I've admittedly been looking and writing mostly about broader urban issues so far. But since it's specifically from the purview of gender issues in Chinese urbanism this summer, I figure it’d be good to have a post or two about my own take on the current state of the gender imbalance in let‘s say “society，”This is taken from a conversation I had with my dear friend and colleague, Rajeswari Rajagopalan, a who’s one of India‘s foremost strategic analysts, on gender issues in our workplace. But it turned into a long conversation in gender issues in society. Blogs, I've found, are places for guided rants, so here's one on why (I think) things are the way the are:
June 5th, 2013
The economic structures of "traditional" society (up 'til the last century) were largely manual labor based, almost necessarily ensuring the centrality and dominance of the male in economic production and in turn in social cohesion. People have argued that this started with the plow thousands of years go: before the plow, men and women were equal economically in that both could till soil and gather food with equal skill. Accordingly, they were equal socially, intellectually, and in terms of power. But when the plow came, the work that women did became less relevant, and the remaining work was left to the physically stronger sex---by nature's course, this was usually the male. All successful economic activity became dependent on the successful economic performance of the male.
These economic structures and the social structures that came with them made it such that women and children were dependent on the man; even if women had issues with the relationship or their treatment, they had little recourse from the crappy relationship, because they were economically dependent on men (to provide their shelter, food, and clothing).
Within these structures, women served their own socio-economic purpose: they kept stuff in order at home, making sure the family was tight-knit; the children and the father always had someone to take care of them, and accordingly, all the members of the family were dependent on one another in some way (i.e. a tight-knit social structure), while the economic underpinning of it all was the man's economic productivity. Friedan argues that women wound up finding personal identity and meaning through their family, rather than through their own virtues. (This is a huge blanket statement, of course. And different societies value women’s economic contributions in different ways, but I don’t think there‘s a single culture that does it enough.)
Of course， this was reinforced---if not entirely driven， after a while---by social structures that supported male-dominated households and frowned upon (a) women working and being economically empowered and independent and (b) women disrupting otherwise stable, peaceful families and societies. When my grandmother started working at a municipal office in 1940s Bombay for the very reason of economic independence, for example， her whole family disdained her activities; she was needlessly challenging stable, peaceful norms.
But in the last century especially, women have been able to demonstrate their individual economic worth outside of the home as well---demonstrate to their families, societies, and selves. Whether this had to do with the changing nature of work and economic activity (less manual labor-based) or the needs of the economy (i.e. World War II required women to work on bomber assembly lines in the US), women demonstrated that work outside the home was doable and beneficial to society in some respect. This has probably changed even more from the move from an industrial economy to a service economy，where economic contributions are less contingent on physical strength or prowess。 （That said，large elements of industrial manufacturing have required the massive contributions of women， and in places like 19th century America， today’s factories in China and Bangladesh, and elsewhere, women have accounted for at least half of manufacturing jobs, going so far as to dominate certain sectors in the industry. This is something I'll try and explore after my trip, in a few weeks, to Shenzhen, China's manufacturing hub).
This economic activity (and empowerment) also challenged conventional power structures: being (more) financially independent, the woman didn't have to kowtow to whatever the husband said; she had alternative recourse should she seek it. So, if a woman wanted a divorce, it was more viable. If the woman didn't want to just look after the kids, this was also viable: she could leave and support herself economically.
This relatively sudden empowerment has broken traditionally peaceful, stable socio-economic structures; because of the former (divorce being more viable), marriages are arguably more precarious; because of the latter (looking after the kids exclusively is more of an 'option'), the tight-knittedness of the family has eroded. I recently read a piece about how people that oppose same-sex marriage are often the same people that oppose any challenges to “traditional” marriages in which a man has his defined role and a woman hers.
Because the structures of society were changing, the ideologies of society changed along with them---Though this was arguably a reciprocal process in which each drove the other. With more women realizing their potential, their own expectations for themselves were elevated, and as they accomplished them, society's expectations for women were also elevated. Accordingly, the ideology of feminism---of the equality of worth of a woman and man---as well as recognition of its merit---that there are many benefits to this equality---came about. And that's somewhere near where we find ourselves in many parts (but not enough) of the world today.
(This rant is getting unwieldy, so I'll break it into two posts)
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