Economics…and Gender Roles?
In a more atypical Saturday evening activity – I’m just sitting on my bed (for lack of a better place to really relax) and I’m reading the Wall Street Journal…and I come across this article which states that
The impact of these uneven job losses will be felt along lines which have been apparent for quite some time to some of us concerned with basic biology. Ever since females gained control of reproduction, mainly with The Pill, there has been a cascade of subtle but extensive shifts in sociosexual experience. Now, in both a real and symbolic sense, women are acquiring control of production too.
But they are also being more controlled by it. Like men in the past, they no longer have a sassy choice between job or family. Bread before self-expression and “fulfilling potential.”
First find a job. Maybe then, find yourself.
Essentially – the gist of the article is that this recession is claiming an inordinate amount of jobs currently held by men, therefore altering the dynamic not only in gender roles (which were apparently already shifting due to ‘sociosexual’ shifts) and now women go from ‘liberation to obligation.’
The article ends with this:
Irritated slogans about equal opportunity will fade, replaced by dour acceptance of equal obligation. Or if the current data are predictive for women, unequal obligation.
I find that Lionel Tiger doesn’t seem to be making any point. He’s more or less acknowledging the current shifts in socio-economic reality.
I suppose what caught my eye about this article is that he mentions that men are increasingly unpalatable to women as a mate, particularly if that man is unemployed. Women are already having to step up in unprecedented ways to provide for those they love as well for themselves – and how is a man supposed to carve out a place for them in a woman’s life if he is unable to provide in any meaningful way?
It’s hard to find women that yearn to be provided for (or at least women that make it clear that they are indeed yearning for it), it effects this–
It is so refreshing to actually encounter a woman who acts in such a ‘counter-cultural’ way, and it challenges me to also broaden my horizons when considering what is to be expected or even desired in a marriage relationship.
