Even in the 1950s most blue-collar jobs didn't require the upper body strength or physical endurance that excluded women. Women's exclusion from most of these jobs was plain discrimination. During WWII, when women were needed to do jobs in manufacturing they were recruited; when the war ended, positions were needed for returning GIs, and women were needed to take on the job of professional consumers to transition to a peacetime economy, they were sent home--in spite of the fact that, according to a survey by the Women's Bureau at the time the overwhelming majority said that they would prefer to keep their jobs if they could. Woman can do most blue-collar work and, as the natural experiment of WWII indicates, many would prefer it to the pink-collar drudge work into which most women are now locked.
As for the question of why more women are going to college and outperforming men, and the endless whining about boys falling behind, the reason for this is obvious. Women are working without a net. Without at least a four-year college degree and decent academic performance women will be locked into agonizingly boring, low-wage pink-collar drudge work. Men still have decent blue collar options so there is no need for them to bother.
As one whose formal training is in Anthropology with a specialty in human origins and evolution, another thought occurs to me. Human societies the world over and all through our history up until very recently were distinguished by one very clear dichotomy in the distribution of labor and power. There was always a male sphere and a female sphere. They did cross over in times of significant need, but in general the two sexes defined themselves in major ways as the roles they played in life and work. And in those roles, men were always the dominant sex. There were of course obvious physical reasons for this, but it was always far more pervasive a concept than just that.
It was the reason for the American 19th century male perception of women’s domain being restricted to ‘hearth and home’’ (or in the crude vernacular, barefoot and pregnant’). It was the reason why so many American men so objected to allowing women the franchise, or indeed any part in the larger political life of the nation. It was the impetus behind Abigail Adams’ famous letter to her husband noting that ‘all men would be tyrants if they could’, And it is one of the main reasons why all thoughout history, men have attempted to dominate and to use women for their own purposes.
Some would say that it is some kind of male fear of women’s emotionalism. Rex Harrison’s lament in My Fair Lady comes to mind. “Oh why can’t a woman be more like a man”. I know prehistorians who propose that the changeover came at the moment that men finally realized that they had major role to play in reproduction, whereas up until that moment this most crucial of human activities seemed a power given only to women.
Whatever the reason, the modern world’s work, among other issues, is inevitably changing that. But one does not alter several million years of one possibly innate perspective in a generation or two.
Your comments and those of Mr Fukuyama fail to consider genetics as the main reason for the gender roles in society until the past couple of centuries. Over three million years ago hominins evolved from knuckle-walking to upright bipedalism. Infants of knuckle walking primates can self-nurse clinging to their mothers who maintained mobility, protective and gathering capabilities. Because of the changes to body posture with walking upright and loss of hair, infants of homo erectus could no longer self-nurse. The mother needed to be stationary and cradle their infant, significantly limiting female capacities to provide and protect their offspring.
With a short life expectancy, the typical Homo erectus female had six to eight children and spent a high portion of her adult life either pregnant or nursing. Females had no choice but to make a huge investment in each child, nine months of pregnancy and two to three more years of nursing. This high investment with compromised capacities required females to choose males who would bond with them over the course of numerous children to provision and protect the female and her offspring. This set of adaptations increased the number of her viable offspring and solidified her genes for those adaptations in her female offspring.
Males had more flexibility in reproductive investment. However, males who better formed stable bonds and better provisioned and protected his mate increased the number of his viable offspring and solidified his genes for those adaptions in their offspring.
Over almost two million years the adaptations for better caregiving and nurturing in the female and adaptions for provisioning and protecting in the male simultaneously increased the favorable odds for their children. Those genes are still present in modern humans.
This unbalanced biological situation led to adaptations for selecting mating partners, females who would nurture and care, and males who would provision and protect the mother and children. As a broad and general statement, the adaptions of pair-bonding promoted the formation of the family unit, in which the male provided and protected his mate and offspring, and the females cared for and nurtured them, thus establishing the genetic biological family as the base for societal organization. Modern society wants to change these underpinnings of human existence. Genetics works on a scale of thousands of years, and it is hard to envision an adaption to counter millions of years of genomic sucess.
“one does not after several million years of one possibly innate perspective in a generation or two".
I believe my comment actually agreed with yours. I was just presenting it in a wider perspective, adding the power of cultural influence. However, dependence on a solely genetic perspective denies the power of culture. Nature v Nurture: that is a question we cannot fully decide since we are simultaneously both the examiners and the objects of our examination.
We are on the line of same line of thought. Not so sure about the author of the article. More importantly Nurture had been settled science with the "woke side" refusing serious discussion. Just ask Charles Murray, and Larry Summers and from Phyllis Schlafly to Naomi Wolfe, Nature must lead the conversation and not Nurture as Mr Fukuyama would have it.
I rather think the two are fully intertwined and utterly inseparable. Which is why it is so hard to distinguish the full effects of either. Are we E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology or the Bible’s reach for heaven or somewhere in between?
For me, we are an internal contradiction, a stitched together being composed of four essential pieces - the animal, the poet, the builder, and the would-be god. MacBeth characterized us as ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’ But I rather think what Shakespeare had him hear upon the stage were the Babel sounds of our fears, our dreams, our tools, and our hubris.
Are we E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology or the Bible’s reach for heaven or somewhere in between? As I recall he argued that biology was the foundation or at least central building block of ethics, and that we should look to biology and its evolution to understand morality. That maybe too much reductionist but in the right ball park, and pretty much the way I see things as well.
As perhaps in addition to a long process of human societal decisions based on the experience of what worked in keeping a society functional and relatively safe for the majoring of its members or proved destructive to that society?
Even in the 1950s most blue-collar jobs didn't require the upper body strength or physical endurance that excluded women. Women's exclusion from most of these jobs was plain discrimination. During WWII, when women were needed to do jobs in manufacturing they were recruited; when the war ended, positions were needed for returning GIs, and women were needed to take on the job of professional consumers to transition to a peacetime economy, they were sent home--in spite of the fact that, according to a survey by the Women's Bureau at the time the overwhelming majority said that they would prefer to keep their jobs if they could. Woman can do most blue-collar work and, as the natural experiment of WWII indicates, many would prefer it to the pink-collar drudge work into which most women are now locked.
As for the question of why more women are going to college and outperforming men, and the endless whining about boys falling behind, the reason for this is obvious. Women are working without a net. Without at least a four-year college degree and decent academic performance women will be locked into agonizingly boring, low-wage pink-collar drudge work. Men still have decent blue collar options so there is no need for them to bother.
Basically, many who are anti-woke or really hate wokeism are often more radicalised, bigoted and authoritarian than left-wing collectivists
As one whose formal training is in Anthropology with a specialty in human origins and evolution, another thought occurs to me. Human societies the world over and all through our history up until very recently were distinguished by one very clear dichotomy in the distribution of labor and power. There was always a male sphere and a female sphere. They did cross over in times of significant need, but in general the two sexes defined themselves in major ways as the roles they played in life and work. And in those roles, men were always the dominant sex. There were of course obvious physical reasons for this, but it was always far more pervasive a concept than just that.
It was the reason for the American 19th century male perception of women’s domain being restricted to ‘hearth and home’’ (or in the crude vernacular, barefoot and pregnant’). It was the reason why so many American men so objected to allowing women the franchise, or indeed any part in the larger political life of the nation. It was the impetus behind Abigail Adams’ famous letter to her husband noting that ‘all men would be tyrants if they could’, And it is one of the main reasons why all thoughout history, men have attempted to dominate and to use women for their own purposes.
Some would say that it is some kind of male fear of women’s emotionalism. Rex Harrison’s lament in My Fair Lady comes to mind. “Oh why can’t a woman be more like a man”. I know prehistorians who propose that the changeover came at the moment that men finally realized that they had major role to play in reproduction, whereas up until that moment this most crucial of human activities seemed a power given only to women.
Whatever the reason, the modern world’s work, among other issues, is inevitably changing that. But one does not alter several million years of one possibly innate perspective in a generation or two.
Your comments and those of Mr Fukuyama fail to consider genetics as the main reason for the gender roles in society until the past couple of centuries. Over three million years ago hominins evolved from knuckle-walking to upright bipedalism. Infants of knuckle walking primates can self-nurse clinging to their mothers who maintained mobility, protective and gathering capabilities. Because of the changes to body posture with walking upright and loss of hair, infants of homo erectus could no longer self-nurse. The mother needed to be stationary and cradle their infant, significantly limiting female capacities to provide and protect their offspring.
With a short life expectancy, the typical Homo erectus female had six to eight children and spent a high portion of her adult life either pregnant or nursing. Females had no choice but to make a huge investment in each child, nine months of pregnancy and two to three more years of nursing. This high investment with compromised capacities required females to choose males who would bond with them over the course of numerous children to provision and protect the female and her offspring. This set of adaptations increased the number of her viable offspring and solidified her genes for those adaptations in her female offspring.
Males had more flexibility in reproductive investment. However, males who better formed stable bonds and better provisioned and protected his mate increased the number of his viable offspring and solidified his genes for those adaptions in their offspring.
Over almost two million years the adaptations for better caregiving and nurturing in the female and adaptions for provisioning and protecting in the male simultaneously increased the favorable odds for their children. Those genes are still present in modern humans.
This unbalanced biological situation led to adaptations for selecting mating partners, females who would nurture and care, and males who would provision and protect the mother and children. As a broad and general statement, the adaptions of pair-bonding promoted the formation of the family unit, in which the male provided and protected his mate and offspring, and the females cared for and nurtured them, thus establishing the genetic biological family as the base for societal organization. Modern society wants to change these underpinnings of human existence. Genetics works on a scale of thousands of years, and it is hard to envision an adaption to counter millions of years of genomic sucess.
My last line, which you may have missed
“one does not after several million years of one possibly innate perspective in a generation or two".
I believe my comment actually agreed with yours. I was just presenting it in a wider perspective, adding the power of cultural influence. However, dependence on a solely genetic perspective denies the power of culture. Nature v Nurture: that is a question we cannot fully decide since we are simultaneously both the examiners and the objects of our examination.
We are on the line of same line of thought. Not so sure about the author of the article. More importantly Nurture had been settled science with the "woke side" refusing serious discussion. Just ask Charles Murray, and Larry Summers and from Phyllis Schlafly to Naomi Wolfe, Nature must lead the conversation and not Nurture as Mr Fukuyama would have it.
I rather think the two are fully intertwined and utterly inseparable. Which is why it is so hard to distinguish the full effects of either. Are we E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology or the Bible’s reach for heaven or somewhere in between?
For me, we are an internal contradiction, a stitched together being composed of four essential pieces - the animal, the poet, the builder, and the would-be god. MacBeth characterized us as ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’ But I rather think what Shakespeare had him hear upon the stage were the Babel sounds of our fears, our dreams, our tools, and our hubris.
Are we E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology or the Bible’s reach for heaven or somewhere in between? As I recall he argued that biology was the foundation or at least central building block of ethics, and that we should look to biology and its evolution to understand morality. That maybe too much reductionist but in the right ball park, and pretty much the way I see things as well.
As perhaps in addition to a long process of human societal decisions based on the experience of what worked in keeping a society functional and relatively safe for the majoring of its members or proved destructive to that society?