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The game plan is the same, whether it be poverty of racism or the poverty of patriarchy. Poor whites were given just a smidgen more social and economic power that the poor blacks in the USA – enough to make the us vs. them categorization viable. The will of the oppressor is carried forth on the backs of those he oppresses, whether it be the handmaidens of patriarchy or the poor white people, historically speaking.
“The system of patriarchy can function only with the cooperation of women. This cooperation is secured by a variety of means: gender indoctrination, educational deprivation; the denial to women of knowledge of their history; the dividing of women, one from the other, by defining “respectability” and “deviance” according to women’s sexual activities; by restraints and outright coercion; by discrimination in access to economic resources and political power; and by awarding class privileges to conforming women.”
-The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner
Seventy two years (+) of struggle just to get right to vote, and an uphill battle *all* of the way. Now who exactly was creating such resistance to positive social change? Hmm… now that is quite the puzzle now isn’t it.
Those in power will never willingly concede their power. Not ever. What it takes – organizing, resistance, community are the factors that feminism built up until roughly the end of the Second wave. With the influx of po-mo theory and men – the feminist root manifesto i.e. the liberation of women from the oppressive structures of society – has been all but lost.
So much time has been lost to endless debates over empowerment and identity politics, the entire project steadfastly nonthreatening to the status quo. The radical feminist message is starting to get out again, despite the best efforts of the establishment to silence women who look to the root causes of the oppression of women. The task ahead is, as always, daunting but community is being formed, women are organizing and of course the status quo – is to be questioned, analyzed and ultimately rejected.
When asked about the wage gap and why we don’t see women equally represented in society how often is one bombarded with comments like: “Women prefer lower paying jobs”, or even better, ‘there is no such thing as the wage gap”. Steaming monkey muffins to that bollocks is my usual reply. Before we go on, one should not forget the neural-sexist angle, “females are just better at doing certain (lower paying, lower esteemed) jobs than others”.
*Gah* with hearty helping of *fml*
Gerda Lerner chooses a historical perspective to analyse the performance gap between women and men in society and in doing so creates an accurate set of insights into why dudes be achieving the way they do.
“For many centuries the talents of women were directed not towards self-development but towards realizing themselves through the development of a man. Women, conditioned for millennia to accept the patriarchal definition of their role, have sexually and emotionally serviced men and nurtured them in a way that allowed men of talent a fuller development and a more intensive degree of specialization than women have ever had. The sexual division of labor which has allotted to women the major responsibility for the domestic services and the nurturance of children has freed men from the cumbersome details of daily survival activities, while it disproportionately has burdened women with them. Women have had less spare time and above all less uninterrupted time in which to reflect, to think, and to write. The psychological support from intimacy and love has been far more readily available to talented men than to talented women. Had there been a man behind each brilliant woman, there would have been women of achievement in history equal to the numbers of men of achievement.”
>— The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: from the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy, Gerda Lerner
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