It must be what they're wearing.
1%
One Percent.
O.N.E. P.E.R.C.E.N.T.
That's the number between ZERO and TWO. Plus a "%" symbol behind it.
There must be a good reason for this startling fact. Especially since, according to UN gender reports, women perform 66% of the world's work, produce 50% of its food and earn a whopping 10% of its income. Could it be that Occupy Wall Street really is a feminist movement camouflaged to make it palatable?
Nah! Besides, I know; women don't want to own property, it's a hassle. They know intuitively that property is overrated. It can't help that women aren't as good at math and find it harder to calculate closing costs. And it really doesn't help that clothing standards are dropping. If women would just dress for success, banks will take them seriously. Besides, their husband's provide everything they need and they shouldn't worry their pretty heads about crass things like property. In addition, if they're liberated, which we all know they pretty much are these days, they need to work harder and stop expecting things to be handed to them on a platter like the princesses they all secretly want to be. Phew, all done.
But, maybe it's because girls and women:
How much poorer do we want women to get in the world? It's really hard to imagine. They already make up the overwhelming majority of the world's poor. And, despite the successes of feminists (yes, men and women) during the past century, even in the U.S. we have a persistent and growing feminization of poverty.
If you doubt what I'm saying just because you have to then look at Half The Sky, or We Are Equals or The Girl Effect or any number of readily available sources. These organizations are not fly-by-night hobbies for people with not enough macrame to occupy them. These are big, serious international movements created by thoughtful, kind and empathetic thinkers and doers dedicated to changing the world.
I know, I know, Oprah and the Queen are both on the Forbes List. I love Travie McCoy, too. It just bums me out that he had to point those two out in particular. Because then I had to, sigh, explain catchy women-rule-the world agitprop to my patient children. Oprah and the Queen are the only two people mentioned in his song, even though out of the top 100 Richest People in America only 10 are women. Neither O. or HRH are on that one.
But there are several lists, one for Women and another for the real people (there is no "Richest Men's List"), which is just called the Forbes Rich List. On that list there are eleven women in the Top 100, including one self-made woman, Wu Yajun, whom I imagine might be in possession of underwear enhancing prosthetics of some sort. Half of the women are listed by their name followed by "& family" which sounds like Forbes Code for "see, her dad/husband/brother did it). Of the top 50 men listed, only seven are listed "& family." Do the other guys not have families? If you took away the "& family" would these women be on the list at all? In any case, it's seems awfully lonely to be a billionaire male. And yes, I know, American and European women have made pay and income gains during the last 50 years. Although every Tuesday I say a pay equity prayer because that is the day that women's salaries catch up with the previous week's salary earned by their male peers.
Which goes to show, money isn't everything. Why does it matter if women aren't earning, saving and investing it? It doesn't make you happier.
It does, however, make you healthier, make you safer, mean you live longer, you don't die in childbirth, you don't work til you die, you aren't subjected to the constant threat of violence or violence itself. It means you are an agent in your own life.
I understand that lots of people feel that women have enough and that men are now getting the short end of the stick. If that's the case why NOT let women spare men the onerous task of being workhorses in charge of their own destiny and having responsibility for the women and children around them. Men should stop paying for brides, educate their daughters, let women do paid work and allow them to inherit property. I say, throw out the stick. Look at the frigging mess we're in.
But, before I go to worship at the foot of my Marilyn Waring statue we should consider Dominant Forces of Behavior. The societal rules, formal and informal, that continue to enslave and oppress girls and women, and by logical extension the men and boys they "belong" to, are hard to change.
It's important to mention here that I'm a serious Trekkie (not so serious that I dress up, but serious enough that most of fourth grade was spent perfecting raising one eyebrow). What does that have to do with anything? I really actually believe that, on this planet, we're all the same. It's hard to keep in mind as we obsess over the duration of Kim Kardashian's marriage or the final score of Sunday's game (pick a game, any game). As long as one more female child gets sold into marriage, one more girl gets stoned for being raped, one more mother dies giving birth for lack of hot water, one more widow goes into hiding to save her own life -- we, women, all do.
And we, men and women both, get to live with that. It's why I sometimes can't bear to read Nick Kristof's column and why I don't have much patience for the male right's movement this morning. And, since I always say this, to be clear, this is not an exercise in male-bashing. I know that it's been a downer for guys growing up in the past 50 years to learn that maybe men do bad things to women because they're essentially taught to. This is a description of poverty and inequality, of worldwide, gender-based social injustice based on traditions and laws that are archaic and hard to change. And, the fact that they overwhelmingly benefit boys and men is not the same as being good for them.
If the rules are hard to change, do we stop trying? So, my real question isn't how much poorer can women get, it's if we don't radically empathize and stop confusing gender with destiny, who will?
Oh, and one last thing, the idea that the Occupy Wall Street movement is feminist at it's core is just not something we're comfortable with. It's a lot more acceptable if we just keep hiding those people. As Daphne Muller points out: "Men's visits... have been consistently reported -- just perform a basic internet search for Michael Moore, Russell Simmons, Kanye West, Cornel West or Chris Hedges. But what about Naomi Klein, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eve Ensler and Susan Sarandon, to name a few?" Except for articles about sexual assault being a problem, that is. But, that's not because mainstream media is way into highlighting women primarily for being sexual and vulnerable. I'm going now.
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Look up "Dear Collegue letter" if you need to see what I mean.
...which is why women own property by proxy. Let the men do the dirty work, while women enjoy the benefits.
Men and women through out history have been co-partners and it just counter productive to argue otherwise. Instead we should be standing together to fight the 1% that own all the wealth. And that is the rich elite, not the average Joe because he is a man.
But the real problem as I see it... those posters' that respond like this are the one's that get "defensive". They have a need to put total strangers in their "place" with no real bases for their argument. Comments are usually followed by a lot of assumptions, all caps, and a bunch of explanation marks.
Other than what I typed on this topic Juliadrake1 I don't think further explanation is needed. If your looking for a fight look else where.
We are equal in this matter here in the USA, but since it is not explicitly stated in the article, I can assure you that many men and women will take this study and run with it at the expense of men under the guise of "equality." An equality that we already have.
Even in the Western world, where differences are harder to detect between gender, as argued by many who have commented, there are still women to feel objectified, forced into the position they have assumed as "feminine," while there are still men who feels objectified also, forced into the position they have assumed as "masculine."
I say, instead of focusing on proving each other wrong, why not focus on the problems at hand? Is it not a problem that there is a woman being stoned because she is raped? Is it not a problem that a woman can not pose a case in court against someone who raped her because she was dressed provocatively when the said rape happened? Is it not a problem that some women are not given a choice when it comes to when and how many children they are willing to have? Why not focus on this, instead of the validity of arguments pinning women against men?
Few people are going to try to justify the example presented above as being something worth addressing...
... but is the plight of these girls, or girls in other 3rd world nations really the equivalent of the "plight" of women in the West? Do western women have the right to appropriate the real injustice these women suffer to further their goals at home? These women suffer orders of magnitude more oppression than any western, college-educated woman agonizing whether to change her name when she gets married, or co-mingle finances, because of what it symbolizes-- could ever claim.
It's all in the title and argument you presented.
... few would argue the above example isn't oppression and isn't worth addressing on the world stage. It's horrible that they live in a society that doesn't allow women to eat eggs... but that isn't the west.
Machines and technology made all of our live easier and created the seductive allure of being a technocrat in one of our many institutions. This was once a role reserved for very few but over time it became one of the most common in our civilization. We need to look at history honestly and in context, there is little understanding to be found in endless victim games between the genders. It's fair to say we all had it rough and when it was good for one it was good for the other.
These numbers are absurd, we should argue about them and the motives of someone who chooses to paint such a dishonest picture of our world.
What we do know is that the wealth that controls the US is controlled by men. We know that the big money that funds our politicians comes from the big industries - the finance industries and energy companies that are overwhelmingly controlled by men. In fact they're almost exclusively controlled by men. In addition, the government itself is predominantly male. with the US having one of the lowest rates of political representation by women in the free world.
Male primacy is historic. It is all that human history is. But we are in a new era and things are changing rapidly. Along with that change we have angry reactionaries, as always happens when privilege shifts. Their anger clouds every such discussion with emotion. Access to clean data would help diffuse a lot of that emotion. You can't argue with math.
The notion of control and power seems to be a predominant theme among feminist who have taken to the view that men cannot be trusted therefore their presence in power is a inherent threat to women and symbol of stark inequality. I reject these assumptions and instead assert that the fear of men is evidence of sexist and hateful attitudes towards men on the part of feminist.
I have plenty of sources to back up my claim that women control 51% of personal wealth in America, just Google it and you will see lot's of articles from mainstream sources. As far as the authors claim I found a source for that originating in a report from 1978. It was calculated by the author using scant data and making way too many assumptions. She had no data on property so she made a guess based on guessing women's income.
http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/stop-that-feminist-viral-statistic-meme/
You can't just dismiss all evidence of male power using your own resentments as evidence either. The predominance of males in government does indeed have negative consequences, as we can see in the current war by this R congress against women's reproductive rights.
As for boys falling behind in education, we've certainly been over this. It's a small gap for middle class kids and is dwarfed by the race/class gap. I don't believe any males are honest about trying to get to the root of it because they become irate at any suggestion that the problem can be attributed to anything other than feminism. If they wanted to solve the problem, they'd propose solutions rather than use it as another springboard to whine.
As for male incomes, they are not falling behind. A very small sliver of educated women are doing slightly better than men on the whole, but only until they marry or have kids or age past 30. Please stop exaggerating.
Thanks for the feedback.
Keep in mind that I am not blaming the men here, just pointing out a trend. You are right; the problem is poverty in general (and perhaps a lack of birth control). But there is an element of gender here, and it can't be ignored or tossed aside.