deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
> Women don't really need to do anywhere near as much housework as they do. The amount of hours worked by a homemaker has stayed steady at 60 hours per week for about 300 years while we have increasingly created household technology to make the job easier. Meanwhile, the demands on her have crept up to keep her working that many hours.
This is the story of every other job, too. Increased productivity doesn't really lead to shorter hours worked in any other field, either. Children today enjoy more opportunities and a higher standard of living, which necessitates some parental care (no one was driving kids to soccer a hundred years ago.)
> You can look up terms like "Pink Collar Ghetto" if you want to explore that further.
I did, and I noticed it uses the typical "men vs. women" stuff. "Men have/women have" statements, presenting them as diametrically-opposed factions. Your source has good stats, but I can't say I like this sort of rhetoric.
> Plenty of women find it soul crushing to be a homemaker.
I mean, lots of people hate their jobs. Change jobs. As you said, get a divorce. Maybe that wasn't acceptable a hundred years ago, but it is today.
> Trying to establish an adequate income after being a homemaker for years can be a very hard row to hoe.
Well, yeah. Those people have been out of whatever profession for usually between a dozen and two dozen years; I know others who've had medical absences of just a few years and had serious difficulty re-entering their professions. The people I know who had an easy time of going back to work stayed somewhat engaged with their professional communities. They attended some events, maybe did a little freelance work. Doesn't have to be much, just enough to remind people that you still exist and keep up-to-date on the happenings of the industry.
> Adult men (married with kids) typically choose colleges that serve their career goals and move the family there. Adult women (married with kids) typically attend whatever school happens to be conveniently nearby and not too expensive. Unsurprisingly, men tend to have better credentials that are more career enhancing.
Are you referring to going back to school? For young undergrads, they don't base their decisions on this as they aren't married and don't have kids. This was different with older generations (especially with, say, soldiers who came back, married, and went to school on the GI bill.) As far as I'm aware, most people who go back to school do so at either a local community college or online, often part-time, regardless of sex.
> Men who start businesses are much more likely to start as a full-time thing with adequate funding as their new career focus. Women who start businesses are much more likely to be starting "lifestyle businesses" that will accommodate the demands on their time as wives and moms, often because they have special needs kids or because the details of their husband's career make it impossible for them to pursue a serious career or regular job. Unsurprisingly, businesses founded by men tend to be much more financially successful than those founded by women.
You claim that, "Women who start businesses are much more likely to be starting lifestyle businesses" that will accommodate the demands on their time as wives and moms". While this is true, "lifestyle" businesses aren't the only available options. I know a guy whose wife has more "rigid" career. When they had kids, he quit his job and started a chemical import/export business. He makes good money, has lots of flexibility, but no "lifestyle" business. There's nothing that stops a lady from doing the same.
> While dismissive replies are par for the course on HN, it remains rather aggravating to have decades of reading up on the subject dismissed so casually and by a new account that was about two minutes old when you left the comment.
While dismissal is rude, account age is one hundred percent irrelevant.
I'd like to address your above comment:
> Women and men generally do not face the same options. They simply don't.
No one forced ladies to get married, have children, or stay home with them. At least, not in the past decades. What opportunities to men have that ladies do not?
You honestly come across as the female version of an MRA (Mens Rights Activist). I'll explain what I mean in the hopes that you might gain some perspective.
An anecdote.
Years ago I read about book talking about how a lot of men have simply checked out due to so many legal unfairness with respect to men (both genders have their shit to deal with). I remember reading through this book, reading the anecdotes of just severe injustices done by people and the justice system, and then at one point realizing I was angry with my gf of 2+ years. When I realized I had this general anger towards her I had to stop and ask myself why because she had never treated me in any way that ever indicated she would be onboard with some of the injustices I had been reading about.
I became a lot more careful about what I consume after that. It's important to be informed, but it's important to avoid going down a well of negativity that skews your perception. The vast majority of men love women, and the vast majority of women love men, and it's the shitty people on both sides that are the real problem. When you lose that perspective, it engenders bitterness and hatred.
MRA has some very real, valid observations. But the problem is that many of the young men who discover these observations don't have the perspective to truly understand them. So you get these older men talking about these injustices (that are real), and these younger men who have limited life experience (no perspective) starts to see women and the legal justice system as against them in a very real way. This engenders hatred on their part, and this is where the MRA movement gets their reputation.
I'm aware of these patterns, I just think they're a downstream consequence of perfectly normal and healthy specialization.
>The amount of hours worked by a homemaker has stayed steady at 60 hours per week for about 300 years while we have increasingly created household technology to make the job easier. Meanwhile, the demands on her have crept up to keep her working that many hours.
At the same time, the birth rates have been going down, now standing at sub-replacement rates in many countries. With the present development, it seems like both trends will continue. It seems like a more reasonable idea then to try and encourage women to be homemakers.
It seems like the efficiency remains about the same - being a homemaker supposedly requires less work now, but women also have less kids. Some stuff seems like it should be more efficient, but the human aspects will never be possible to automate.
Or, I mean, you can, and people do - many parents let the iPad raise their kids. But it's not a good thing.
>Historically, when jobs are male dominated, they pay well and have good benefits. If they become female dominated, the pay drops [...]
>[..] men tend to have better credentials that are more career enhancing.
>[..] businesses founded by men tend to be much more financially successful than those founded by women.
All of this is reasonable. I could put forth some alternate explanations (men have higher testosterone -> can take better decisions under pressure -> better businessmen), but it doesn't matter. Men bringing home the bacon and women taking care of the household is a perfectly normal and healthy state of affairs.
>Adult men (married with kids) typically choose colleges that serve their career goals and move the family there.
What adults attend colleges?
>Women were routinely prescribed Valium for depression when, arguably, they should have been told to get a divorce, but trying to establish an adequate income after being a homemaker for years can be a very hard row to hoe.
Yes, that is the nature of these things. Even if they do divorce, they're an old woman with pre-existing children. Of course it would be hard to return to their carefree 20s. This is why, like everyone else, they should plan ahead.
If a man makes a bad decision going into college, studying something that turns out to be a poor fit, then he will face an uphill climb trying to find a new career and an employer willing to accept him despite of his past. This is just the accepted state of affairs, and it's why we place such emphasis on making sure kids make the right choices the first time around.
It's regrettable, but the alternative - an existence of weak, short-term connections, where any relationship or career is entered or exited on a whim - is not much better.
>I soaked up a whole lot of such stats over the years. While dismissive replies are par for the course on HN, it remains rather aggravating to have decades of reading up on the subject dismissed so casually and by a new account that was about two minutes old when you left the comment.
I do not object to the fact that there are patterns pushing women into staying home, I object to the claim that this is regrettable. To me, women working is a sign of financial desperation, whereas for men it is a natural part of life and something from which meaning is derived.
You see this with the successful businesswomen - becoming a businesswoman completely destroys their ability to have a family, forcing them into a sterile and anti-natural lifestyle. Whereas, even the top male CEOs generally enjoy healthy family lives, if a bit challenged owing to their long hours.
The answer isn't to make it easier for women to work, it's to realize that division of labour is an inherently good thing.
"And if so, we must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things." –Socrates
>Historically, when jobs are male dominated, they pay well and have good benefits. If they become female dominated, the pay drops and it becomes a dead end job that is no longer held in high esteem.
If you double the supply it would be weird if the laws of economics magically cease to function. If there is an oversupply of workers then wages are going to drop and it doesn't matter if you add women first and then men or men first and then women.
I don't see any reason to believe that's the explanation. The counter example is programming which went in the opposite direction: It began as female dominated and was not deemed to be important and yadda and later became male dominated and now it is well paid and so forth.
So why didn't pay for programmers plummet when "supply doubled" because we added men to the equation?
I'm happy to entertain explanations like "Well, whether it is PC or not, everyone knows women end up doing the housework. So the reality is that men typically have more time, energy and mental focus to offer, so it's not unreasonable to think they will bring more to the table."
But please don't give me mathematical BS explanations that don't fit the data. I've had a class in statistics and I've read plenty of statistics books, including a great classic called "How to lie with statistics." Math doesn't really explain the gender based outcomes that have been well documented for decades at a minimum.