4 ms·

What is meant by "is not adequately specified and not appropriately valued monetarily"? My question isn't meant to sound skeptical, I'm genuinely curious.

clairity 9y ago
i meant that we don't buy and sell it in the ways we would buy and sell plumbing services, for example. we don't have a professional organization that sets standards and issues credentials. we can't compare the quality of one provider against another. there isn't a market to buy and sell household care, with the concomitant prices that implies. but the real question is, would we want to?
- weberc2 9y ago
  Presumably we don't do these things because the market indicates that they aren't valuable, right? In other words, we don't do them because we don't want to do them, or at least we lack the ability to do them at a price that is better than doing it ourselves? Also, we do pay some people for some of these tasks--childcare, for example. And increasingly I think we're seeing more penetration by the market--grocery shopping and other direct-to-home services. Lastly, can you clarify how this pertains to the conversation about the gender wage gap?
  - clairity 9y ago
    i think we don't do those things, not because they're not valuable--in fact, we've shown they're immensely valuable by dedicaitng whole groups of people for decades of their lives to the task--but because patriarchal social structures benefit from the asymmetry in value placement. if only men can create value, they hold power. we've been moving towards a system where power is shared between men and women. that has benefits but also tradeoffs (e.g., men can't monopolize power as before). as the system moves in that direction, things like value placement necessarily shift along with it (as you point out). what we're conversing about here is the grapplings we face along that shift as we negotiate what the new equilibrium will be. the gender wage gap can then be seen as a measure of what that equilibrium is. that's my take on it, at least. =)
    - weberc2 9y ago
      > not because they're not valuable It's not because they aren't valuable; they're just not more valuable than our leisure time (for the majority of people). Of course, even this varies--for example, outsourced child care is very popular. > patriarchal social structures benefit from the asymmetry in value placement. if only men can create value, they hold power. I don't think the patriarchy/power theory is a particularly good one. Men have never behaved as a social class nor monopolized social power. While it's true that men are overrepresented at the very top of almost every society, it's also true that men are overrepresented at the very bottom of almost every society. Theories of patriarchy don't predict this anywhere at any time, much less in almost every human society that has ever existed on the planet. I don't know what the right answer is, but it's very likely that for hundreds of thousands of years, a society's survival has depended on reproductive success where men are expendable and women are crucial. As such, men are left to do the risky work while women added social value in low risk (but important!) areas of life like tending home and family. These dynamics incentivize risk taking and competition among men, which explains men disproportionately occupying the tops and bottoms of every society. Working outside the home has only been the less risky occupation in the last hundred years or so, and our society is still adapting to the change. This is probably wrong on some of the particulars but right in general.
      - clairity 9y ago
        > I don't think the patriarchy/power theory is a particularly good one. [....] Theories of patriarchy don't predict this anywhere at any time, much less in almost every human society that has ever existed on the planet. that's gonna need some backup as you're going up against the likes of foucault and nietzsche on this one. besides, what happens at the bottom of the hierarchy is a non sequitur here. you can't just claim that power theory is wrong because not all men are at the top. that's an odd stipulation to impose. > ...men are expendable and women are crucial... this is also an odd statement. both men and women are crucial to species survival. that's actually the crux of my argument: both men and women do valuable work, but the power dynamic has disporportionately placed value on "manly" work and less so on "womanly" work. what do you think incentivized women to enter the workforce in the first place?

clairity 9y ago

i meant that we don't buy and sell it in the ways we would buy and sell plumbing services, for example. we don't have a professional organization that sets standards and issues credentials. we can't compare the quality of one provider against another. there isn't a market to buy and sell household care, with the concomitant prices that implies. but the real question is, would we want to?

weberc2 9y ago
Presumably we don't do these things because the market indicates that they aren't valuable, right? In other words, we don't do them because we don't want to do them, or at least we lack the ability to do them at a price that is better than doing it ourselves? Also, we do pay some people for some of these tasks--childcare, for example. And increasingly I think we're seeing more penetration by the market--grocery shopping and other direct-to-home services. Lastly, can you clarify how this pertains to the conversation about the gender wage gap?
- clairity 9y ago
  i think we don't do those things, not because they're not valuable--in fact, we've shown they're immensely valuable by dedicaitng whole groups of people for decades of their lives to the task--but because patriarchal social structures benefit from the asymmetry in value placement. if only men can create value, they hold power. we've been moving towards a system where power is shared between men and women. that has benefits but also tradeoffs (e.g., men can't monopolize power as before). as the system moves in that direction, things like value placement necessarily shift along with it (as you point out). what we're conversing about here is the grapplings we face along that shift as we negotiate what the new equilibrium will be. the gender wage gap can then be seen as a measure of what that equilibrium is. that's my take on it, at least. =)
  - weberc2 9y ago
    > not because they're not valuable It's not because they aren't valuable; they're just not more valuable than our leisure time (for the majority of people). Of course, even this varies--for example, outsourced child care is very popular. > patriarchal social structures benefit from the asymmetry in value placement. if only men can create value, they hold power. I don't think the patriarchy/power theory is a particularly good one. Men have never behaved as a social class nor monopolized social power. While it's true that men are overrepresented at the very top of almost every society, it's also true that men are overrepresented at the very bottom of almost every society. Theories of patriarchy don't predict this anywhere at any time, much less in almost every human society that has ever existed on the planet. I don't know what the right answer is, but it's very likely that for hundreds of thousands of years, a society's survival has depended on reproductive success where men are expendable and women are crucial. As such, men are left to do the risky work while women added social value in low risk (but important!) areas of life like tending home and family. These dynamics incentivize risk taking and competition among men, which explains men disproportionately occupying the tops and bottoms of every society. Working outside the home has only been the less risky occupation in the last hundred years or so, and our society is still adapting to the change. This is probably wrong on some of the particulars but right in general.
    - clairity 9y ago
      > I don't think the patriarchy/power theory is a particularly good one. [....] Theories of patriarchy don't predict this anywhere at any time, much less in almost every human society that has ever existed on the planet. that's gonna need some backup as you're going up against the likes of foucault and nietzsche on this one. besides, what happens at the bottom of the hierarchy is a non sequitur here. you can't just claim that power theory is wrong because not all men are at the top. that's an odd stipulation to impose. > ...men are expendable and women are crucial... this is also an odd statement. both men and women are crucial to species survival. that's actually the crux of my argument: both men and women do valuable work, but the power dynamic has disporportionately placed value on "manly" work and less so on "womanly" work. what do you think incentivized women to enter the workforce in the first place?