I consider myself a blood-thirsty feminist; I think the feminist movement was and is a good thing. I was a participant at one level or other from the days of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. I’ve read all the best known books. My favorite: Elizabeth Janeway, Man’s World, Woman’s Place. A great title, don’t you think?
When I was teaching history at a community college, I created a course called “Women in European History” which, as I said in the course description, was not so much about great women as about gender roles in various historic eras.
It was a joy to see feminist goals become main stream and to see women gain their legitimate position in society.
When I was teaching history at a community college, I created a course called “Women in European History” which, as I said in the course description, was not so much about great women as about gender roles in various historic eras.
It was a joy to see feminist goals become main stream and to see women gain their legitimate position in society.I think, alas, the feminist movement had unintended consequences when it was hijacked by clawing, greedy hands. One of the unintended consequences is the required two-income couple. Two parents both with careers started out as a choice, allowing women to use their education and training to pursue careers while having a family, a routine expectation for men. Working women, including working moms, have been a boon to society as they have added their talents to the work force.
Two parents working has now become a necessity as employers have found ways to reduce work benefits, changes tolerated by employees who could afford reductions because of the two incomes. Layoffs are more common and more tolerated now than they once were. An employer’s commitment to a work force is not expected.
More and more income over the last 30 years has flowed from workers to the very top of society. Here are some discouraging statistics.
- Today, the people whose incomes are in the top 1% get 23.5% of all US income.
- In the 1990’s, the top 1% got 19%.
- In 1980, the top 1% got 14%.
- In the 1970’s, the top 1% got 8%.
- Right now, the top tenth of a percent of the population (.01%) gets 12% of all income.
- Between 1980 and 2005, 80% of new income went to the top 1%.
Robbing the middle class to feed the rich has been tolerated, I believe, because working couples have two incomes. The rich have grabbed the benefits of feminism for themselves.
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| A Koch brother |
The rich have become richer in part because of the dramatic rise in executive salaries in absolute terms and as compared with the salaries of other employees. In some countries, there are controls on the size of executive salaries; fat chance of any controls getting instituted in the U.S. But income disparity is the stuff of revolution and reaction. If the bottom starts to grumble significantly about the lack of parity, the wealthy and powerful and their political lackeys will enact repressive measures quickly enough.
Another benefit reduction in this regime of robbing the worker is the replacement of pensions with 401(k) plans, the biggest scam ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. For people with the time, the inclination, the knowledge, the skills, and the luck to manage personal investing, the 401(k) might be good. Even then, the personal investor managing a 401(k) is until he/she reaches age 59 1/2 confined to the plan's small pool of allowed funds, a violation of the first rule of investing, diversify the portfolio. Individuals can be led astray into various schemes, they can ransack their 401(k) funds for emergency purposes, or they can make decisions that do not follow the best investment practices.
Examples: A former coworker of mine, an intelligent, thoughtful and hardworking man, lost much of his 401(k) in a Ponzi scheme, not the infamous and gigantic Maddoff scheme but in one of many local scams. Some years ago, a work colleague told me that he was putting his 401(k) funds mostly into the then booming tech companies. “But they have such poor price-earnings ratios,” I said. His response: “What’s a price-earnings ratio?” He admitted some years later that his 401(k) fund was still recovering from the collapse of the “dot com” bubble. An acquaintance says she had to stop her unemployed husband from using 401(k) funds to buy a new car. Still another acquaintance says she and her husband lost tens of thousands to a corporate scam similar to that launched by Enron.
The 40l(k) is a vast boon to investment firms, banks, and other corporate big shots who have way too much influence over our government.
The two-income family means that mom has to be super-mom and, now, dad has to be super-dad as well as men have stepped up to participate in raising children and keeping house. Women can work but working couples must both work full time with a commitment that largely ignores family life. Life for many is tight and stressful. For me personally, time has been for many years a crushing tyrant.
I have a solution to the stress-and-tension side of life. I think we should change work. Fat chance, I know, especially now, an era when capitalism has been described as " a transnational phalanx of giant corporations that eat their young and flatten everything in their path." But I'll say anyway that I think work, where possible, should be broken into more part time segments so that parents can organize a decent work and home life.
My husband and I have worked for many decades in professional level jobs where we nonetheless were not supervisors. All of those jobs could be segmented to provide couples with flexibility. A management challenge, I know, and corporations according to the "dismal science" (i.e. economics) are not supposed to do anything but make profits. But then anything good for children is good for society, right?
