Canadian_watcher wrote:
Thanks for commenting on this. (I just noticed that I didn't code the quotations right in the response, above, so it looks like I wrote some of what Stephen actually wrote. yikes. anyway, hope you can tell which is which)
'ghettoization of labour' is a BIG issue imo.. obviously not just for women.
I appreciate the points you make regarding the equal pay for jobs that require equal training and about how work predominantly done by women is routinely more poorly rewarded than that of men. Its interesting to read how this sort of thing plays out in different countries or regions. the plumber situation wrt to the amounts they can charge is the same in Canada. It's so highly in demand that they write their own tickets, really. But the funny thing is that childcare is also highly in demand in Ontario, at least, and yet the incentives to become a child care provider (yes, wages mainly but also grants for education) are non-existent.
as an aside I think it's kind of strange that it's one a day week for 6 months to train to be a childcare provider in Australia .. why stretch it out like that? And if the training is important in the first place, why let them work before hand?
Well the same thing is true here wrt to the demand for childcare (referring to the bolded bit in your quote), however that demand is kind of new, a generation or two old...
If childcare had been as predominate a thing when Australian unions and trade unions had the power they once had then perhaps the situation would have been different. Perhaps not tho, because the trade union movement in the old days was very male, and in fact very bigoted in many ways.
As far as the training goes ... untrained childcare workers are always under the supervision of trained people, and the one day a week is sposed to be done in conjunction with another 3 or 4 days a week of working in the field. In some ways it shows how little value we give child rearing - otherwise like teaching or plumbing a much greater qualification would be required. I spose there is an assumption that people have been raising kids for ever and didn't need qualifications (tho i doubt this is true, in indigenous communities it appears girls had similar initiations and training before they could be "women" in the same way boys had before they became "men". Both had to "qualify".)
Which brings me to this:
compared2what? wrote:PLEASE NOTE: The adversity specifically faced by girls and women at every stage of life, in multiple spheres, in every culture on earth, for all recorded history is NOT mutually exclusive of the adversity specifically faced by boys and men at every stage of life, in multiple spheres, in every culture on earth, for all recorded history.
Thanks for listening!
Although it isn't "recorded" history, indigenous people in Australia (and possibly Mindinao, but I'd need to check) had a variety of societies with women having different levels of power. There have been some studies that correlate female power in indigenous Australian societies (and male power for that matter) with the ratio of food provided by each gender.
In indigenous Australian societies tho women "gave as good as they got" so to speak. This is an issue today with adolescent aboriginal females. They take a lot less shit (especially from cops) than their European descent counterparts and as a result have a much higher interaction rate with the legal system.
In indigenous Australian communities "women's business" is something men are not allowed to know about (at least till they become elders/past middle age). This is consistant across the country and men who broke the taboo were subject to harsh punishment (beating to death often) by women, or spearing by other males on request.
Family violence was accepted in some indigenous communities within specific boundaries. men who abused this and were excessively violent were subject to a series of punishments. Basically if a husband beat up his wife unfairly she would go tell her mum or auntie. If they felt she deserved it no further action was taken, if they felt it was unfair then the entire family, mum, aunts, sisters and cousins (all female) would ambush the guy and beat the crap out of him with the digging sticks. Often this ambush was set up by other men as well.
If the behaviour continued the man would often be beaten to death. I don't have any links or refs for this cos its all stuff I've been told verbally.
Some might consider this a savage and brutal way of life, and of course in some ways it was, but in some ways so is our current culture.
The upshot of this was that there is a more even distribution of power across society.
Now this is a society where raiding groups of young men would "steal" women from other tribal groups and often war would ensue. So I'm not holding it up as some perfect sexism or misogyny free noble savage bullshit. Its just interesting to compare some of the ways power in our society is distributed with what I have heard about those cultures.
