Changing families and feminist blind-spots

Have female-friendly policies been captured by middle-class feminists?

Alison Wolf

‘Feminism’ today

• Number 1 topics for self-identified feminist columnists and commentators are sexual – date-rape, campus rape, ‘gendered’ violence, ‘revenge porn’

• Other major media topics are– ‘pay gaps’ (interpreted as discriminatory) – demands for female quotas in top jobs or all-female

lists

- campaign for’30%’ minimum board members to be women pursued across developed world, championed by top female executives

2014: a ‘watershed year’?

Rebecca Solnit’s ‘watershed’ events

And elsewhere

January Dylan Farrow testified that she was molested age 7

Start of Israel-Gaza conflict.

April Silicon Valley executive fired for abuse conviction

Islamic State mounts hugely successful offensive. Crimea occupied

September Videotape of violence in a lift

Yazidi women captured/sold. Ukraine fighting

December Canadian radio host accused by 15 women

100,000s of Syrian refugees in tent camps. Pakistani school atrocity

What ‘everyone’ (sic) was outraged by…

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/12/the_year_of_outrage_2014_everything_you_were_angry_about_on_social_media.html#part-8

’

A far cry from the progressive breaking down of barriers which were linked to gender as part of the liberal, individualist revolution.

And far from reflecting a ‘post-liberal’ awareness of the continuing importance of family, community, civil society, ‘new’ feminism is the pursuit of individual and elite self-interest.

Today it makes no more sense to talk about ‘women’s interests’ as an

important, shared concept than it does to talk about ‘men’s interests’.

Three huge social changes have made the idea obsolete at best, and all too

often perverse and harmful

Major changes

• Social change (1) Female labour market participation

• Social change (2) Family structures

• Social change (3) Class differences, new and old – the fragmentation of ‘sisterhood’

The new labour market: changing female participation

• Major increases in female labour market participation

• Rise most striking for married women, upper and upper-middle income women, older women

• Also involves huge increase in part-time employment

• Part-timers largely female – but part-time employment is far more common for some groups of women than others

• Labour force participation rates have been increasing for women, falling for men, over the last quarter-century

• Women are under, but close to, half the entire labour force in developed countries

• Overall participation rates for women remain lower than for men

A similar picture at aggregate level…

Canada France Germany Netherlands UK USA0

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Labour force participation 2009

Men 15-64Women 15-64

The single most important change?

Participation of MARRIED women

This change came early in the US, somewhat later in Western Europe

1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 (prov)

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Trends in US female employment

% employed labor force (16+) who are femaleemployment rate for married women

1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1973 1981 1990 19980

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Female participation rates GB ( age 16-59)

% married% single

Changing family structures

Marriage patterns

• Fewer marriages, more divorces

• More childless adults (men and women)

• More single-parent families, overwhelmingly headed by women (both once-married and never-married)

Child-bearing patterns

• Big decreases in average family size

• Big increase in number of women and men who never have a child

• Very very few families with 3+ children

Decrease in family size is universal

Other changes differ enormously by class and education

Major differences between more and less educated

• Very large increase in average age at marriage and average age at first child for the highly educated only

• Very large increase in the number who never have a child, men and women, for the highly educated only

• ‘Large’ (3+) families concentrated among the very affluent and immigrant/some second generation groups

Inter-generational links

• Families still the most important source of care and support, not supplanted by welfare state

• For the very elderly, the infirm, the disabled, family support critical. In some (many?) countries, including the UK, state payments increasingly concentrated – ‘minor’ disabilities fall on families

• Grandparents play a major and increasingly important role in child care, for both single and two-parent families.

The death of sisterhood

Social change has generated major and growing differences in the career and family paths of more and less educated women.

Educated women have jobs which are the same as those of educated men, and if they do not have children, their salaries are the same.Their work patterns are different, their family patterns are different.

Male and female jobs: UK 1930

Men 1930

Professional/TechnicalClericalSalesManufacturingServiceAgricultural

Women 1930

Professional/TechnicalClericalSalesManufacturingServiceAgricultural

Male and female jobs UK 1999

Men 1999

Professional/TechnicalClericalSalesManufacturingServiceAgricultural

Women 1999

Professional/TechnicalClericalSalesManufacturingServiceAgricultural

Lawye

rs & ju

dges

Teach

ers in

higher

educati

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Doctors

and den

tists

Scien

tists[1]

Economist

s, stati

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alysts

, computer

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mmers0

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% female: selected professions UK

19712009

For the top 15% of jobs, taken overall, gender equality has arrived% Class 1 jobs held by men and women: OECD 2000

MaleFemale

Work patterns differ by education more than by gender(and for childless graduates they don’t differ by gender at all)

Males with less than upper secondary

Males with tertiary Females with less than upper secondary

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Labour force participation 2008 by education age 25-64

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Huge growth internationally in female part-timers

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% employed adults working part-time 2009

MenWomen

But not all women…

• Part-time work is more likely for

• Less-educated• Lower-paid• Older• With care responsibilities• THESE GROUPS TAKE

LONGER BREAKS WHEN THEY HAVE SMALL CHILDREN

• Part-time work is less likely for

• Highly educated• Well paid• Younger• Professional jobs• GRADUATE WOMEN

TAKE VERY SHORT BREAKS FROM THE LABOUR MARKET

Diverging lifestyles• The less educated –

• Work throughout most of adult life

• Often work part-time to fit in family demands

• More often single parents• Work shifts• Partner also often works shifts• ‘Job’ not career• Work in female-dominated

sectors

• The more educated -

• Work mostly full-time • Take very short breaks for

children• Are rarely single mothers at

birth, divorce less• Work long but ‘normal’ days• Career-oriented• Work alongside men• Employ domestic help

Large proportions of the non-graduate workforce is in sectors where many jobs are still either heavily female (and traditionally so) or heavily male (and traditionally so).

The stronger and larger the welfare state, the more this is true.

This is why there is a ‘pay gap’

• Many desirable jobs are not available part-time. This is not, normally, prejudice (and if it were, would be economically self-defeating).

• Many part-time jobs are in low-paid sectors• Many part-time workers have had interrupted

employment histories• NB AMONG part-time workers, women’s

average hourly pay is higher than men’s

Childcare and employment

• Care of small children is intrinsically labour-intensive and expensive

• Private payments are post-tax• Seen as major barrier to female employment• Vocal demands for more state-supported, and

institutional provision• UK has increased spending very rapidly, now

second-highest spender in OECD

But childcare patterns for UK 3 year olds show limits

Increases in subsidies for childcare have either tiny or indiscernible impact on employment rates of mothers of pre-schoolers.

So what do today’s leading feminists most care about?

Inequality among women?Policies and benefits that focus on

lower-paid women prioritising family?Hardly…

The ’30%’ rule: a core demand

• Norway’s statutory requirement that publicly-listed companies should have at least 40% female directors has been studied in depth.

• NO positive impact on company performance (some evidence of the opposite)

• NO positive impact on wage rates or promotion rates for other women in the companies concerned

• Small group of very highly paid ‘golden skirts’

All-female lists

• Achieved in some political contexts• Assumes that ‘being female’ gives you some greater

insight into ‘women’s needs’ in some universal sense – but why should it?

• Actual voting patterns reflect the fact that it almost certainly can’t and doesn’t

• There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that women are more likely to vote for a female candidate because she is female

Sex, violence and ‘views’

• Human beings are obsessed with sex• Human beings are obsessed with violence

• Social media are ‘quick-view’, headline driven

• How to get huge numbers of hits and views?• Sex + violence. Sex + violence + feeling

superior (or victimised)

In conclusion

• Today’s self-proclaimed ‘new feminism’ has little to do with today’s labour market or today’s society, or with the acute problems faced by many non-privileged women

• It has been captured by a combination of highly-paid self-interest and commercial acumen (dressed up as moral outrage): and by a mindset which is that of an individualist, career-oriented elite