I figured we’d tackle this one first, get it out of the way. The left side of the blogosphere (and maybe the right too) has been going through convulsions recently over the topic of religion, lots of words thrown about, lots of hurt on all sides. Thankfully, that’s not what this diary is for.
In case you are just joining the conversation (and all are welcome), we are undertaking a collaborative project between the bloggers of BooTrib and Human Beams Magazine. Goals are to help build up a reader base for the blog of “I don’t usually read blogs” type people, as well as to guide people into taking further action or joining an overall liberal/progressive movement to effect change, worldwide. You can read more about the project in this diary, and some informational type stuff in this one.
[ note: while the first special topic is women, it will be addressed in the context of the connections between women and their specific issues, and overall liberal, leftist, progressive, Democratic, whatever issues. Men are encouraged to participate. My mantra: we are all in this together :)]
Okay, so on to the discussion. I’ll set out some issues I’ve been thinking about, everyone else can add their own, or bring up points or whatever. As this will be the diary for discussion on this topic, so that we can keep it all in one place when the time for writing comes, you might want to hotlist it or something so you can find it once it disappears from the page.
Onward…
First, while touching on the history of the religions is good, the articles themselves will mostly deal with not how various religious were supposed to be, or what they were supposed to do, but what they are today, how they affect people, women specifically at this time, today, and what we can do about various issues today. We can have “for further reading, see…” type boxes available with the articles, for people to do more research on historical topics or something not covered in the articles.
I would suggest that those who have knowledge and an interest in the history or whatever, write up a companion blog post, on BooTrib or their own blogs, and people can be pointed to that one, instead of to an unrelated (to the project) site. This would go for any of the other topics covered too, of course, which will work to build up blog profiles.
I wasn’t sure whether to tackle each religion separately, or the three main patriarchal religions together, and the others separately or what. I suppose we’ll see how it shakes out, and go from there. For now, we can just do all here. I’d like to get some input from people not only in the main religions, but also the earth based ones, and buddhism and so on, in relation to women.
Connections:
[note: Homosexuality and religion is a big topic, and I was considering making that all one on its own… but I believe that plays into the “divide and conquer” strategy. Gays and lesbians are one of our most vulnerable (to hate and bigotry and bad laws) groups right now, and, to my way of thinking, one puts the most vulnerable right in the midst so that everyone else can stand beside them and surround them for protection and solidarity. Thus, I feel that the issues affecting lesbian women should be addressed in the same context of issues affecting all women, regardless of sexual orientation. Show the connections and why non-lesbian women should be concerned at the rights of all, and all that.]
The Gag Rule was reinstated by Bush when he got into office at the urging of the religious right, and was just recently repealed again. Therefore, US policy had the direct effect putting women across the world from us in harm’s way, creating the conditions for lifelong illness and death. I know this… many people know this, although I am not sure some are aware of the extent of the harm. One thing I don’t know though, really, is… who are the women on the receiving end of the policy? Even just one… what’s her name? Is she religious too, and does she understand where these people are coming from? What about her family? Can we make her into something besides the generic “Woman in a Poor Country”?
Why care now, now that the rule has been repealed? For one thing, I’m sure it will come around again, and there are other issues related to it, like the UN conventions and so on.
I won’t write much more, so as not to inhibit discussion, but a couple of more points.
We want to cover as many areas of the world as we can.
Connecting the dots… how one thing affects another and affects all of us is a main goal, so keep that in mind.
Even if you are not a ‘writer’ — information, commentary, research and ideas for action or getting people involved and such are all part of the project.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, nor probably do I even know all the questions, so please add your opinions and/or expertise to all this.
So, let’s see what we can accomplish together.
I’ve come up with a few more topics of consideration.
Of course, there is the issue of reproductive rights. The gag rule thing is one aspect, but there are others. Mostly I am familiar with the ones in the US, such as the subject of Ductape’s diary about the 13 year old girl, and the “let me play doctor” pharmacists. The European countries that I am familiar with don’t seem to have the same issues at the forefront of their political life, at least. Which is how it should be.
Apparently Navahos are now staking out an anti gay stance (at least some). From what little I know or remember of their religious (and/or cultural) beliefs, gays used to be viewed as two spirit (or maybe it’s twin spirit) persons. They may still be among regular people… we know how often “the leadership” of any people with a diversity of views actually reflects the views of the people. Sadly, the first thing I thought of when I heard this was… I wonder what carrot the Bush admin has promised them in exchange for them swinging the hate stick. Hey, it worked with some black churches, no?
It seems that wherever you find the “worst” oppression of women (and more about that later), even though it may be “hung” on religion, when you dig, you find that it is not the influence of religion itself, but the triumph of culture over religion that comes into play.
I know I have said this before, and I will probably say it a few more thousand times, but subjugation of women is the most effective method of social control ever devised by human beings. It works. It has a track record.
And there is no religion that has been able to defeat it.
But culture is not the worst offender here. That prize goes to women themselves, or at least within the context of what is called in sociological circles “internalized oppression.”
Well, that’s culture, too, you may say, and you will be right. But let’s not kid ourselves here. Who creates culture? Who preserves culture?
From Pashtunistan to Prattville, from Uttar Pradesh to Ulan Bator to Utica, who exactly is raising these boys up into men who believe women are property, sexual objects, OK to hit, creatures that have less value?
These are clearly not the sons of enlightened, hands-on fathers whose days are spent imparting values as he changes diapers. These values do not come from whiskered chins nuzzling toddlers at bathtime, they are not shouted over the pail of dirty little rompers, whispered into soft little ears after the nineteenth request for one more glass of juice.
If my brothers will pardon me, there is no use talking to you. It is women who need the education, and the economic empowerment, and if my commitment to non-violence will pardon me, in some cases, the weapons.
It is women who must understand that changing the nature of the oppression does not make it any less oppressive.
This is a lesson that many eastern women who come to the west do learn, but for many of their western sisters, it is a file not found.
Who is to say that a society, a culture, that requires a woman to cover herself with a burqa is more or less oppressive than one that requires her to display herself, to spend her time styling her hair, applying makeup, wearing uncomfortable clothes that reveal the contours of her body and shoes that cripple her feet?
Who is to say that a woman who must cook and clean and care for children all day for a man who does not love her in the western, romantic sense is more or less oppressed than a woman who must work all day in the city, then come home and cook and clean and undo whatever was done to her children by whoever cared for them, for a man who claimed to love her, but seems somewhat less besotted now that she has put on a few pounds, and he sees her every day without the makeup, the constricting clothing and the crippling shoes, rushing around to get the kids ready for bed, clanging pots and pans in the kitchen while he tries to enjoy the ball game?
Oh, say the eastern women, but we are respected, we live for our children!
Children grow up. Then what?
Then they take care of us.
And what about you? What do you do?
What do you mean? I will be respected. Taken care of by my children.
There’s that wall.
Oh, say the western women, we have our independence, we can go out and get jobs.
Indeed. And earn less than your brother, for doing the exact same work.
Fifteen of the 20 listed [highest-paid] occupations for men appear on the list [of the 20 highest-paid occupations] for women, and in all cases, the female median is less than that for men. In fact, the occupation third on the list for women makes the same as the occupation last on the list for men ($67,000). A similar pattern is shown for the lowest-paid occupations (Table 6). Sixteen occupations appear on both lists, and in all cases but one … women make less than men in the same occupation.
In only 11 out of 422 detailed occupations with 10,000 or more year-round full-time workers did the Census Bureau find that female median earnings were statistically indistinguishable from male median earnings.
Among the highest-paid occupations: women physicians and surgeons earn 63% of what men do; women dentists, 62%; women judges, magistrates, and other judicial workers, 57%; women actuaries, 70%; women economists, 82%; women chemical engineers, 80%; women chief executives, 63%.
Among the lowest-paid occupations: women dishwashers earn 86% of what men do; women farmers and ranchers, 60%; women cooks, 88%; women maids and housekeeping cleaners, 79%; women teacher assistants, 75%.
Take this Census data, across 411 out of 422 detailed occupations, combine it with the GAO study that controls for numerous independent variables, and the existence of a wage gap that is not “easily explained away” is readily apparent.
link
But it is getting better. And I can be independent.
Can you really? 90 odd per cent of people in the US living in poverty are women and their children in situations where the father has opted not to participate in the financial aspect of the family. It doesn’t seem to be getting enough better fast enough for you to afford an apartment and food and child care on your own, now does it?
Well, I don’t have to wear a burqa. Do you mind if I take my shoes off? My feet are killing me.
And there’s that wall.
A few years back, there was a popular song, called “Sisters are Doing it for Themselves.”
That is what will have to happen.
There is a lot here to chew on. Thank goodness.
I actually mentioned this the other day, and was going to go search it out, but luckily you’ve said it again, so I don’t have to 😉
That’s one of the main points I wanted to get at, through this project. Show how that is done, how it relates to other things not being done (legislatively, politically, socially).
There is plenty of oppression without religion, I know, although religion is often used to facilitate or justify the oppression. And, last I heard, the vast majority of regular Christian church goers around the world were women, mostly older ones. I am not sure about the other religions.
I had to go look the post up anyway, because I also wanted to get this:
I think this is what set my thinking off in the first place… a means of allowing people to connect to why these issues matter, even if one is “not a feminist”, as so many seem to say nowadays. Left leaning women included as that, like ‘liberal’, has been made a dirty word.
So, delineating what is religion, what is culture, what are the ramifications of each would be one way to approach this topic, and would probably go a ways to informing people what can be done to change that. Because while someone believes that their “lot in life” is a product of their religious beliefs, they are less likely to be open to change for themselves, or more likely, for their children. So the whole mess is passed down again and again.
As for the more oppressed, I quite agree with you there. There are different ways of looking at oppression and the various cages we build ourselves into.
I recall watching an interview on some morning show about mothers and dealing with kids or something… anyway, there was this woman on there that was just so upset and bemoaning the fact that her 7 year old daughter wanted to dress “just like Britney Spears”… in other words, like a tart. I was almost feeling sorry for her until she led the camera into her daughter’s room, opened a huge walk-in closet, and started pulling out all the terrible clothes her 7 year old daughter forced her to let her wear… feather boas, skin tight hip hugger pants, slinky (and skimpy) animal print things, and all this other stuff, moaning all the while about how terrible it was.
I suppose she was hoping that people would just assume that all her 7 year old daughter had to do is close her eyes and wish, and clothes magically appeared in her closet. Otherwise, they might wonder why the silly fool of a woman was buying all those clothes for the child in the first place.
Sometimes being literate is no guarantee of sense, sigh.
In some ways, religions have attempted to ameliorate, or at least regulate, the oppression of women, but religious rules such as widows marrying their brothers in law as opposed to being thrown into the street to starve, etc only highlight the iron grip of culture, so strong that even the most idealistic and spiritual reformers have been able to do little to stop it.
Anthropologists would probably join me in speculating that the universal culture of subjugation of women, of women as property, is rooted in biology.
Only women can give birth, and in a non-technological society, only women can provide nourishment to those little humans for the first months of life.
Human beings have always been a commodity.
In agrarian or “primitive” societies, they are a survival commodity.
If you do not have children to help you work the land, you will be unable to produce enough food to survive. When you grow older, without children to care for you, you will die.
Moving into the larger community, the village with fewer people will be easier prey from the bellicose village with a larger population.
In that context, it is a simple business matter. You have a commodity that with little effort on your part, produces another unit of that same product. The more of those you have, the larger your tribe can be, the safer you will be, and the more prosperous.
The means of production cannot be allowed to belong to itself, if you will. 😉
To return to religion, almost all religious edicts having to do with sexuality point toward one goal: maximizing human reproduction, and establishing a framework for children to survive to adulthood.
Thus, homosexuality, extra-marital sex, even auto-eroticism are condemned. There is no real theological basis for this, unless you count the ethical implications of infidelity in the context of a committed monogamous relationship, but this is getting way off.
Let’s use an ancient desert scene, since that is somewhat accessible to both east and west. Population is scarce. Sexual activity that does not have the potential of resulting in A) a new “asset” to the community, and B) the survival of said asset to an age of usefulness, threatens the security of the community.
Obviously, neither solo nor same-gender sex will result in the production of a human unit, and recreational, uncommitted sex carries the risk of producing a human unit that is unable to survive, the ancient desert version of today’s abandoned single mom pushing a stolen grocery cart around the alley, searching for scraps for her child.
(Nothwithstanding the sturdy women who continue normal activities of stamping around gathering berries and climbing rocks until the moment of delivery, whereupon they squat down, eject the infant, bite the cord, and tie the baby to themselves with vines, then rise up and resume rock climbing and gathering, the child’s chances of survival are obviously better in a different situation, and the desert has few berries).
Biology, in a very basic, sparsely populated society, really was destiny, in some very harsh ways.
The institution of marriage developed, not out of the emotional need of human beings to celebrate the wonder of romantic love, but to regulate property, namely women and children.
And to this day, in many areas of the world, among people of many different religions, it still is. Marriage is not seen as having to do with personal happiness, rather a social and family duty. Marriages are arranged for their children by their parents, naturally they will choose a partner they believe their child can live peaceably with, and in time, come to feel some affection for, but the primary purpose is to ensure the next generation, and keep family property within extended family or tribal groups, or on occasion, create an alliance between different groups, if it is felt that such would be, for whatever reason, advantageous. This is why you see so many people in some places marrying their cousins (albeit distant ones). That is preferred. It keeps the family property from getting into the hands of outsiders.
To marry for love, in these societies, is seen as selfish and foolish. The subject of arranged vs love marriage is debated today, right now, on message boards around the world with the same fever and passion as Americans debate Social Security and filibusters.
And in the United States itself, the attitude of some religious conservatives toward the notion that two people, neither of whom wish to be parents, might marry simply to share their lives, is not too far off from their counterparts in far Balochistan, when the same subject comes up:
Joe and Deb Schum of Atlanta aren’t worried about baby proofing their house or buying a car seat. As a matter of fact, the couple doesn’t ever intend to have children and they are proud of their childlessness. According to the newspaper’s report, “the Schums are part of a growing number of couples across the country for whom kids don’t factor in the marriage equation.”
The paper also pointed to the fact that the nation’s birthrate fell last year to an historic low of 66.9 births per 1,000 women age 15-44. That represents a decline of 43% since just 1960. “Many childless couples,” according to the report, “revel in their decision, despite badgering from baffled mothers and friends. Others struggle with the choice before keeping the house kid-free.”
The Schums just don’t want kids to get in the way of their lifestyle.
Another woman in the Atlanta group explained, “you focus those motherly feelings elsewhere. For us, our dogs get all that love.” That worldview is sick, but more and more common….
Christians must recognize that this rebellion against parenthood represents nothing less than an absolute revolt against God’s design. The Scripture points to barrenness as a great curse and children as a divine gift…
The Scripture does not even envision married couples who choose not to have children. The shocking reality is that some Christians have bought into this lifestyle and claim childlessness as a legitimate option. The rise of modern contraceptives has made this technologically possible. But the fact remains that though childlessness may be made possible by the contraceptive revolution, it remains a form of rebellion against God’s design and order.
Couples are not given the option of chosen childlessness in the biblical revelation. To the contrary, we are commanded to receive children with joy as God’s gifts, and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We are to find many of our deepest joys and satisfactions in the raising of children within the context of the family. Those who reject children want to have the joys of sex and marital companionship without the responsibilities of parenthood. They rely on others to produce and sustain the generations to come.
This epidemic of chosen childlessness will not be corrected by secular rethinking…The church should insist that the biblical formula calls for adulthood to mean marriage and marriage to mean children…The church must help this society regain its sanity on the gift of children. Willful barrenness and chosen childlessness must be named as moral rebellion….link
That is the same guy who was one of the main people at the Just Us Sunday thing, no? I wonder how many at that conference or watching it realize that many of those people really do want to force people to have babies.
I’ve always thought that the “pro-life” movement had any number of different agenda that were not being talked about, such as race and economics. That’s one of them. Plus, all this talk lately about ‘natalism’ and stuff.
That really is what it all boils down to, isn’t it? The owning of the means of production. Or reproduction, I guess.
That’s really not ever going to change either, I imagine. Or, at least not for a long time. Even if someone came up with an outside-the-womb womb (the techonology for which is actually rumoured to exist, although I can’t remember where I saw that), some would just think that a baby incubated in one had no soul or was of the devil or some such thing. Plus, there would be the loss of power, which is another thing to be avoided.
I think also tho, going back to the other posting, one difference between the cultural pressures of the woman in the tight clothing and uncomfortable shoes and the burqa’d woman is the matter of choice. And, the ramifications for making that choice.
In the one society, if a woman doesn’t want to do the makeup and dress-up thing, there may be loss of prestige, she may have to get a different job, or something like that, but she has the choice to take those results. But in at least some of the societies where women are required to wear a burqa, there is no choice and the results of not complying can be dire.
Not knowing more than the basics about societies such as those, I am not sure what help can be offered, besides moral support and so on. The societies where women were able to break out of that, how did they bring it about? Politically? Staging demonstrations?
It was a long, hard slog here too, which is still not completed and which of course some are still trying to erase.
wherever they live, most women who do not conform to cultural norms face pretty much the same penalty: social opprobium, reduced educational/career opportunities, limited potential marriage partners. Any of those alone can negatively impact a life, all of them together can pretty effectively negate one.
It is up to women to claim the means of production as their own property. That is what it will take, a sort of gender-centered Bolshevik revolution 🙂
The reason behind the forced-birth movement is, as in days of old, a business decision. Although today, underpopulation is not a problem, human beings are still a commodity.
Even children can constitute a revenue stream for prisons and mental institutions.
Or, provided they are Caucasian and relatively defect-free, they can be sold at a premium to affluent couples as adoptees, in the best case, or sold to other buyers for other purposes in the more likely case.
Should they avoid being subsumed into the justice system until their late teens, they are available as expendable assets for the crusades. Meanwhile, even as non-stream producers, they help to keep one more family, or usually, one more woman, stuck firmly in the underclass.
There are many heart-warming success stories of women who went through unwanted pregnancies, kept their children, and with the help of a strong support network, and their own early life advantages and subsequent resourcefulness, went on to prosper and successfully raise those children.
Much more common, however, are the less told, less heartwarming non-stories of girls whose feeble and not terribly realistic hopes for a future died with the pink line on the pregnancy test, suffered through their pregnancies with little or no medical care, and languished with their infant in squalor, doing whatever they had to do to feed it and themselves, which endeavors frequently produced more children. The low income areas of US cities are teeming with such sad little families, the more fortunate squeeze in with relatives, others move from place to place, according to the whims and generosity of boyfriends and babydaddies, others can be found in shelters, waiting in line for shelters, and on the list of those who have stayed in shelters the maximum time allowable, and many more can be found in prisons, separated now from their children, who soon become feral, and are eventually imprisoned themselves, thus making a more robust contribution to the corporations than they ever would have done at a minimum wage job.
Well, with prisons being a major growth industry in the US, one can see how they would need more and more fodder.
And that may be one reason for the really strange resistance to having a support system for young families (not necessarily young or teen mothers, but them too). But for all the encouragement and threats used to get women to have babies, and for married couples not to be childless, there are very few mechanisms to support the families set up… whether it is childcare or convenient transportation or whatever.
Your last paragraph answers a question I sort of posed (long form)in another posting … who benefits from making sure the poor stay poor, or that there are always generations of the indigent.
And to this day, in many areas of the world, among people of many different religions, it still is. Marriage is not seen as having to do with personal happiness, rather a social and family duty. Marriages are arranged for their children by their parents, naturally they will choose a partner they believe their child can live peaceably with, and in time, come to feel some affection for, but the primary purpose is to ensure the next generation, and keep family property within extended family or tribal groups, or on occasion, create an alliance between different groups, if it is felt that such would be, for whatever reason, advantageous. This is why you see so many people in some places marrying their cousins (albeit distant ones). That is preferred. It keeps the family property from getting into the hands of outsiders.
I’ve always wondered whether or not marriage originally stems from being able to ‘prove’ paternity. I haven’t come across much on the subject either way and was wondering if you did.
This is the reason usually given for the obsession with virginity, and old adages like, a decent woman goes out only two times in her life, once from her father’s house to her husband’s house, and once from her husband’s house to her grave.
It is why you end up with people going absolutely nuts because their daughter talked to a boy.
The idea is to keep her so completely locked up that no one can suggest that she ever had the opportunity to have sex, some people even use it as a reason for not educating women, so they can say, she is so pure and innocent, she cannot even write her name, completely untouched by the world, blah blah.
And the whole thing with the wedding night sheets. To show everybody that the property was in pristine condition, and the issue any subsequent pregnancy can be indisputably the property of the man who purchased the unit. Children are also considered property, remember. 🙂
check my blogroll
Mr. Negroponte will be sending some gentlemen over to talk to you, just to ask you a few questions, nothing major, just have a toothbrush and any prescription meds ready when they arrive.
Congratulations on becoming a High Value Target. In case Zarq happens to get there to measure you for your code ring before Negroponte’s guys arrive, just stuff him in a closet. A really small one will do. That leg comes off.
😀
What is the goddam obsession with virginity anyway? That continues to this day..what with those creepy Purity Balls that are now happening around the country. Where fathers and daughters(no sons that I’m aware of)dress up just like a debutante ball and then vow to be true to their daddy or some such crap until they marry..uggggggh way beyond creepy to me. Some I believe even have rings put on ring finger to wed themselves to jesus until marriage…
Anyway, I guess it’s a good thing there weren’t tasers back in the old days ala your terrific story, Haley’s Nose.
The short answer is “chattel.”
“Mint! in Box with Original Shrink Wrap” will get you a higher price on eBay, won’t it?
That is what it is now. I’m more curious as to the origins of marriage which would probably be tribal. Even Christianity has its roots somewhere – much of which is taken from older customs. There were cults that believed in virgin births, the pope to this day is still pontifex maximus, most of the Christian holidays fall conveniently on pagan holidays and so on. If you look at Catholicism in South America you find much of their local beliefs entwined. For instance there is a saint of death (Santa Muerte), you have Santeria which is a Catholic cult if you will. Much of South America that is Catholic, is not in any way traditional – (so I would think that this would make it difficult for traditional Catholics to accept a South American Pope, as any Cardinal there would be somewhat sympathetic to the more recent deviations in the religion.)
These tendencies of our culture (and several others though not all) you talk about have roots somewhere. The Romans, Greeks and Jews all had similar traditions regarding women as property. However the Jews, and therefore the Christians are much more male dominated. (I’ve always viewed Christianity and Islam more as Jewish cults, than religions onto themselves.)
‘Feminist’…another word that repugs and religious leaders tried and pretty much succeeded into making feminist a dirty word. So if you do identify yourself as a feminist you then have to automatically defend yourself against all kinds of stupid questions. Like no….. I’m not a frothing at the mouth lunatic who hates men and no I’m not a lesbian and no I don’t secretly wish I had a penis so I could pee standing up, etc etc etc…(well peeing standing up might come in dam handy at times)
I hate to say this but the word ‘Feminist’ by its very definition is something that excludes roughly 50% of the population. We need to change that to be inclusive. For that very reason I have always considered myself a humanist. It may be nit picky on my part but I think the word is less scary.
I’ve always considered myself a humanist as well, although I have no problems with the word ‘feminist’. There are actually quite a lot of men I would consider way better feminists (as far as actively promoting feminist issues and working with organizations and stuff), than I am. I thought it was pretty funny when I realized one of the only feminist blogs I’ve read consistently over the years was actually mostly written by men (alas, a blog). There are some other really good mostly female written ones getting recognition online too now, which is a good thing.
I am not all that sure a different word would work, as it’s the actual concept that some have a problem with so they would just demonize any word used. I’m not one that is wedded to keeping unhelpful terms just to prove a point either, though. I’ll gladly toss aside the terms in order to work more effectively on the actual concepts and strategy (and bring back in the terms, revitalized, in the process, if that is what people want to do).
I would and do use the term humanist for myself also…just pointing out how at the time the word feminist came into being it was quickly denounced by all the whackos as a subversive label actually and ridiculed endlessly.
I can’t say for sure but don’t remember humanist being used much at the time..saying you were a feminist was a quick way of finding out someone’s political philosophy basically. Rather like you’re either with us or against us.
I’ve often taken issue with some of the more hard-core feminists like Andrea Dwarkin, for instance. She puts me off. I guess I would use the label ‘humanist’ more or less to say that everybody is welcome to be equal. I know many men myself who do not see the feminist label as offensive or bad, but if we are going to try and include women who come from more suppressed environs that would themselves never associate with feminists because of their background/religion, we give them the opportunity to “join” something progressive. Also it gives the more suspicious men less to gripe about. In war always choose the high ground.
Excellently point:
I know any number of women who are feminists, but absolutely refuse to be called that. Probably all the more if they come from the more suppressed environs, as you said.
It’s all about human dignity, equality and so on, whether it’s women, men, gays and lesbians, poor etc. Whatever works.
I don’t know if anybody out there watches ‘Secrets of the Dead’ on PBS – but one of the last episodes they had (I recommend them all – they had an excellent one on Christianity – very controversial – as well) they covered Amazon warriors and what happened to them – and they did a brilliant job of tracing what happened to them after Troy, and proved their existence. Unfortunately no answers on how these women differed from the rest of us or what their secrets were. They did however trace their descendents, with the DNA to prove it, to nomadic tribes in Mongolia. If anybody’s interested the link is here.
I think for things to improve for anybody there needs to be a healing of society itself. Not just culture dictate how people treat each other but also poverty and social repression. Of course that creates an environment for extreme religion, because people have no hope. I’m not sure one segment of the population can be healed without the rest of their society. Give a woman a job and you have no guarantee that her husband won’t beat her when she comes home. As a matter of fact her husband may then be envious and beat her more – who knows. If a man is oppressed and has been so his entire life then I would bet he is a result of that environment. The only thing I am actively for at the moment, in other countries, is putting an end to clitorectamies.
A woman discovered that the major compounds of the universe are hydrogen and helium. Everybody knows this – but do any of you know her name? Who discovered gravity? Electricity? Nuclear reaction? We all know of Madam Curie, I would guess because we are fascinated by her death, but otherwise women get less credit or no credit in this society. They don’t get equal pay. (However, I believe Ann Coulter should by all means return to the kitchen and stay there.) We need to improve things here first.
One has to start somewhere :). For me, one place to start is to attempt to lessen some of the enmity people place on one another instead of on where it goes. Like the husband you speak of.
One of the things I find most distressing about the ‘left’ these days is that we’ve allowed ourselves to be all separated out. Or maybe we’ve done it ourselves, I don’t know, with our ‘herding cats’ personality. But I don’t see why even that would apply… sure we all have our special concerns, but ultimately, each individual issue or concern affects all of us.
If women are oppressed in a society, self or otherwise, then other parts of the society don’t function well either. In fact, in studies of democratization and stuff, they’ve realized that they cannot do it without the women, so some just don’t try and do it at all.
You live in… Germany? Somewhere in Europe, I think… what is the situation there with women and the society?
Thanks for the link to the Amazons thing, by the way… what a fascinating culture that was. I’ll see if they are showing the series on my local PBS stations.
P.S. no, I don’t know the name of the woman who discovered the major compounds of the universe (mind you, I know the names of few male discoverers of things either). Something else to look up and maybe another area to include in the project. Thanks! 🙂
No, I live in MA – grew up in Austria. I would say women are a bit more aggressive there and I never encountered any resistance to my education or my social life. I grew up believing I could do what I wanted (as long as that included an education). Not that there wasn’t chauvanism, but in fairness it came from both sides.
I’m not saying your goal is not worthy, far from it. I just think what you’re proposing involves a lot more than just empowering women. As you say religion is a factor, but it is also economics, poverty, hopelessness for society as a whole. Change, especially when what you’re trying to change is ingrained into the social fabric, takes time and a lot of positive attitude. My favorite example, because it is so blatant, is Saudi Arabia. 25 – 50% unemployment, even among the educated, (obviously this excludes women) they see foreigners getting rich on their oil. There is a lot of hatred in that society and the obvious place for them to turn is to the religious right, since they invoke their passions and their hatred even more. They also see their wealth being chewed up and given away by their corrupt monarchy. Where does one start in a place like that?
Sorry! I got the continent and the country wrong, but other than that, I was close ;).
I completely agree with you, on the other factors. Religion (and indeed women) is just on small portion of the overall project. The idea is not about empowering women, exactly, but more about empowering an overall liberal progressive social movement, of which the issues of women are a part.
I might be going about this all wrong, or making it seem more difficult than it needs to be but to my mind (and it seems, yours) there is more value in showing things in context and how they all connect than in just setting something down in unrelated areas.
To that end, while the nucleus of this particular part of the project is women, the finished effort (ideally) will include the economics, social issues, ways to build a society we want, how women are important in environmental issues and vicer versa, why we should care about the women in Saudi Arabia, or Botswana, or Mexico, and they about us and where can we help effect change etc.
I don’t expect an overnight thing, in fact I am in the midst of building what I hope is a long term organization where people can get the tools and support and so on to work locally, as well as nationally and internationally. I think we need to be in the small spaces, everywhere, everyday and so on… but I also think blogs are greatly underutilized and undervalued, so this project is mostly a way to try and connect the thinkers and doers and readers and all that.
I know, I know… make my pie-in-the-sky flavor apple a a la mode ;).
The internet is a great tool for people of all walks of life to communicate. For it to include other societies is vital – I would say ultimately for world peace. I hope your projects meet with success.
Of course, since my ulterior motive is to drag people in, I’ll keep you and everyone updated on how things are progressing :).
I sometimes wonder why women who consider themselves to be feminists persist in going to any church that continues to suppress women. In all the variations of suppression, large and small. Waiting around patiently for male leaders to supposedly come to their senses and realize all people should be equal is a lost cause and ain’t gonna happen.
My feeling is that maybe it’s time to bring back the ERA fight. To have ERA ratified and made part of the Constitution once and for all.
This seems to me that it would have the added advantage of showing just how backward the religious right truly are and I’m quite sure that the republicans would still be against the ERA. Making them I would hope look incredibly stupid and bigoted.
Several of the truly stupid issues like unisex toilets are no longer an issue nor is women in the military-to some extent anyway.
I’m sure the biggest issue for those against the ERA now would be that this would give those ‘terrible homosexuals’ legitimacy.
Gay rights is a huge huge issue for me. My sister and I both consider our best friend who is gay to be more than our friend but another sister and is included that way in any family gathering. For me the issue isn’t even if you are born that way. I don’t care if someone chooses(although given such hate toward gays who’d want to be gay)to have affairs or love someone of the same sex. I don’t care as long as you’re a decent honorable person, that is all that matters. That’s all that should matter to anyone.
” Equality of rights under the Law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
On the ERA, the fight is back… there are a few lawmakers who have been introducing legislation lately… the last is called the Three State something, because it’s essentially lacking only three states to ratify (I have a friend who has made this her ’cause’ and she keeps me informed). Here is a link to that though: ERA site
Gay rights is a huge issue for me as well. My brother was gay and a good many friends as well. Ductape admirably explains some of the hostility of societies towards gays, because of the baby making factory thing. But one thing that doesn’t explain (at least, I can’t see it)… the most vicious hatred is targeted towards gay men… lesbians are sort of an afterthought.
You’d think it would be the other way around because it’s the women who would be having the babies, and be ‘subject to the men’ and so on.
hey Nanette, thanks for that link. I signed the petition and to get email updates on what is going on with the ERA.
My only thought on homophobia toward gay men is that men for some reason are more threatened by gay men than gay women…that’s just an idea of mine with no basis in any fact though. It seems women in general are more accepting of people who are gay…again that’s just my general impression.
All the various explanations of hostilities towards gays from different societies as always baffles me. To me people are equal period and if you’re gay how does that automatically make you inferior, evil or whatever reasons people dream up to explain their prejudice. I don’t get it and I never will.
You’re welcome. I was unaware of it too, until my friend pointed out to me.
I wonder if it’s our culture, or if anti-male homophobia is more prevalent across all homophobic cultures. I have a feeling it is. Not sure why it would be that way though.
Interesting topic- I agree that conservative culture underlies conservative religion. During the recent pope-fest I argued that in Latin American countries it is precisely because the cultures are conservative that the Catholic Religion flourishes, as it currently does in Africa, and other developing countries.
In any case-I came across an explanation for female lower-class status in Latin Countries that could be applied elsewhere, in various degrees. Those countries in Latin America that took female slaves as wives, or consorts, have more entrenched traditions of female abuse, and reduced public roles for women. Among mestizo populations post-conquest, women transfered slave status to their children, specifically their daughters. However among sons this effect was reduced because the sons were thought to acquire the European status of the father.
In countries where women from Europe were brought over for marriage, they formed the basis for the elite society, yet women were treated better among elites, they enjoyed privileges that non-European women did not, faced less job restrictions, and less abuse. These Elite women also benefit from the lowered status of other women by appropriating their children when necessary, higher heirarchal structures/status, and the obvious cheap labor and less competition for their husbands in competitive careers.
If you look at patterns elsewhere, I would say that there may be something to this. Among elites, even in the most overbearing churches, you find women who benefit from the status quo. Poor are identified through “that family” (a lower class, not simply payscale)
The church provides security for many women, and in exchange they give up their sovereignty, much like citizens do as a nation or community. Whether that is a perceived security or a realistic expectation is entirely different. The women of the South who insist on church attendance from their neighbors do so out of a collection of reasons. Spiritual component aside, churches provide comfort, community, stability, a place for socializing, a good place to exchange business cards, child-care, counseling, and so on. What else do these women get? They get the entire community to keep an eye on their husband. Male sex role are also encouraged toward fidelity. The anxiety of possible transgressions in a “macho” society, or hyper-masculine culture is alleviated through devout worship, and chronic reminders in the community to stay on the straight and narrow.
So in the South, where every guy has a gun and a pickup, women seek shelter and community in their churches, but also get the church behind them in supporting monogamous marriage.
The churches in the South reflected the culture, even to the degree they supported slavery. same as mill town Churches in the Northeast that supported workers rights in factories. I think ductapefatwa is spot on that religion is an expression of the culture, not the other way around. Otherwise you would not see such variations within congregations, also the decline of conservative religions in moderate countries.
will tell you, if you ask them why they put up with crap that they know is actually contrary to the religion professed both by the women themseves and their oppressors – security.
That is another of the most popular arguments for arranged marriage in conjunction with joint families – the woman will say, if there is a problem with my husband, the family is there to help us, and if my husband goes off for long periods of time, or takes up with another woman, I don’t have to worry that my children and I will starve, or be lonely.
In its own way, that “support system” forms part of the oppression – live within it, and have security, and we are back to flaunting cultural norms, live without it and you are on your own.
Sisters doing it to themselves!
There is also a correlation where African slavery was an accepted practice, and female domination, However there is not much information of whether it coincides with slavery, or if the same mindset that introduced slavery as an economic function (as apposed to social inter-tribal agreements) also requires a subset of lower class females to maintain power strucures. Brazil for example, much of the Carribean, Haiti, and Southern White society as well as Southern African countries all have similar sex-role issues.
In all the countries you mention, African slaves formed the basis of the economy.
Weakening, and breaking down the family unit goes hand in hand with subjugation of women. Slavery gives us perhaps the clearest and simplest illustration – simply break up the families, quite literally. Send one here, one there, ensure that children grow up with limited bonding and within a few generations, you have people who have to learn how to be families all over again.
We can see the same thing in the US today, as the society transitions to feudalism, there are an increasing number of single parent households, in an economy where even two parent, two income families are having a tough time making ends meet.
In these circumstances, the burden falls to women, the means of production, to resist as best they can, and as they say in the southern US, “make a way out of no way.”
It is thanks to such “way making” that large segments of the population in the US and the Caribbean have been able to avoid a complete breakdown of any social fabric whatsoever, but way out of no way is not ideal, nor is it always functional.
As in the eastern example of the women who cling to cultural constructs because they are all they have, and at the same time, all that is keeping them down, so do western women fall into the same trap.
Complicating the picture is the role that religious institutions frequently play in the lives of oppressed populations of both genders!
The great strategic mistake made by the Catholics, for example, has been in attempting to crush the liberation theology movement, thus effectively removing itself from the running in the “best religion for Resistance” contest, which globally, Islam is winning, hands down!
Thanks for bring up those points.
Conservative religions seem to flourish in conservative cultures, but almost always, it seems, among the poor cultures. Security and refuge, if you will.
It works both way though, I think… whether the culture creates the religion or the religion creates the culture, it becomes a necessity of sorts for the religion to keep the cultural status quo, because once people, especially women, break out of their assigned ‘place in life or God’s plan’, they tend to leave the religion, or at least to leave some of its teachings.
I imagine that’s what has happened in Italy and Spain and places that used to be considered very religious countries, but where now contraception and jobs and a fairly good economy have worked to allow women (and men) to seek security and community in other ways.
Also in the US, you see mostly the more secure (in life) people seeking out congregations that are less focused on control and more on spirituality or community, openess and the like, such as Pastor Dan’s church.
In the US who are these people who have time to stand around abortion clinics for weeks at a time. They need jobs, preferably not at the local Wal-Mart. Even they are aware of the wealth around them. True their preachers, who rile them up, are more often than not ludicrously wealthy (the contrast is quite shocking, considering the make their fortunes preying on them). These ‘leaders’ are looked up at and honored because they spend time with them and ‘motivate’ them. Outsiders would have little impact on these people because they are looked upon with suspicion and are the enemy. Their system needs to be changed from the inside, the only thing we can do is to try and provide them with jobs and better economies. We blue Saters have largely ignored them and not seen to their needs over the course of time. I would say to a certain extent we have viewed them with distain, and I think what we have now is largely a result of this.
You are probably right, but I don’t know the key to unlocking that. Some of the southern US states are like a foreign country to me… and make little sense. You’ll have crushing rural and urban poverty, poor schools and so on, and also people who are virulently anti tax (including the poor who would benefit most from the taxes). Some of that is all mixed up in the some of the religious rhetoric, as well as the supposed “independent individual” rhetoric and so on.
I know there are more moderate and liberal southerners who are working to change things from within, and I agree on “blue staters” attempting to help, although many blue states have some of the same problems, with the urban or rural poverty.
Obviously having a base of very poor and fairly illiterate people is considered a benefit to some, otherwise it wouldn’t exist in “the richest country in the world”, and programs wouldn’t be in place to make sure that such situations continue on for generations. Not only here in the US, but elsewhere, like in Mexico and South and Central America and Haiti, where established and accepted policy is to keep people in office who will keep the majority of the citizens of the countries poor. Which is why there is such angst over the guy in Venezuela, and the probable new President of Mexico, next election.
Changing societies from within (at least in the US) will require joining the churches, getting elected to the school boards, getting on to the curriculum setting committees, becoming teachers, getting elected to the small political offices, putting organizations smack dab in the midst of neighborhoods and communities, and making them an indispensable part of them and other things, so that “blue staters” or progressives or liberals or whatever are not an ‘over there’ thing, but a ‘right here’ thing.
All we need is a plan, people and a Soros, and we’re on our way!
Certainly to include them is key. Right now tensions are so high that we don’t want to include their radical views, which in truth would be devastating to civilization. They need to become educated, but I would say jobs come first. A good place to start would be with corporate America – the very people that send their jobs overseas, yet manage to have these people on their voter rolls. The system we have now allows for abuse of itself. With that I mean the Government. There are no checks and balances to guard against those that don’t believe in it – in other words the system is progressive, but how it’s used is regressive.
I think probably that’s one of the hardest things, for some reason. Getting people to realize that some corporations are not their friends, and that for a select few to be super rich, and the others to pretty much struggle all their lives is not necessarily the natural order of things.
That also hsa to do with religion, or with culture informing religion, whichever way around it goes. But at least some of the Christian religions… am not sure about the non ones, use the religious beliefs of their congregations to convince them that, well, basically, god wants some people to be rich, and for them to be poor, and that to complain is unholy or something. Class warfare and all that. Which is a bit different from the newer ‘mega churches’ which seem intent on convincing the well off that god wants them to be well off, and that if anyone is poor, its only because they arent blessed by god, or whatever.
There are no checks and balances in the Government, or at least few left anymore, because, I imagine, a good number of those elected are either there to make sure there are few balances left, or rode in on a wave of corporate money to fund their campaigns (and votes).
I think speaking about corporate pay in dollar-per-hour terms is more effective than in percentages. While saying that some corporate bosses make 450% the amount of their workers… it sounds more shocking (and easily understood by someone who counts wages by the hour) to say something like … while you are making $7.50 per hour (if they even make above minimum wage) so and so is making $10,000 per hour, or whatever it is.
It’s a vicious circle.
Southern society sees the North, West, and everyone else as the encroaching threat. It always has, and is reinforced through reminders of the civil war, race baiting, anxiety producing rhetoric on the scourge of liberal thought and progress.
In areas where there is development there is a relative lessoning of patriarchal values. For example along the coast, there is a distinct liberal community, that has been among the most vocal in the education and medicaid wars.
It is a completely different culture, very complex,and on certain issues, it is easy to garner support for progress from virtually everyone. So the South suffered greatly during the civil war, then later during reconstruction, then again during the depression,(lasting the longest in the country) a hostile climate/weather/geography increases anxiety, and you have two seasons, tornado and hurricane. Lots of anxiety here.
How to remedy the situation? Well, obviously reduce the factors that cause integrated anxiety. A better economy along the coast has made HUGE inroads. 80% of the employees at the casinos are women. This is a huge difference from thirty years ago when they didn’t work at all.
Many businesses along the coast are female owned.
And many women are employed with government contractors. The rural areas are the most possessive about the patriarchal values. Even among women there is conflict about the right roles for women. It is obvious that there is a dichotomy when you talk to them most are working, but still cling to the ultimate ideal of women staying home (but would NEVER give up their job!)
As for churches.
Well, as I have witnessed there are various churches, and some are more prohibitive than others. They are conclavish, meaning that each has it’s own demographics, which would be an interesting study. Once I get on with my other work, I’ll get back to you on that.
So not having proof or time at the moment to work on this, I would say that there are going to be subtle differences among the churches and the demographics, jobs, and income level.
The scientists I know are mostly Catholic and Methodist. They also have the most obviously egalitarian relationships I have witnessed here.
The phenomena I see is that women in the most restrictive churches actually do not have less power relative to other women as long as their chosen path supports the Church in some way. Many women I see with fish on their cars are business owners, teachers, and very active in the community. They have been co-opted. However it is the women who are not obviously supportive of the role of the church or rebel against the established churches that have the most limitations. Single moms, women not attending church, women basically on their own.
If you want a job, you need to have ties, know someone, and the place to make those connections are in the churches. One big problem I see is a number of non-churchgoing women with college degrees, highly qualified, unable to find work, reduced to cocktail waitressing, while there are plenty of women without credentials working jobs they can only provide mediocre service in. Sometimes you wonder how the hell they got the job.
(I am sure this translates similarly to men as well in employment)
That seems to sort of hark back to your earlier point, about the elite women and those on a lower societal rung.
What sort of support systems can you think of that are in place for women such as those in your last sentence? Not meaning like welfare or anything, but something comparable to the religious organization/community type thing that one finds within the halls of many of the religious places. Not necessarily exclusive to women, but there for those who need the support when they need it.
I can’t think of anything here offhand, and it occurs to me (finally) to wonder, this far along after the beginning of the ‘women’s movement’… why not?
“What sort of support systems can you think of that are in place for women such as those in your last sentence?”
Oh boy. This is gonna hurt. Those women are the “bad girls” if you are “on your own” you better have family, or husband to help you, a good job, but if you are poor, your function is to be the scapegoat. These women as I said end up working in the service industry, cocktail waitresses the (casinos have very skimpy outfits), adult entertainers, they have as many strip clubs as churches in some areas, and prostitution flourishes. You’ve heard of Bourbon Street, how’d you think it got that way?
If you could imagine the perfect support system, what would it look like? A blessed be person on kos posted a diary not too long ago, something like “If Pagans ran the world” or something… I’ll have to go look for it. There were suggestions in there (some of them completely impossible, but still… one can start small ;).
There are halfway houses and other things, but they too are geared towards the girls (and boys) being “bad”.
At least part of it.
Your last sentence makes a very good point – most “programs” and constructed “support systems” have one or both of two fatal flaws: either they are essentially pork, designed to provide jobs for a handful of politician’s friends, and contracts for a few others, with any impact on the participants secondary or below, and/or they start with the premise that something is wrong with the person, that their lack of sufficient income to provide for basic needs is the woman’s fault.
Because, let’s face it, all of these problems of mothers on drugs and turning tricks on the streets are not the result of a young girl sitting on her pink ruffled bedspread and saying “When I grow up, I wanna be a crack ho!”
Assuming that she has a chance to begin with, which frankly, if she is born into a low income situation, is not likely, all it takes to get her to bottom and/or keep her there is one pregnancy.
And one pregnancy is pretty easy to come by.
It should not define her character, nor the rest of her life.
One of the most fundamental societal and cultural changes that is needed is an end to demonizing the poor, and the recognition that 99% of social problems are caused by insufficient income.
Therefore, any program that is really going to work for the participants should focus on that – helping the woman to get sufficient income.
Once that is done, if she feels like she needs counseling on punctuality or grooming or whatever, sure, she should be able to have it.
But all the “soft skills” and rhetoric and frank group talks about making mistakes and bad choices is not going to address the immediate and fundamental challenge she faces: sayin’ it one more time – insufficient income.
And it’s an activity that most everyone can participate in, should they be so inclined. The poor make an easy target though… for angst and to blame for one’s own situation on and to make sure that people are not focusing on the real targets.
I take your point about the soft skills and so on.. there are groups that do that, and may do a good job of helping people get on their feet, and I don’t really know if they contain the element of “you were a bad girl/boy” stuff in their programs.
Getting sufficient income… that’s a tough one. And getting tougher all the time, actually, since the prices of so many things, including shelter, is rising quickly, while whatever income one does have rises not so much. A societal change, and a government change, where the need for people to have a way of living might help, but that’s very far off in this country, if ever at all.
How would one go about helping the person get a sufficient income? You are not talking about job training and such, I take it?
I’m trying to think outside the capitalist-society-trained box, but everything I come up with seems improbable, if not impossible. Depending on what your meaning is, though.
Job training, sure! But a living wage is imperative for a sustainable society that does not resemble Rwanda.
Once the value of your labor – anybody’s labor – falls below the value of your survival, that’s not capitalism anymore, that’s feudalism.
Capitalism actually requires a minimum wage to exceed a living wage, not only to allow for one or two dependents, but to give you the incentive to work harder, make more profit for management, and receive the benefit of a higher wage that allows you to amass – gasp – capital!
Instead we have the Miracle of Poverty:
In his wonderful book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, the Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto notes: “The cities of the Third World and the former communist countries are teeming with entrepreneurs. You cannot walk through a Middle Eastern market, hike up to a Latin American village, or climb into a taxicab in Moscow without someone trying to make a deal with you. The inhabitants of these countries possess talent, enthusiasm, and an astonishing ability to wring profit out of practically nothing.” It’s possible to keep such people down only if governments dedicate themselves to the pursuit of really bad policies for decades at a time…link
There’s one component here that no one is mentioning concerning people in poverty and not being able to get out of poverty. Health. Many, many poor people without access to health care have medical problems or even something as simple as not being able to see without glasses and can’t work…or very bad teeth that they can’t get fixed…and no one will hire someone with a ‘rotten’ smile so to speak. To say nothing of any kind of mental illness that doesn’t get treated making it impossible for someone to either get work or keep a job.
I think I could write a book on this issue and how it effected me personally..misdiagnosed for 30 years and not being able to work basically while people said nothing was wrong with me..in turn also keeping me very very poor-which is around 9,000.00 a year.
Is definitely one of the overall issues. I’m sorry to hear of your troubles as well. (You should write your book, by the way… I imagine you’d find any number of people who are in the same situation, but afraid to speak out).
There really is no reason why there shouldn’t be clinics in each community, dental, general and mental care.
Yeah I managed to go back to a community college in my 30’s. I had great difficulty at times just walking across the parking lot or couldn’t make it to class cause I had to park to far away…and people didn’t believe me. Yet I graduated in the top of class with several thousand in scholarships.
The worst thing was that I had to forfeit the scholarships cause there was no way I could walk across a larger campus much less the enormous parking lot at the 4 year college. People and counselors at the Jr. college continued to think I was making up my foot and other problems(with hands) and somehow was ‘afraid’ to continue my education…stupid reasoning on their part after I’d worked my ass off to get the scholarships and be in the top of the class.
I found out that being poor somehow made everything about you suspect especially when it came to working…like you’re always trying to get out of it…
While the few free clinics I’d get to go to check my feet would simply tell me my feet ‘looked’ fine and that I must be lazy and didn’t want to work and send me home.
It is one of exceptional courage and persistence – and unecessary suffering.
There is a book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, that came out a few years ago.
It is all about the lazy poor.
So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the “bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?” Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month’s rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. (from link above)
That’s really just the beginning of the whole crappy story…and I’m still pissed off that I couldn’t finish college for something as simple as not having a correct diagnosis or any diagnosis and a wheelchair my college career got stopped in its tracks. Can’t go to a doctor without insurance or a job which was also my situation and couldn’t work due to the health thing and just a vicious circle really….add that to people believing you were perfectly healthy and it’s a wonder I didn’t do drugs or go crazy or marry some idiot just to take care of me.
I just get incredibly pissed off at people who equate poor with lazy and stupid…no matter what color you are.
We have not mentioned that at all, and it is, for many people, the first thing they need to “fix.”
And thank you also for pointing out the senseless policy in the US regarding what pitiful excuses for indigent dental care exist – most will pay for nothing but extraction – thus effectively reducing the meager employment options that the person has to begin with.
About the best you can say for it is that almost no job they could get even with a full set of teeth will pay enough for them to purchase either health care or housing, two very profitable commercial products that are rapidly becoming luxuries available only to the wealthy.
Thanks for that link… interesting article, which I have to go back and read more thoroughly, of course.
I see what you are saying now, although your idea of capitalism seems to have no relation to the ideas of those that say they are capitalists. In fact, they’d probably call you a socialist or something, even though what you are saying makes more sense than the current system. And would bring more overall profit.
Thing is, I don’t think they want to do that… we seem to be on a well planned path to take us to a sort of South American type economy (as mentioned in that article) with a few very rich, some well off, and a huge number of poor. I don’t see the purpose in that, but it definitely seems an attractive prospect to certain segments of government and business.
One of the things that works in developing nations and I am strongly in favor of is small business, or micro-loans for women to develop their own jobs, and employment. Access to college is fine, but also community colleges and cash for workshops that teach various skills should also be looked at. If there are local workshops or apprentice programs, then by all means why not learn HOW to do something, or a craft to have a talent that can be utilized for personal profit?
I have friends who have their own businesses and most of the women I know who are happiest with their jobs and choices own small businesses, or are their own boss. Also they have very little problems with child care, because they can bring the baby with them, or work around available child care.
Women face issues that one-size to fit all cannot fix.
Small businesses are boost to local economies, are a valuable way for women to gain empowerment, and also provide a leveler in income disparity.
One problem I see with many programs is that the rules are too rigid, and women end up as cogs trapped in a system. I think it is disgraceful how low income housing in many areas is more like a wharehouse, than a place for people to grow and children to aspire.
Common rooms, community projects like gardens, commissaries, workshops, child care on premises, can contribute to the training of people in housing, offer a community life, and help get people on track to building a resume, and a more productive life. Each community project/ (housing authority) should have a a business area for economic projects overseen by a project manager. So the women can form a business plan, and be part of the growth of the business, then move on and out as they are able to independently.
Just my two cents.
I like those better than micro-loans, if you google around, you can see where some micro-loan programs have gotten mired down in questions of risk and interest and whatnot.
Not to mention that people who need a micro-loan need every cent of their profit.
It can be a real eye-opener, for those unfamiliar with conditions in some parts of the Majority World, just how small a grant can literally change a life overnight. Something as simple as a used sewing machine, or a couple of goats, and poof! self-sufficiency!
… I love it. And it’s so much better than that awful, denigrating “third world”. And definitely more accurately descriptive. I’ll use that one from now on.
I like the idea of micro-grants better as well. And I see there are various sources for those as well, for different programs. Will have to search out and include basic instructions on how to start one in the “what you can do” part of things. Any more ideas you have like that, feel free to list them… I can look up details and such.
I know about the goat thing, but I’ll have to broaden my horizons on the other stuff that might not necessarily occur to me. There are probably so many really simple things we could be doing, but aren’t due to ignorance.
I knew a woman who traveled a lot, and stayed in hotels all the time. She would take home all the little shampoos and soaps and such that they give you, wrap them up in a nice little basket or bag, and then take them to the battered women’s shelters and other places. Simple, something anyone (who travels or knows someone that does) can do, and it provides just a little extra something for someone.
Getting a used sewing machine to the other side of the world might take a bit more effort, but still.
venture further afield, I have heard some (affluent) ladies who like to visit “exotic” locales say that they deliberately purchase clothing for the vacation, during which they, naturally, shop, then when it’s time to go home, they have all their vacation clothes, shoes, bags, etc, cleaned and washed, and give them away to people they have met or just look like they need them – and have a nice empty suitcase to pack with all their new loot, some of which they wear on the plane home!
Not exactly eco-tourism, but a cousin 😉
I believe that is Paganism, but it could be Wiccan (and they could be the same thing, I don’t know). Hopefully someone does know a bit about it though.
There are a lot of misconceptions out there about it, this I do know. We published an article by a Wiccan teen on Wicca a few years ago and there was one man who rather insistently emailed me to ask if we were “human or alien” because as far as he knew, Wiccans considered themselves non-human. As I wasn’t Wiccan, and as he was a nutter (I went to his site to check him out) I ignored the emails.
But you get all sorts of odd commentary on this religion, not only because the association of ‘witches’ and ‘hags’ and such with evil, but also it seems because it is matriarchal and polytheistic.
Ancient stable societies flourished in matriarchal conditions. When Europeans met the (north)Eastern Woodland tribes, they were astounded that they had to ask the women of the tribe for trading conditions. While the men had roles as hunters, it was typically women who provided the agricultural economy among tribes. They were in a better position to know how much the corn or vegetables were worth, because that was their domain. Any agreements had to be made with the elder women’s agreement because they were most concerned with social issues that could be effected by treaties.
The Eastern Woodland tribes (and other more stable tribes, had a much different set of female roles, so much greater were women’s roles in Indian society that often European women “adopted” into tribes would refuse to return to European communities once they were found by search teams, often months or even years after the skirmish that resulted in the “adoptions”.
The more stable the society, the more you see matriarchal tendencies. Chronic famine, stress from wars, high anxiety, pressure from other encroaching societies, tribes, result in more patriarchal tendencies.
This must be why we are seeing a resurgence in the more matriarchal religions now, mostly in western countries where the societies are relatively stable. But only to a point, as that is practiced only by a relative few, and the societies themselves, no matter how stable and modern, mostly seem ready to protect the patriarchal status.
At least, as far as I can tell, I’ve not studied the issue or anything. I don’t, personally, know of anywhere in the world where women are getting the same pay or are of equal religious, political or social status… unless one of the Scandanavian countries are at that point. I don’t know about the various African or Asian societies, some of which were at one time matriarchal, but possibly no longer.
I think it is a relative matriarchal situtation, degrees of female empowerment in relation to degress of stability, improvements in health, peaceful coexistance and so on. The number one indicator for abuse among men is stress from unemployment-so it breaks down even in a microcosm, a family. (also social facotrs play in, upbringing, etc, but loss of employment is highly correlated to female and child abuse).
http://womenshealth.med.ucla.edu/healthcareproviders/domesticresearch.htm
Combat-http://nccafv.org/combat_vets.htm
access to guns-http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press/2003/June/030630.htm
other-http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/ipvfacts.htm
However many domestic violence advocacy sites countered these studies by stating no such correlations exist. The intention, I beleive is to reduce “stereotyping” but that in itself can inhibit any progress in this area.
Thanks for the links. While domestic violence happens in all economic and other areas of society, I can see how the job loss and so on would exacerbate things. Plus, not only is domestic violence often not reported, I think it’s done less so among those in the higher economic strata.
At least, that was my impression the last time I delved into this topic, I may have everything wrong though. Will follow the links and see 🙂
http://www.religioustolerance.org/witchcra.htm This is one of my favorite websites to peruse and find about various religions, also has much more on the site….you can spend hours on it just looking around.
Short Wiccan explanation: They believe in Mother Goddess and Father God as Creators of the universe. The earth in all it’s seasons and variations is to be honored. And their basic philosophy and ‘ye shall do no harm’. Very, very shortened version.
I love that term, “blessed be”, for some reason.
I’ve been to that site, but I always forget about it in between times ;). Thanks for the reminder…I’m hoping that some of those who belong to or are familiar with that religion will add to the conversation as things go along as well.
Have you ever explained your name, by the way? It’s a fun one.
I’m answering this over here as the other thread is getting squished into oblivion.
I think the idea of microloans for businesses is an idea that needs to catch on more too. Not only in other countries, but here as well. i am not sure how they work, or what it takes to set that up, but it’s something to look into and to put in the list of solutions.
Sometimes I wish I was Bill Gates for a day.
I’m going to quote the next directly, as I think it bears repeaating:
This is what it would look like for me too, although I have no clue how one would go about. That’s not to say that someone else wouldn’t though, especially given the idea and a sort of blueprint for a start. wystler had this in a comment the other day, and I thought it just perfectly captured what needs to happen:
For all the “50 state strategies” and the framing and all that, I feel that until we actually become the culture, nothing much will change. Here, in the US, and everyplace else too.
I thought several years ago that I had a good idea to put lots of people to work who basically had no skills. I had dreamed this up one day when I was in a very bad health state and couldn’t do anything but sit on my couch and watch tv..lot of decorating shows, etc.
Anyway this was my idea. Furnishing Homes for Habitat with furniture supplied by women refurnishing/rebuilding/repainting etc items collected from junk stores/salvage places around the country.
If you’ve ever watched any decorating shows you know there are several that literally take junk from salvage places at little or no cost and make fantastic one of kind tables/chairs/dressers etc with a little elbow grease and ingenuity.
Anyway I saw this as a project to start in one huge building with various areas for different projects. You know, one to rebuild or repaint/refinish all bedroom type furniture..and the same for living room furniture/kitchen furniture. Then an area where some people could with little fixing up or knowing some electrical skills could redo lamps/toasters and so on.
I also pictured this building as having a separate area for children. Some of the women who weren’t as artistically inclined could watch everyone else’s children.
In an even more ambitious train of thought I was thinking each building could have a garden attached where some of the people composted, grew vegetables which would go to families working there and if any left they could sell. I also thought this would be a good way for the young kids to learn about taking care of the earth and all that.
I even had a name for this-Phoenix Furnishings. There’s more to it than that but it seemed like a way without a lot of overhead to somehow start something that would help people to work and provide a service. Having kids taken care of and seeing their mothers or fathers working at something useful and productive(and can be fun) I thought would also be a good thing. Getting rid of ‘junk’ would also be helping the landfills as much of old furniture etc does end up there…
Really, a wonderful idea. I wouldn’t limit it to just Habitats either, (although that would be a good place maybe to start). But with the advent of ebay and other things now, and with the right marketing, you could make Phoenix Furnishings the go-to place for the environmentally and socially conscious person to shop for that unique touch for their household.
Especially when you go global… what is commonplace design in Burundi or Nepal would be Art in the US or some such place.
You sound like you’ve got the basics of a plan there… maybe it can be researched, written up as a business plan and we can help find one of those microlending places maybe, (or others) for you to shop it to?
thanks..I wondered if my idea just sounded good to me or not. I was a in a pretty bad way health wise and was in a bit of fog for several years due to that but I think I sent off letters about this to people like Al Gore,(speaking of environmental) Oprah etc and never got any answers back on the idea.
I had visions of it also not just completely furnishing Habit but for other people(rich people) looking for one of a kind furnishings also…It’s really amazing what some of the people on those decorating shows did with scraps of metal for instance into one of kind tables(that were sold for a thousand or more actually) …I was convinced after seeing some of these huge salvage yards that almost give this stuff away and what is there that you could truly build a house from scratch from a salvage place. Sort of as a showpiece of what can be accomplished from ‘junk’.And I mean a house that would be a real show piece also not just some thrown together piece of crap.
My basic premise though is still combining people with no skills with almost free material to create jobs. I thought at first that the furnishing for Habit could maybe be all bought up by big companies -they would get tax credits, and free publicity for then giving furnishings to Habit. You could even have some of the people who weren’t artistic doing the bookwork and such…everyone would find there niche in a place like that. Or even rotate and give everyone opportunity to learn more than one particular skill.
I think it could work. I don’t know much of anything about salvage or refinishing furniture, but there is lots of information about that out there. Plus, if you have woodworkers, you can make your own.
I think probably if you started it in one community first, and got people in the community involved (artists, furniture crafters, sales persons, etc) for helping to train people, that you could make a definite go of it. I don’t know which business structure you would want.. non-profit or regular, but SCORE can help with that, for free. Also there are usually free business incubators in various cities that might be able to help. Don’t bother with Gore or Oprah (although she can put you on her show and help you out once you’ve done all the work and become successful at it 😉
Definitely I would go for the higher end market.. and the Habitat market. You could maybe have an opt-in program type thing, where the buyer has the chance to provide a similar piece to what they’ve purchased (or something) for half the price to a less fortunate person. Or offer the opportunity to buy a goat or sewing machine for a family in wherever, at the same time.
You could also consider selling the artwork for walls.. and sculptures and such, if you have people doing that. What you would really be selling, though, is not the actual product, but the opportunity for people to do well, help make changes in society, while also gaining a benefit. So, while talent would be important, the idea behind the talent would be more so.
How about “Interiors” or something, instead of Furniture?