Feminism

[Bjorn]

wasn't this an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force?

 

No clue, it showed up in my Facebook feed today with no other context. Did a search, and everything I came up with was in Spanish (which I am extremely rusty in).

[Problem Machine]

That was actually a joke which would only make sense if one had already seen the episode I was referring to. I'm sorry.

[Bjorn]

Ha, totally went over my head.  I watched the first couple of seasons of ATHF back when they were first on, but haven't watched any since. 

[CollegeBaby]

Haha Bjorn that video was so gross. Like David Cronenberg level of gross. I had to turn the sound off, but I'm sure that's absolutely the effect they were going for.

 

In other news a study observes sexism in STEM fields. Men react with predictable sexism.

 

Men (on the Internet) don’t believe sexism is a problem in science, even when they see evidence

 

22 percent  of all of the comments justified the existence of gender bias.

-10.6 percent (of the 22%) justified gender bias stating that women perpetrate it by discriminating against other women.

 

wat

[Apple Cider]

This is a really great way to illustrate to people what privilege is or does.

[Zeusthecat]

This topic may have been discussed at some point here before but I'm curious to know what the prevailing opinion (if there is one) in modern feminism is regarding child rearing. Considering biological differences and the fact that breastfeeding is something that only the mother is physically capable of doing, is the general thought that a mother should sacrifice her other responsibilities when a child is born instead of the father for the greatest possible benefit to the child if it is possible to do so? (Obviously, I don't expect the answer is as simple as yes or no)

 

This has been something I've been trying to come to terms with for awhile and I think is a big factor (maybe the biggest factor?) when it comes to retention and pay gaps between men and women in the workforce. I am very pro-breastfeeding (strongly reinforced by my upbringing and my wife's education) and I think if it is feasible, a woman should strive to breastfeed her child even if it is a detriment to her career. I recognize that this is probably not a popular opinion around here but it is an irrefutable fact that breastfeeding is vastly more beneficial to a baby than formula feeding and this is an area where there is an actual biological difference between men and women.

 

I think this would be easier to answer if we lived in a world where the job industry recognized the importance and value of parenting and gave adequate maternal/paternal leave and fair pay that is on par with those who don't have children. Unfortunately this isn't the case in most places (at least here in the US).

[Apple Cider]

I'm sure it's super well and good to want women (or rather, people with breasts, not all people with breasts are women) to breastfeed their kids to the detriment of their career, but you're neglecting that a lot of things need to be changed before this can really be effective. 

 

Like you said, fair pay needs to happen. The US is also woefully behind in implementing sensible parental leave for both parents as well as adequate pre-natal care, especially to low income parents. We also need to societally grasp that breastfeeding is a natural thing and not flip the fuck out about it every time it happens in public, nor force parents to take their kids unsafe or unclean places in order to make this happen.

 

So while your suggestion is good, I guess (though I am not sure it's really your place to suggest it?) it relies heavily on a shift in our economy, our current job market as well as mores surrounding the auto-sexualization of breasts and the demonizing of exposing one's chest in order to feed a kid. There's also just the fact that many parents do not necessarily have the resources (see: time) to breastfeed, hence why they turn to formula, this happens a lot in low income areas. Same goes for companies trying to force formula on low-income families as well. 

 

Basically, your suggestion is great but it relies on a lot of other factors.

 

Plus, as far as I know, child rearing should really be between BOTH parents (if it isn't a single parent household) - allowing equal parental leave helps parents make decisions that are best for their families. I don't think breastfeeding is the biggest factor when it comes to retention and pay gaps between men and women though? Women get paid less because their work has been historically devalued due to sexism, seriously. Retention rates are affected by things like if your company even OFFERS maternity leave, which many don't. A lot of companies will straight up fire you if they find out you are pregnant. It isn't really a case of a parent-to-be just up and leaving a job vs. having to because they won't get support from their company. 

[Zeusthecat]

Sorry if I came across flippant in my post. I realize it is not my place to state this opinion but it is a topic I just don't really seem to see anyone bringing up and I think it is a pretty important thing to consider.

 

I know at least for the company I work for, the biggest reasons given for the retention gap between men and women revolve around child rearing (sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it was the breastfeeding factor specifically). They presented information gathered from years of exit interviews and that was overwhelmingly the main reason women gave for why they left the company. Due to the additional pressures brought on from having a child, they could not keep up with the demands of the job and had to make the decision to leave (of course they were lucky enough to be in the position to even have that as an option). Those that didn't have children or child rearing responsibilities had a much closer retention level to that of male employees (although still not equal). In my own experience, the majority of women that I have seen leave the company have done so because they could not keep up with the demands of the job after having a child (or they went on a reduced schedule with reduced pay). Women are already vastly underrepresented in the company and it is exacerbated by the fact that expectations for new mothers are the same as those for everyone else in the company. Thankfully, in our case, they recognize this is an issue and the business case for taking measures to close that retention gap is a no brainer. 

 

This is of course just a limited perspective based solely on my experience in the specific industry I am in, but I think it would be reasonable to posit that child rearing is one of the top factors affecting retention and pay gaps between men and women in a good number of other industries as well.

 

To be clear, I think in an ideal world where we could truly do what was best for our children, BOTH parents would contribute equally to raising them. In reality, that is rarely the case and the bulk of the responsibility falls on one of the parents. And again, the reality of that situation is that more often than not, it is the mother who ends up taking on the responsibility due in large part to biological and societal factors. Whoever ends up with that responsibility though is likely forced to sacrifice their career at some level because our job culture doesn't really factor in the demands and importance of child rearing.

 

Honestly, most of what I've read surrounding feminism has come from these forums and articles linked from these forums. It's all been a lot of really good stuff and has broadened my perspective and understanding on this subject immensely. Since I hadn't really seen much of anything mentioned about feminist perspectives on child rearing in this thread or elsewhere I figured I'd bring it up to get some perspective from other people. So thank you Apple Cider for taking the time to respond politely to me (god, re-reading it, I totally came off like a prick. I just couldn't quite get the words out of my head properly).

 

Finally, on the breastfeeding thing specifically. That is just one topic that has been strongly reinforced as super important by the major women in my life. Unfortunately, it is a thing that has become an alarmingly controversial subject amongst both men and women (at least here in the US it has) and it really bothers me how much our culture has shifted to pushing formula over breastfeeding. They push it on you relentlessly when you are in the hospital after giving birth and then when you get home, half the people you know think you're fucking weird for choosing to breastfeed. We even had one friend who made the decision to be a stay at home mom but refused to breastfeed because she felt like it was too personal and would rather just feed them through a bottle. Our culture is really fucked up when it comes to this and I think it is an important feminist issue. But obviously, like you said, this will remain an issue until we experience the necessary shifts in our culture where women (or men in some cases) have the freedom to make the decision to breastfeed their kids without experiencing any negative repercussions culturally or economically. 

[Bjorn]

Spoilering the main part of the post in case anyone's not in the mood to read about something super infuriating about rape.  A friend linked me to an academic article from the '60s that's the granddaddy of victim blaming, but with a thin veneer of academia and science. 

 

 Victim Precipitated Forcible Rape.  It's an academic article published in 1967 in a peer reviewed journal.  It opens with this. 
 

We are accustomed to believe that forcible rape is an act which falls upon the victim without her aid or cooperation, but there often is "some reciprocal action between perpetrator and victim" in such cases.

Once the victim and the offender are drawn together, a process is set in motion whereby victim behavior and the situation which surrounds the encounter will determine the course of events leading to the crime. If the victim is not solely responsible for what becomes the unfortunate event, at least she is often a complementary partner.

 

 

I only had a chance to scan it, but in its tables and case studies, it includes a section on whether or not victims had a "Bad Reputation".   Of his 122 cases he studied, he also concluded that 2 children below the age of 10 counted as having precipitated their rapes, and that 18 females in the 10-15 age category were victim precipitators. 

 

I wonder if any of the old fuckers who talk about legitimate rape read shit like this when they were young men, and got academic validation of the shit society was already telling them. 

[Deadpan]

Nothing particularly wrong with wanting parents with breasts to be able to stay at home and breastfeed. Feminism's all about giving people the opportunity to make their own decisions outside of discriminatory systems, economical pressures, etc. It gets a little weird when you suggest that it has to be done though, even at a detriment to your career. I understand you are interested in what's best for the child in this situation, but there's a lot of folk wisdom, contradictory views and outright humbug floating around about what's best for children, and that stuff is often used as an excuse to shame women for their decisions or meddle in the affairs of parents. Like, if you're not always with your child, you're neglecting them, but if you are always with your child, you're an overbearing helicopter parent.

 

The other thing I wanted to mention is that the you should keep in mind that the justification given for a problem isn't necessarily also the actual reason for a problem. I don't want to say that what your company says is inaccurate, but companies in general are not necessarily going to be cognizant of what's going on, let alone be willing to admit it. Like, which company in the world has ever admitted that, oh, a lot of women quit their jobs here because we have a really sexist office culture and they didn't appreciate how we continually ignored them when it came to promotions and downplayed their complaints about the comments their coworkers made about their appearence? A lot of this stuff might take very insidious, indirect forms, women being interviewed might not feel comfortable bringing up certain things, etc.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that we had the capability to collect a mother's breast milk and store it for later use? I could imagine there being downsides of course (discomfort, having to maintain a store of it) but realistically unless I'm way wrong about that then it barely ought to be a real barrier even aside from the points made above.

 

The other thing I wanted to mention is that the you should keep in mind that the justification given for a problem isn't necessarily also the actual reason for a problem. 

 

This is also super relevant to any time you're trying to deal with an issue of disparity between different social groups.

[CollegeBaby]

On the gender wage gap: Apart from the basic problem that women's work is not as valued as men's, the wage gap is exacerbated by a large set of other relationships. Women are less likely to complete higher education, they are more likely to work in lower paying job sectors, they are less likely to get promotions, they are less likely to have full-time positions, they work less hours in casual/part-time jobs etc. Apologists use this is a way to mitigate the severity of the wage gap as women not being good enough employees, but they fail to understand how expectations of gender roles play a part in all these factors. None of these things just happened out of nowhere, actually they reinforce a dangerous cycle.

 

To me the biggest sign of the sexism at the heart of the gender wage gap is that around the world there is only one industry where women are consistently paid higher than men. Sex work.

[Apple Cider]

Yes, you can pump and store a ton of milk and honestly a lot of parents DO because otherwise you get really sore boobs apparently, between feedings. You produce a ton more milk sometimes than the baby needs every day.*

 

*= anecdotal, I am not a mother, I gleaned this from the skadillion people I know that had kids recently.

[osmosisch]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that we had the capability to collect a mother's breast milk and store it for later use?

Yes, BUT:

- your workplace needs both time and space for the mother to pump

- you then need to store and transport the pumped milk

- a pump just plain might not work. Milk production is triggered by both mechanical simulation and contact with the baby (pheromone/hormone absorption through smell/skin).

- for the above reason a pump usually extracts less milk, leading to less production and before you know it you're in a vicious cycle.

So while possible, it's not ideal. My wife had trouble on our second child.

Regarding the decision whether or not to breastfeed, it's of course a priori the woman's decision, but like most parenting decisions, I believe it should be something that's decided as a unit. We both thought it was important to do after reviewing what evidence we could find. It's unfair that then the burden so largely fell upon her, but there's very little to do about that. Luckily here employers are obligated to allocate time and place for pumping to breastfeeding mothers so it wasn't too much of a burden, and I could then use the stored milk to relieve her sometimes.

Overall we weren't too displeased at the end of the 9 recommended months. What a fuss.

[Zeusthecat]

Nothing particularly wrong with wanting parents with breasts to be able to stay at home and breastfeed. Feminism's all about giving people the opportunity to make their own decisions outside of discriminatory systems, economical pressures, etc. It gets a little weird when you suggest that it has to be done though, even at a detriment to your career. I understand you are interested in what's best for the child in this situation, but there's a lot of folk wisdom, contradictory views and outright humbug floating around about what's best for children, and that stuff is often used as an excuse to shame women for their decisions or meddle in the affairs of parents. Like, if you're not always with your child, you're neglecting them, but if you are always with your child, you're an overbearing helicopter parent.

 

I understand where you are coming from and I don't mean to suggest that breastfeeding has to be done even if it means sacrificing your career. I am attempting (rather poorly) to pose the question: if someone who is capable of breastfeeding has a child and they are in a position to choose whether to stay at home for x amount of time to breastfeed that child or to go with formula and continue to focus on their career, which is the best decision to make considering what is best for the mother/father and what is best for the child? That is obviously a really tough question with no simple answer.

 

One thing that is very clear though, breastfeeding is absolutely better for a child than formula feeding. And feeding directly from the breast is absolutely better for a child than feeding them breastmilk from a bottle. This is not a situation where there is a bunch of folk wisdom and contradictory views on what is best for the child where some people think that formula is best and some people think that breastfeeding is best. These are hard facts that I don't think you would find anyone who knows what they are talking about arguing otherwise.

 

Given that more often than not, the mother is the only one capable of breastfeeding, what is the right thing to do when a child is born? There are so many ways that women are at a disadvantage in our society and I think this is one unfortunate area where not only has breastfeeding become such a controversial thing, but women are under further pressure to not do it because the demands that come along with it can become a detriment to their career. Having gone through this experience with my wife for both of our children now, I can appreciate how complex this situation is and the sacrifices that have to be made. Where we have landed on this topic is that yes, we think a woman (or man) should strive to make the necessary sacrifices to do what is best (i.e. breastfeed) for their child even if it means having to make some kind of sacrifice in their career. I think it is the lesser of two evils. And given that this is a big point of importance to us, the angle that I am interested in seeing feminism tackle is how to get us to a point where a sacrifice doesn't have to be made. Most of the discussions I see tend to focus on sociological issues that women face but I think the biological differences between men and women and how that relates to raising children is of equal importance. I think the conversation should recognize that there are biological differences between men and women (although not always) that especially come into play when a child is born and that we shouldn't just pretend that an average man or woman can fulfill all of those roles equally (although I do think they can fulfill most of those roles equally). I don't think that is always the case in these types of conversations and unless there are people who have kids participating in the conversation, I think it is often overlooked.

 

 

I don't want to say that what your company says is inaccurate, but companies in general are not necessarily going to be cognizant of what's going on, let alone be willing to admit it. Like, which company in the world has ever admitted that, oh, a lot of women quit their jobs here because we have a really sexist office culture and they didn't appreciate how we continually ignored them when it came to promotions and downplayed their complaints about the comments their coworkers made about their appearence? A lot of this stuff might take very insidious, indirect forms, women being interviewed might not feel comfortable bringing up certain things, etc.

 

To be fair, the president of our company directly addressed this. He acknowledged that it is also a big social issue in our company but that the best way for us to go about taking any steps to remedy this was to make the business case for why we should address it because we still live in a kind of culture where people (shareholders) refuse to admit that there is a social issue at all.

[Apple Cider]

The moment we can significantly untether our bodies from the physical labor of procreation and child feeding will be an interesting day. 

[feelthedarkness]

I always think of this article from the NY Times magazine, about birth rates, workplace, and government services. It's like 7 years old, but it covers a lot of the differences between Europe and the US. At the time it was written, the US was considered pretty flexible about protecting jobs, but offering poor financial support, where Europe offered more support, but is far less flexible as to returning to work. 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[osmosisch]

fuckin' shareholders, man

[Griddlelol]

What a fuss.

Not to mention how fucking weird a pump must be. One of my friends refused to do it because she found the whole concept repulsive. Don't blame her to be honest.

The whole career/child thing is a difficult issue, and while I'm surely simplifying the matter, it's something that couples should seriously talk about before even considering a child. While my relationship is currently miles away from children, I made it very clear at the start that I will not budge on anything that will affect my career (the conversation was around moving to a mainland European country, but it was extended to all things). Being clear might not always be possible - some people don't necessarily know what they want.

[Apple Cider]

I think it should just be feasible to have kids AND a career and not have it be a big thing, or that maybe a father wants to be stay at home, etc. The whole idea of pushing for parental leave and good amounts of pre-natal and after-birth care allows couples to make the kinds of decisions that are best for both of them, whether both parents go back to work or one stays home or whatever. But unfortunately there's huge amounts of financial and societal pressures that push women into being full-time mothers regardless. 

[Zeusthecat]

But unfortunately there's huge amounts of financial and societal pressures that push women into being full-time mothers regardless. 

 

And I just want to point out that in my opinion, that is one of the hardest and most thankless jobs that exists on the planet. My wife opted to stay at home for the first couple years of both of our child's lives and holy shit she had to deal with so much more stress and hardship than I did going to work every day. It is pretty frustrating then to see that the culture we live in puts almost no value on the life experience that a person gains being a stay at home parent. In my opinion, for a wide variety of fields that should be the type of thing you should be able to put on a resume and should be valued as highly as any other work experience.

 

So I guess to your greater point, I think it should be feasible to have kids and a career AND if a parent does decide to stay at home with their children, that decision should be recognized as an equally valuable contribution to society.

[Argobot]

I read a study on wage gaps that indicated men out earn women not because of ingrained sexism, but because women often drop down to part-time work after they have kids. That messes up their experience and contributes to why they earn less. The same study also showed that men get a salary bump when they have children  I'm sure there's a lot more going on that can't be quantified, as is true with literally any social policy that you're trying to study, but it was interesting to look at numbers that show a potential cause of unequal pay.

[Deadpan]

It's also frequently suggested that women earn less because they're not negotiating for raises as forcefully (without looking into where that learned meekness might have come from). On the flipside, women who do act that way and make themselves heard in meetings and such are often seen and described as overly aggressive and pushy (usually in less nice terms). Same behaviors, different interpretation.

 

Anything that argues that there's a reasonable, objective explanation for why things are this way is worth a couple of grains of salt at least.

[Apple Cider]

If it was merely a matter of "oh women are dropping out of the workforce" then why aren't we dispensing governmental salaries for women who take care of the home? Why isn't taking care of your home and kids considered work? Why do we penalize women who have gaps in their resumes because they were a homemaker? 

 

It's because women's labor is inherently devalued and expected to be XYZ and be done with little fuss and for almost no money. Also reminder that the wage gap cuts incredibly hard across racial lines and many people make way less money than white men, including black men. I think the lowest earners are Latin women. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

It's also frequently suggested that women earn less because they're not negotiating for raises as forcefully (without looking into where that learned meekness might have come from). On the flipside, women who do act that way and make themselves heard in meetings and such are often seen and described as overly aggressive and pushy (usually in less nice terms). Same behaviors, different interpretation.

 

Totally a flimsy note, but I remember hearing about a study that found overall women were much more effective negotiators when they were told to negotiate for their friend/colleague compared to when negotiating for themself.

I think when you point out any proven disparity it's important to keep in mind that it's not an 'objective explanation' in the sense that it's something inherent or unchangeable. Having concrete numbers just makes it clear it's an issue and means that we should be more vigilant about not letting it happen.

 

(Note I'm not even sure anyone was saying/thinking that, but I just felt like it was worth pointing out because not everyone seems to make that hop from reading such results to fully realising what they mean)