I had never read or heard any of Joan William's work. Thanks for introducing me to it. Her analysis is excellent. We should get all Democrat party leaders to listen to this.
Joan Williams: I follow your work, and have read _Outclassed_ Brava! I grew up with the working class and identify because I still suffer from imposter syndrome—and what you have to say is dead on. The only concerns I have is that I don’t see how it is possible to win over the working class without throwing working class women under the bus. One of the fundamental values of the working class, as in all ‘traditional societies’ is the male/female division of labor. Male dignity for working class men requires that the be doing jobs that no women does and which they which, they believe, no woman would or can do. A core value of the working class is occupational sex segregation.
I’ve spent my academic career on and off team-teaching Econ-Philosophy Women and Work courses with a labor economist. IMHO the most important feminist issue and, frankly, the only feminist issue I care about, is that of liberating women from the occupational pink-collar ghetto—ending occupational sex segregation, making it possible for women to get traditional ‘men’s jobs’. ‘Elite’ women on my side of the diploma divide now compete in a unisex labor market for jobs in management and the professions. But non-college grad jobs are highly sex-segregated and, de facto, most women on the other side of the diploma divide are locked into a range of agonizingly boring service sector jobs—the 5 Cs: caring, cleaning, catering, cashiering, and clerical work. It isn’t merely a matter of wages, much less ‘respect’ or whatever: it’s the intrinsic character of the job, what one does day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute that makes this work, to many women, intolerable. And contrary to what many ‘elites’ seem to imagine all cats are not equally gray in the darkness: secretarial work isn’t just the same as auto mechanics, laying carpet isn’t just the same as cashiering, etc. It isn’t that ‘men’s jobs’ are better: different people are different in their tolerance for different kinds of drudgery.
Can you make a serious effort to end ongoing employment discrimination, open blue-collar jobs to women, and enable working class women to escape the pink-collar ghetto and still win over the working class?
I had never read or heard any of Joan William's work. Thanks for introducing me to it. Her analysis is excellent. We should get all Democrat party leaders to listen to this.
Joan Williams: I follow your work, and have read _Outclassed_ Brava! I grew up with the working class and identify because I still suffer from imposter syndrome—and what you have to say is dead on. The only concerns I have is that I don’t see how it is possible to win over the working class without throwing working class women under the bus. One of the fundamental values of the working class, as in all ‘traditional societies’ is the male/female division of labor. Male dignity for working class men requires that the be doing jobs that no women does and which they which, they believe, no woman would or can do. A core value of the working class is occupational sex segregation.
I’ve spent my academic career on and off team-teaching Econ-Philosophy Women and Work courses with a labor economist. IMHO the most important feminist issue and, frankly, the only feminist issue I care about, is that of liberating women from the occupational pink-collar ghetto—ending occupational sex segregation, making it possible for women to get traditional ‘men’s jobs’. ‘Elite’ women on my side of the diploma divide now compete in a unisex labor market for jobs in management and the professions. But non-college grad jobs are highly sex-segregated and, de facto, most women on the other side of the diploma divide are locked into a range of agonizingly boring service sector jobs—the 5 Cs: caring, cleaning, catering, cashiering, and clerical work. It isn’t merely a matter of wages, much less ‘respect’ or whatever: it’s the intrinsic character of the job, what one does day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute that makes this work, to many women, intolerable. And contrary to what many ‘elites’ seem to imagine all cats are not equally gray in the darkness: secretarial work isn’t just the same as auto mechanics, laying carpet isn’t just the same as cashiering, etc. It isn’t that ‘men’s jobs’ are better: different people are different in their tolerance for different kinds of drudgery.
Can you make a serious effort to end ongoing employment discrimination, open blue-collar jobs to women, and enable working class women to escape the pink-collar ghetto and still win over the working class?