****Really Freaking Long Post Alert****



Royce Dunbar of An Iowa Libertarian blogs on "Unintended consequences of Women's Rights." I do agree that there is fallout from the women's movement that was not necessarily intended by the protagonists. I do not agree with the premise of the Tech Central Station article Royce cites, What Women Want by Val MacQueen, and I can't resist a little fisking(rolls up sleeves):



"A high-ranking British woman doctor, Professor Carol Black, president of the Royal College of Physicians, has warned that the British medical profession is shedding the prestige in which it was once held. She ascribes the diminution of respect to the high percentage of women who have entered the profession over the past 20 years."



Indeed, she is right to be concerned.



Consider teaching. Fifty years ago, when most teachers were male, teaching was accorded the status of 'profession.' Now, with the great majority of teachers in Britain and Europe being women, teaching has seen its prestige plummet to the point where it is regarded as just another unionized job with pay and holiday issues."



And back I was young 'un still in that there one-room schoolhouse, I tell ya, we knew what troubles was. I walked clear 'bout five miles each and every day. Barefoot through the snow sometimes. Uphill. Both ways.



Sorry, couldn't resist.



Actually, I had a pink coat and little white go-go boots, and I whined the whole ten minutes it took to walk to school. It was the seventies.



To get back to the point, I see nothing here to support the premise that educators are respected less in modern times, other than that general "remember back in the good old days" cliche. The author may perceive a general decrease in respect for the profession, but that doesn't mean there is one. We all remember "the good old days" cliché. Of course, the older people get the more likely they are to feel the current generation is going to hell in a handbasket. Yet, somehow, the world keeps turning.



"Again, since British women flooded into the legal profession, especially as solicitors (essentially, non-trial lawyers) the law too has seen its score marked "diminuendo"."



Hey now. First off, I don't know that attorneys have ever gotten that much respect as a whole. "First, kill all the lawyers" ring a bell? But I strongly object to the current anti-lawyer sentiment being laid at the feet of the female attorneys, for reasons I will address later. Again, it's the author's perception being passed off as truth here. I can agree that the person authoring the article does believe that teachers and lawyers are not highly regarded because of all those darn females. That does not mean it is truth.



"The Anglican Church has allowed itself to become sidelined to the point of irrelevance -- although to be fair, this is partly due to its adopting a loony left stance on most critical issues of the day. Nevertheless, the decision to admit women as vicars has diminished the Church's spiritual authority and shepherded it into an "issues oriented" profession rather than that of a provider of spiritual comfort and moral certainties.



People perceive women as anchored to issues as opposed to concepts. I recall seeing an interview with one woman who voiced dissatisfaction with her Anglican vicar, who was a woman. The woman complained, 'I was spiritually troubled. I was trying to find my faith again, and the vicar kept drawing the conversation back to the lack of adequate childcare facilities in the parish.'"



Data! Well, of a sort. Is it possible that there is a really insipid female Anglican vicar in Britain? I'd say it's a statistical certainty. Does that mean we can extrapolate that all female vicars are insipid, or that none of the male vicars are? Not so much. Anecdotal evidence does not proof make.



"Politics, too, once surely the most ruthless profession of them all, has seen the regard in which it was previously held, albeit always with a healthy skepticism in the Anglosphere, diminish since large numbers of British and European women chose politics as a career. Think Swedish female politicians, and now think how seriously you take Swedish politics."



D*mn those Swedes anyway. The article goes on to add policework to the list, indicating that law enforcement has gone soft, turned into pseudo-social workers by the increased estrogen in the department.



Conceding - only for the point of argument - that the correlation between an increasing female presence in these professions and the author's perceived decline in their 'respectability' indicates a causal relationship between the two, which again I don't see any hard data for, I don't know that it means there was a problem with putting women in the profession in the first place.



White flight is often a problem in integrated neighborhoods as the perceived property values diminish, does that call for a return to segregation and the Jim Crow laws?



"So, jobs that have always had a high female presence -- real estate, sales, journalism, advertising, literary and performer agencies -- racket along as ever with nary a change in public perceptions. (Be it noted that although these are all jobs that require mental agility and an ability to capture a fleeting mood, they do not require years of rigorous study and grinding apprenticeship.) The professions whose corpus is still largely male -- architecture, nuclear physics, orchestra conducting, rocket science (indeed, all science) maintain their status and mystique."



Orchestra conducting? Seriously?



Rocket science I can grant you. Architects? When's the last time you really respected a good architect, gave 'em some props? Mike Brady?



Okay, I'm reaallly digressing now.



"Dr. Black told London's Observer newspaper that female-dominated professions such as teaching no longer see themselves as "powerful" and pointed to the danger of feminizing medicine because they have been persuaded to make special dispensations for women and mothers.



I think that Dr. Black hit the nail on the head when she added that 'women were unlikely to take top jobs, such as the dean of a medical school, because of the difficulties combining them with family life.' She added that many women avoided more "demanding" areas such as cardiology. 'What worries me is who is going to be the professor of cardiology in the future? Where are we going to find the leaders of British medicine in 20 years' time?'"



Leaders of British medicine, or female leaders of British medicine? If I can take Dr. Black's word that all female British doctors are slack-offs, I presume the guys will welcome the lack of competition for the top slots in cardiology. Women would settle into the bottom rungs of the profession, and life would go on.



And as for that "no longer see themselves as powerful" thing, it makes it sounds like cardiologists everywhere are now suffering from a vast inferiority complex because they have to play nicely with the girls.



"Well may she ask, because as long as women insist on maintaining a dual role and manipulating their chosen professions to suit their family life, men will be less attracted to the field and the women who are in it will not make the sacrifices that males routinely make to establish a name for themselves and uphold the standards of their profession. In the British and European health systems, there are few top women consultants in any field except pediatrics. They don't seem to have the stamina or the mental rigor to become surgeons. Or perhaps they don't have the will. A 12-hour operation would interfere with their home life."



Omigod, we don't, like, have the brains to be a surgeon, ya know?



It's in the whole double-x chromosome thing, is that it? We're just not as smart?



Or we don't have a lot of "stamina" (though I actually hear that phrase applied a whole lot more to men).



So if that's the case, why worry? If the women are destined to loiter on the bottom rungs of a profession, what's the big whoop? They'll stay in pediatrics and "bring down the prestige" of that profession, while you hot-shot guys can feel powerful in surgery or cardiology.



"And women are increasingly trivializing the rigors of the professions by manipulating them to suit their family life by agitating for shorter working hours so they can be at home when the children come back from school, maternity breaks without loss of position on the rung, and extra time off for school events, and so on. The British Parliament, under touchy-feely Tony Blair, recently introduced shorter working hours in Parliament specifically so female legislators could be at home for supper with their children. No one asked why these Labour politicians went into politics knowing how unsuitable the hours are for family life. Under Labour, Parliament had to be massaged to suit young mothers. This is no way to run a country."



So straighten up and fly right, d*mn it.



Okay, first off: I do believe that any essential job requirement should remain untouched by the fact women can enter a profession. For example, I disagree with modifying any strength test for firefighters, as carrying ladders and hoses of a certain weight up and down stairs and such is inherently part of the job. On the other hand, if you try to instill those requirements for me as a lawyer, I'll sue your behind. It's not reasonably related to the job.



So with the long hours: if they can accommodate and the employer is willing, why not? Is there any law that work must be done in the office between certain set times? I'm not saying that one who pulls less weight at the office should be paid equally. But if someone wants to put in three-quarter time and get paid accordingly, does that really degenerate the profession as a whole?



It is male aggression that built civilizations and furthered the sciences, not women sitting around forming cooperatives and sharing childcare.



The women who rise to the top of demanding professions, rather than drifting comfortably along the slipstream at the bottom, do so in spite of their sex, and because they possess some of the male characteristics that infuse a discussion with certainty and confidence.



Yes: if I have any confidence, if I'm aggressive in my arguments, or have any ambition, it's because I've got some secret Y chromosome stashed away in my attic somewhere and every now and again I take a little hit. In between times, I suck on testosterone lollipops. It couldn't be an inherent part of my personality. I'm a chick, after all. Can you trot out anymore worn stereotypes for me?



To return to the issue of women lawyers and the current lack of respect for attorneys. It is my perception, not based on any data (but that didn't stop the author), that attorneys are reviled not for their feminine congeniality or general "let's all get along" attitude. If attorneys are looked down on, it is because they are perceived as vicious mental whores who are willing sell their legal expertise to the highest bidder even in the most morally reprehensible cases, and to file slimy briefs filled with half-truths and innuendo. If this is the general stereotype of the legal "shark," wouldn't a touch of feminizing actually raise the opinion of the profession?



Margaret Thatcher, although many men found her very attractive as a woman, has a mind with qualities commonly thought of as masculine. In debate, she gave no quarter and asked none. It is interesting that she holds a degree not just in law, but in chemistry as well. There are other ambitious and brilliant women in Britain who possess clarity of thought and vision, who have made sacrifices to achieve their positions and are well rewarded. But by and large, they are not in the professions. Or if they are lawyers, they aren't practicing but deploy the skills they developed in law elsewhere.



Ah, Margie. The exception that proves the rule. I wondered when we were going to get down to her.



Contrast with the namby-pamby modern day lawyers that are "by and large" not in "the professions" or in law.



Whoops.



I thought one of the founding premises of the article is that they are in law, in vast quantitites, and that this enormous female presence is diminishing respect for the legal profession exponentially???



D*mn that logic thing, anyway.



"In socialist Britain and socialist Europe today, there is a conscious demasculization under way. All those wars: bad. All those hours spent away from the family dinner table building fortunes or careers: bad. All that deferring to rank: bad. Ruthlessness: bad. Inclusion, cooperation, "understanding": good. Good for what? Who knows?"



I agree there's a general tendency to question whether a war is worthwhile. But most can agree that there are some good wars (WWII is the perennial favorite). But I propose that while the traits above are stereotypically feminine, they are actually being proposed by men and women, generally from the perceived "left." But depending on the rhetoric used, these are not necessarily negative traits. "Deferring to rank" sounds wonderful until we talk about the unwarranted abuse of prisoners. (Note I said unwarranted. I don't believe in making them all that comfortable, either.) Ruthlessness? I don't know I'd call that a good thing. Strength of character, yes, but not ruthlessness. And cooperation can be good for some things, you know. Most of us learned that in kindergarten.



None of this is new. It isn't often addressed because in countries infected with radical socialism, it is simply too incendiary. Men want to compete. Women want to cooperate. Or so runs contemporary received wisdom. This may not be true. It might be that, once the feminists announced that the professions weren't "caring" enough, the type of woman given to weaving mental macramé was drawn to demand her rights and shove her way in. Certainly the early, and rare, female doctors and lawyers in the early part of the last century were as focused and determined as any man.



I wondered how that was going to tie in. The author paints a picture of all women being weak, then cites strong women, then excuses that as being an anomaly, a 'masculine' female. Kind of like having most female lawyers outside the law, yet enough of them in the law to bring down the testosterone quotient. Makes you wonder if every female in the UK is a lawyer. Could explain some things.



I am left with this burning question: am I the "type of woman given to weaving mental macramé?"



"In my opinion, this deconsecrating of the professions is a socialist, rather than a feminist, construct. The feminists were handy fodder. There is a disconcerting leveling down in Britain and much of Europe today. Excellence is derided for "excluding" those who are not excellent. If further proof were needed that this is an exercise in class warfare, as medical science, in the fields of both knowledge and new treatment, expands at a formidable rate, Labour is currently hacking away at the profession by reducing the length and thoroughness of British medical education to make it "more inclusive".



A reasonable question might be, will the profession continue to prosper although males desert it?



Another reasonable question might be, why is it American women have entered the professions at the same rate, and are not only doing well in many fields and excelling in some, but doing so by accepting the same sacrifices that men make and playing by the same rules?



The fact is, whether it is a deliberate leveling down policy or simply a social evolution, once women predominate in a profession, that profession loses its attraction for clever men. Will we see the social status of medicine in Europe sink to the same level as that of teachers?



Well, it did in the USSR."



I see, it's all the socialists' fault. And the Russians. D*mn them. The Swedes, too.



I note that American women are exempted from the article, almost as an afterthought. But wait, aren't we hearing about the same trends over here? I don't think the distinction is valid.



Then again, I really don't know - there's still NO DATA provided to back up any of this stereotypical rant.



My repeated point is a simple one I learned in preschool: who says?



Who says an architect is respected but a police officer is not? Who says any lack of respect for the police stems from an increase in women police officers, rather than a general degeneration of respect for authority figures prevalent in society as a whole?



I mean, look at each of the examples cited: lawyer, politician, educator, police officer, vicar. See anything in common? Could it be that each of these is a figure of authority over our lives in some way shape or form? Whereas the architect . . . not exactly. Could that be why the vicar is disdained but the architect (I still can't believe that's the example given) is presumably, at least in the author's mind, revered.



As for the "It is male aggression that built civilizations and furthered the sciences, not women sitting around forming cooperatives and sharing childcare" quote, I have three comments:



1) It is possible that the "male aggression" wouldn't be possible without the female "cooperatives." Otherwise, who was doing the childcare, farming the farms, sewing the uniforms?



2) Elizabeth I, Marie Curie, Mary Leakey, Golda Meir, Queen Victoria, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth Blackwell.



3) It is also possible that "male aggression" ensured it was men who built civilizations, by enacting laws prohibiting women from holding property and going out in public, much less participating in most of these traditional male professions. Who knows what other names I could have added to #2 if those laws had not been in place and physically enforced? I don't generally like pulling the "privileged white male" card, because I don't feel today's men should be judged by these stereotypes. They weren't around when it happened, and it's not their fault. But then, neither should I be judged by the women of the past. Should I?



Having thoroughly vented, I throw this open for comments and alternate theories.