. I know you’ve got it in you.
As some of you may have guessed, I’m referencing a recent study led by University of South Carolina fellow Ed Archer that was recently reported on by the New York Times – “What Housework has to do with Waistlines” and ABC News “Study Tying Women’s Weight Gain to Housework,” among other media outlets. The study looked at the amount of time spent on housework, leisure time physical activity and non-work related screen time, based on a collection of “time-use diaries” kept exclusively by women.The conclusion of the study is as follows:
“From 1965 to 2010, there was a large and significant decrease in the time allocated to Household Management (HM). By 2010, women allocated 25% more time to screen-based media use than HM (i.e., cooking, cleaning, and laundry combined). The reallocation of time from active pursuits (i.e., housework) to sedentary pastimes (e.g., watching TV) has important health consequences. These results suggest that the decrement in Household Management Energy Expenditure may have contributed to the increasing prevalence of obesity in women during the last five decades.”
Get out the pitchforks, huh girls? This jagoff obviously wants us barefoot, pregnant and beating our wash against a rock! And not only that, but the whole reason he wants us to do these things is because he thinks we’re fat!
Of course, the Twitterverse has been ablaze with outrage over these sentiments. A few standouts:
“And in other news, the 1950s called and they want their article back.”
“WOMEN: You’re fat because you don’t do housework anymore. (Nice double whammy.)”
And from Jessica Valenti, contributor to The Nation and loud and proud feminist:
“Am I fucking hallucinating or did @nytimes just tell me American women are fat because they don’t vacuum enough?”
Hashtags accompanying these Twitter responses ranged from #whyweneedfeminism to #whywasthisevenastudy. A few even referenced my impending chest piece with the hashtag #patriarchy.
A lot of nerve, huh? Fat women need to clean more so they can stop being fat? As one Twit (or is it Tweeter?) put it “Oh yeah? Then how come MEN are fat too?” Good question! Why all the focus on women’s weight? It’s not like every man is sporting six pack. This is obviously another attempt by men to fat shame us!
Actually, as it turns out this was a follow-up to a study published in 2011 examining the increasingly sedentary nature of jobs in the U.S workforce over the last 50 years. That study concluded that American workers were on average, burning 150 less calories per working day than their parents did, “thus materially contributing to the rise in obesity during the corresponding time frame, especially among men,” as quoted by the New York Times.
The trouble with the study on employed workers was that it mostly ignored women, as so many worked inside the home, not the work force. That prompted some researchers to give us gals a second glance. Even employed women tend to do the majority of the brunt work around the house (unjust as that may be), and it has a significant impact on energy expenditure that the labor-only study did not account for.
It appears that though women continue to bear the burden of most household chores (and childcare*), they are spending far less time actually doing said chores now than they did in 1965. In 1965, women were averaging 25.7 hours per week on housework. By 2010, that number had whittled down to just 13.3 hours. Now hold on, nobody is accusing you of whiling away the hours with your hair in curlers while you watch the soaps (yet). Continuously advancing technology has played a huge role in making housework infinitely more time-effective and easy to complete. Think of your grandmother’s ancient vacuum cleaner- that thing probably weighed as much as your average adult in 2010! Now consider your itty bitty Swiffer thingy, or better yet, your Roomba. Hey, I know managing the on/off switch can be exhausting, but you gotta admit: You’re expending less energy to get the same jobs done.
Think of how much more we go out to eat than our predecessors did. Sitting down and being served is a lot less tiring than standing up in the kitchen while you prepare and clean up a meal. Even if you are preparing meals at home, it’s no doubt less exhaustive to do so with the aid of food processors, microwaves, and for clean up, dishwashers. Boy, those things are awesome. You just load it up, press a button, then sit down and relax. Right? According to the calculations put forth by the author, non-employed women in 2010 burned an average of 360 fewer calories per day than their 1965 counterparts. For working women, the number is 132 fewer calories burned.
So what are we doing with all the extra time technology has won us? Well, it appears us dames are spending a lot more of it in front of the tube and all incarnations of the screen than we used to. Double the amount we did in 1965, actually. (It’s not just us, men do it too- ironically, more so when they hang around the house doing chores.) Now listen, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Information, entertainment and whatever you’d classify Honey Boo Boo as are all great. But spending your time online or in front of the TV is simply not physically active. Everything you currently do is displacing something you used to do, and unless you used to spend all your free time in a coma, no doubt the increasing hours you sit with your eyes glued to a screen use up less energy than whatever you did in the past. Or it’s cutting in on your sleep, which of course has health consequences as well. These are sobering thoughts. As soon as I’m done writing this thing I’m unplugging the computer, I swear. Perhaps I’ll even do a little laundry… or maybe I’ll go clean the gutters and make my boyfriend do the laundry. Boy do I hate housework.
Besides more time spent watching T.V, over the years there has also been an increase in leisurely physical activity, such as playing sports and time spent at the gym. Hey, we’re not totally lazy. Technological comforts simply afford us more time to do the kinds of activities we like to do, not just drudgerous things we must do! Trouble is, it’s only been an average increase of 1.2 hours per week. For the most part we tacked it all on a few decades ago, no doubt an allowance for some spandex and leg warmer required aerobics routine, whereas sedentary screen time just keeps going up. We just don’t move around as much as we used to, and that probably contributes to our increasing weight. I don’t think this is exactly a groundbreaking study.
I personally find it relevant that housework, while physically demanding, is usually done at a fairly relaxed and even pace, and unless it’s a hot day, you probably won’t break a sweat. This is significant because it means that housework is less likely to be such a drain on the body that it slows the metabolism. This stands in contrast with the effects of excessive exercise, something that many of us engage in attempts to make up for the sedentary way we spend the rest of our lives.
Another interesting thing to consider is that while the average woman of 1965 was indeed less heavy than women today, the average 1965 centerfold would be laughed off the pages of today’s magazines. She was heavier, hairier and far fleshier than anything the current culture would dare to celebrate. When we look at ourselves and see how far off we are from the cartoonish ideals of today, it can be easy to become depressed and decide to do something desperate, like go on a bajillion day juice fast or make yourself lofty promises of many grueling hours to be spent at the gym. These efforts are extreme, and not usually sustainable. We end up on a yo-yo, punctuated by periods of elation and shame, depending on which way the scale is sliding. Perhaps it’s because we’re heavier than we used to be that we idolize women with figures that are nearly impossible to maintain. Or maybe we associate a softer figure with a weaker person, and so to prove our status as more-than-a-homemaker, we aspire to eliminate all renegade traces of body fat that dare to reside somewhere other than our breasts.
Whatever it is, I think we’re making things a lot harder for ourselves than we need to.
So ladies, I think we can save the outrage for a more worthy cause. The take-away from this study isn’t that you need to quit your job, don some June Cleaver pearls and make more work for yourself around the house in order to lose a few. The point is simply that there is a clear correlation between more sedentary lifestyles and weight gain. Housework was singled out merely because it is a laborious activity women have traditionally engaged in, and on average, none of the activities we’ve replaced it with are as rigorous. But if you don’t like housework, fine! Get someone else to do it, get the Roomba to do it, or just let the place rot, who cares! But by all means, try and do something in your daily life that necessitates regular activity. Take a dance class, start a dog walking business, grow a garden, coach a softball team, chop wood, become a meter maid. Hey, whatever gets you moving.
So long as your hackles are still raised in indignation, get a load of this…COCA-COLA actually funded the study! Clearly that makes the whole point moot!*
*The study didn’t take into account the effect of child-rearing activities. Apparently, the way the subjects recorded their activities made it impossible to distinguish between child-rearing and other housework. This is probably because so many women are doing both at the same time.
*Coca-Cola probably funded this study because it aims to do a little blame-sharing on the obesity problem. Soda and all processed foods are currently being branded public health enemy number one, and while I don’t doubt that dietary changes play a part, there is a whole picture to consider when looking at the generational weight gain we’re experiencing. The study concludes with “Physical inactivity is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the world and yet is all too often under-emphasized in clinical, educational and public health settings. While the attraction of simple causation in the etiology of obesity is powerful (e.g., economic forces cause obesity), the development of effective strategies and tactics to ameliorate the effects of NCDs and obesity necessitates a broad understanding of the complexities of human behavior and energy metabolism, inclusive of energy intake, energy expenditure and physical activity.” I can’t argue with that.
So the beautiful ladies of Jezebel are at it again today, all in a gleeful lather that fewer and fewer girls express a desire to make caring for their families a priority, and that the labor market definition of an egalitarian relationship seems to have triumphed in the mind of the young.
They start by mocking all the dumb twats whose work doesn’t include sitting in a cubicle sorting out the marketing strategy for OPI nail polish, which, as we all know, is an incredibly important social issue.
You see, for the Jezzie crowd, the only thing that counts as work is stuff you do in exchange for cash. All you folks volunteering for your favorite causes? That’s not work, and it contributes nothing. All you folks taking care of either younger or the older generation because they are your family and you love them? Nope. Sit down, you’re not working. None of that counts. All you folks with hobbies? Nah. That isn’t work either.
Oh wait, now. If you are taking care of the older or younger generation, and they are not related to you, and you are doing it for COLD HARD CASH, well, that IS work. If your hobby is quilting and you do it for fun THAT’S NOT WORK, but if you work in a quilting factory and someone pays you, ok. You get a pass.
My point here is that no matter how much Jezebel and their ilk like to shriek that women (and increasingly men) who are at home, taking care of their families AREN’T WORKING, that work still needs to get done.
So who does it? Who cooks the food, washes the dishes, cleans the house, sorts out the laundry, does the gardening, raises the children, takes care of the elderly, walks the dog and every other thing that needs to get done?
All the nice white feminist ladies abandoned their homes and children and husbands and rushed pell-mell into the labor market, and then paid all the brown-skinned ladies money to do the work for them.
Isn’t that nice of them?
And the lovely white lady feminists wonder why black women don’t identify with them?
One, that they have succeeded in convincing young women and men that a woman’s value can only be measured in labor market achievements. Honestly, this more a triumph of late capitalism, which has ensured that the major proceeds of capital go to shareholders and not workers, creating a situation in which women work for survival, and not because they want to. The rush of women into the labor market COMBINED with the supremacy of the shareholder has seen real wages stagnate, and the family wage has all but disappeared unless you are very well off.
Most women wake up to the lies of feminism too late. It’s not until they have children that they realize they have not made the choices in life that allow them to make a choice! Most women WANT to be at home with their small children. In the UK, the number is 75%! Only one out of four women with small children who are working are doing it because they want to. The other three have been sold a pack of lies and they have guilt and shame and despair to show for it.
The second triumph of feminism is to shove all the work of caring for a family off onto women of color. It’s mostly white women who benefit from feminism, as scant as those benefits are. Earning a family wage is tough enough for a white family. For black families it has become nigh unto impossible, because their labor force participation is limited to doing all the work white ladies don’t care to do, for very little money. Combine that with a cultural narrative that celebrates single motherhood as empowering and beneficial, and dismisses the importance of fathering, and you end up with a whole lot of black women who have no decent chance for success in the labor market at all.
Feminism hasn’t been a triumph for women of color at all. It’s been a disaster.
The solution to this mess isn’t more of the same. When is it ever? What we need is to start telling the truth to young men and women about how they will feel when they have small children to care for. We need to start telling the truth about just how fulfilling it will be to sit in a cubicle while your baby is being raised by someone else. We need to tell the truth about what impact it will have on men’s ability to support a family when women move into high-status and high paying jobs. We need to give the younger generation a clear picture of the consequences of their actions.
And then let them choose. Yes, women should have the right to have any occupation they like (except combat solider), and they have the right to pay someone else to do all their hard work of raising a family. Men have the right to choose women based on how much she earns. Go right ahead.
The reality is that most women WON’T choose to value themselves for how much they can earn in the labor market. The ones who are in the labor force are deeply, despairingly unhappy. “Opting out”, which is another way of saying “become a housewife” has become the new dream.
It doesn’t have to be a dream. It can become a reality. All it takes is a little dose of the truth. You won’t find that truth in the mouths of feminists. Time for a game change.
To all my brothers in the West who are looking to this region for women:
Do not take a Singaporean as a wife. I mean it. The Women's Charter here is even more punishing to men than US laws when it comes to frivorce. The fact that the local feminists are now under the leash of the government and have to beg to be allowed to speak does not mean the state does not know the utility misandric laws have in controlling society. We Singaporean men are getting increasingly fed up and are looking towards Malaysia, PRC, Phillippines and Thailand for wives. You should, too.
Instead, I welcome you with open arms to pump and dump the sluts of Singapore, who have become almost as corrupted as western women have. Enthrall them with your eyes and hair that aren't black, your accents, your impressive heights and high noses. Fuck them hard, fuck them good, and waste as many of their fertile years as you can before throwing them by the wayside. Laugh at their good little worker drone merit badges and feed their hypergamy until it chokes to death.
File this one under “no shit Sherlock”, but it turns out that married couples who adhere to a gendered division of household labor have more sex than those who don’t.
Yep, it turns out that playing out traditional masculine and feminine roles has an impact on sexual desire, and therefore on sexual frequency. Guys who take out the garbage, mow the lawn, pay the bills and take care of the vehicles are getting laid 20 more times a year than the kitchen-bitches slaving over a hot stove.
And obviously, the inverse is true, too. Ladies who cook, vacuum, fold the laundry and make the kid’s dentist appointments are getting love 20 more times, too.
Why should this be? I have a theory: I think it has to do with respect. Feminism has spent a long time trying to convince both men and women that gender is socially constructed. That in and of itself is not a bad thing, necessarily. Stupid, but not bad. Where feminism went really wrong was to define femininity as POSITIVE, all the while ignoring the not so pleasant qualities associated with the feminine, while simultaneously defining masculinity as NEGATIVE, all the while ignoring the wonderful things about masculinity.
Once you accept the premise that the feminine is a priori superior to the masculine, the plan of attack becomes quite obvious: men must become feminine or be forever defined as inferior and unworthy. It’s a tongue in cheek aphorism that feminists hate men, but of course, that’s not true. They love men. As long as men act like women.
Of course, Jezebel responded to the research, conducted at the University of Washington using a sample size of 4500 (that’s a good sample) with reason and rationality. They took a careful look at the data and then tried to come up with some hypothesis that might explain why couples following traditional gender roles might have increased sexual desire for one another.
Yeah, right. Nope. What they did was mock and ridicule the data, and then set up some kind of bullshit sexytime dollars, which is pretty rich, considering the data indicates that SEX is exactly what they won’t be getting. Well, not as often as the couples in the study who rejected the idea that women’s work is man’s work and the two are interchangeable.
Look at how they titled the piece: Cleanliness is next to manliness, which chores will get a man laid?
There you have feminism in a nutshell. Sex is something WOMEN give to MEN as a reward for doing whatever SHE defines as necessary.
Good dog!
Sex as an act of bonding, an expression of the deepest love and care, a mutually satisfying and pleasurable experience does not even occur to these women. Nope. Sex is a tool, a weapon, something you can use to coerce men into doing whatever shit these women want.
And oh my! We have a word for coerced sex. We do! I know it! It’s on the tip of my tongue. Give me a second…
Oh yeah!
Now isn’t that fascinating? A long time ago, a gorgeous, svelte, luscious lady, the pure embodiment of femininity, said that “all heterosexual sex is rape”.
By which she means MEN are raping WOMEN.
Here’s a new one for you: all sex with a feminist is rape. Women raping men.
Dudes, if you are getting laid tonight in exchange for cooking dinner or sweeping the floor or folding the laundry, AND YOU WOULD NOT OTHERWISE HAVE DONE THOSE THINGS, you are getting raped. Hey, lots of men love to cook, and good for them. The best cooks in the world are men # sorryfeminists.
But when you have been ordered into the kitchen by a sulky bitch who figures “it’s your turn and if you don’t do it, I won’t have sex with you”, then you sir, are being coerced, and that is rape. Down with rape culture!
NO MEANS NO!
No, I won’t cook dinner
No, I won’t vacuum
No, I won’t pick up all those fucking Barbie shoes
No, I won’t fluff the throw cushions
No, no, no!
Give the rape a pass, dudes. Traditional gendered division of labor is how you put more sex into your relationship. Sex based on love and affection and respect and admiration and desire.
Tracey Cox, who writes a sex advice column at the Daily Mail has some advice for couples who aren’t having the amount of sex they would like: what you need to do is think about all the things your partner considers romantic or seductive and then set the stage so that you can deliver those things, whatever they are. If flowers and candlelight are the things that make your partner’s heart beat faster, then pick some up on your way home and turn the lights off when you get there.
If your partner finds it hot that you sit beside him on the couch watching footie, wearing nothing but his favorite team jersey, well, put the kids to bed and find a game to watch.
The key thing is to put your partner’s pleasure above your own, and use his or her preferences to encourage a little more time spent pursuing one of life’s great pleasures.
No, silly, that’s not how you have more sex with your partner. What you NEED to do is think about what YOU want, and then write a detailed contract specifying all the particulars and then you both need to SIGN THAT CONTRACT (blood is optional, apparently) because nothing says “I love you darling and want to have sex with you” quite like the concept of CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION.
Sigh.
So romantic.
Usually, contracts come with some penalty for defaulting. That opens up a lot of possibilities, doesn’t it?
You know, I can’t quite figure out where the caricature of the modern career lady as a dour shrew sucking the joy out of everything comes from?
And it seems that you can use this technique of contractual obligations for more than one aspect of life and love, too. Look! Jezebel has instructions for How to Make a Dude Sweep the Kitchen Floor (Correctly), Without You Even Having to Tell Him.
Make him!
Correctly!
Mindlessly!
Wow. Life with these ladies sounds like so much fun.
Here is just SOME of Jezebel’s list of considerations:
Do I do half of the laundry and half of the dishes every day?
Do I buy half of the clothes and toys?
Do I take on half of the management of my care providers?
Do I write half of the lists and notes?
Do I wake up in the middle of the night to calm the baby half of the time?
Do I change half of the diapers?
Do I plan half of the travel?
Do I track half of the household budget?
Do I put the kids to bed half of the time?
Do I make half of the grocery, sports, and afterschool lesson runs?
Do I write half of the e-mails to my kids’ teachers?
Do I watch the kids for half of the weekend and for half of every weeknight? http://jezebel.com/5989991/from-the-dept-of-finally-how-to-make-a-dude-sweep-the-kitchen-floor-correctly-without-you-even-having-to-tell-him
Seems like they forgot something, no?
DO I EARN HALF THE MONEY THAT COMES INTO THE HOUSE?
DO I WORK HALF THE HOURS IT TAKES TO EARN THAT MONEY?
This just leaves me with my head shaking. In what world does this make sense?
Women work fewer hours
At idiotic jobs (Hello, File Clerk! – Good job knowing your alphabet! Yay!)
You know what really confuses me? Why do men marry these women? How is it even possible that they HAVE husbands? What do men get out of relationships with these women? Contractual sex, a shit ton of housework, and the thankless task of bringing home more money and working more hours at more physically demanding jobs.
I think I’d rather be single.
Short post today – my kids are off school for the week and they are trashing the joint. I won’t be setting up any Excel spreadsheets to make sure I have correctly bitched out Mr. JB for not doing exactly half of all this additional work.
22Oct In How To Be A Woman, Caitlin Moran notes, with refreshing honesty, that women really have not created or invented very much throughout history. Her theory is that we’ve been held down too long, and whew! That is exhausting. Nice try.
Here’s what we have created: OTHER HUMAN BEINGS. And for some reason, the effort it takes to create another human being and then do a decent job raising him or her to adulthood is not even considered work! We’re supposed to do that shit for free, and then accept the theory that WE DON’T CREATE ANYTHING.
What the everloving fuck is up with that shit?
This is the main reason I do not consider myself a feminist. I am not joining any team that thinks my life’s work A) isn’t work and B) some sort of treason against all women. Hey, Simone de Beauvoir? Fuck you with your “no woman should be authorized to stay home and raise children” bullshit. Who the fuck are you, bitch? Oh yeah, a childless spinster chasing a married man around the globe. Thanks for your input, slag.
Princess Pointless has a very sick little munchkin and she left her job to care for him. She regularly does 72 hours shifts at his bedside! 72 hours! And guess what she gets paid to do that work? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING! Where is the sisterhood now? Where are all the politically aware feminists in arms? Where are the PAY ME MOTHERFUCKER protesters? Where are the politicians and leaders and activists?
Feminism has thrown women like me and Princess Pointless under the bus and our children, too. Worse, feminists throw their OWN children under the bus by choosing a career over family. And what do they spend that money on? Walk into any supermarket and look at the products. Look at them carefully. 95% of the shit you can buy at any WalMart or Tesco is fucking rubbish aimed at assuaging the guilty consciences of women who get up every day and leave the baby at the day orphanage while they go off to their “job” which is incredibly unlikely to involve A) curing cancer, B) creating technologies that improve the world or C) anything useful at all.
Yeah my kid spends 60 hours a week in institutional care while I plan strategies for marketing nail polish! Yay for me! What a great contribution.
The truth is that women don’t give a fuck about other women. There are no women rallying around me and the Princess. It’s the men in our lives who care. Who value us. Who pay the bills. Who love us for what we CREATE and PRODUCE and who are prepared to pay for that.
Feminist? Not a fucking chance. Not until I hear the voices of a million women screaming for our contributions to humanity to be acknowledged, respected, admired and PAID FOR! And what are those contributions to humanity. Oh nothing, except for HUMAN BEINGS.
At times, adult spanking is used for entertainment. In most cases, it's a woman who's spanked by a man.
