SOLUTION: Ahmadu Bello University Uneven Gender Revolution Solutions Paper

Speaker 1:
00:03
[inaudible].
Speaker 2:
00:03
Welcome to LSU IQ, a podcast from the London School of
Economics and political science where we asked leading social
scientists and other experts to answer an intelligent question
about economics, politics or society 2018 already a standout
year for gender equality in the U K 2018 could be the year of the
woman out Loring pay gaps me to pink waves, 20 eighteens
biggest gender equality wins worldwide. Just some of the
headlines embracing the idea that 2018 might be a good year
for women. Yet despite the surge in positivity, 2018 was also
the year that revealed how common gender hate incidents
were leading to calls from a such need to be recognized as a
hate crime across the u k the year that continued to see a
substantial portion of mothers withdrawing from employment
after childbirth and the year of a sobering report by the World
Economic Forum that suggested women would now need to
wait 108 years to close the global gender gap and 202 years to
bring about parity in the workplace. Despite global activism,
political promises and policy changes, gender inequality appears
stubbornly hard to address in this episode of LSCI Q just went to
Stein asks, is gender equality possible?
Speaker 3:
01:32
So in the literal way men rule the world and this made sense it
thousand years ago because human beings lived then in a world
in which physical strength was the most important attribute for
survival, the physical [inaudible] that person was more likely to
lead and men in general are physically stronger. Of course there
are many exceptions, but Sudan we live in a vastly different
world. The person more likely to lead isn’t not the physical
stronger person. It is the more creative person, the more
intelligent person, the more innovative person and there are no
hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to
be intelligent, to be creative, to be innovative. We have
evolved, but it seems to me that our ideas of gender have not
evolved a lot longer. Guide was an article about what it means
to be young and female. Illegals and and acquaintance told me
it was so angry. Of course it was angry. I am angry. Gender as it
functions today is a grieving justice. We should all be angry
Speaker 4:
02:48
right across the board in every single sphere. There’s work to be
done is work to be done in terms of fiscal representation.
There’s work to be done in terms of equal pay, um, in terms of
social inequalities and violence against,
Speaker 5:
03:00
as we’ve seen the attacks on the fight for gender equality
continue much as they did in 1918 but tonight we are
celebrating and historic achievements. So let’s finish on a
positive. Well, firstly, CNN has declared 2018 to be the year of
women. Yay. We’ve won. The year, only took 2018 attempts
against
Speaker 6:
03:22
quantify it.
Speaker 5:
03:24
Go with it.
Speaker 7:
03:32
That was author Chimamanda and it goes here at ICI. Women’s
rights activist had an a Pankhurst and the mash reports Rachel
Paris giving their take on gender inequality in recent years,
whether it’s a lack of equity in pay or the continued presence of
the glass ceiling. The struggle of women to achieve fairness in
the world of work has long been acknowledged as a problem.
Grace Lauden is associate professor in behavioral science. At
LSE, although interested in inequality in the workplace. Her
recent research which found the gender pay gap could be set to
widen, has been focused on understanding the choices that
children are making. I asked her to explain,
Speaker 8:
04:09
yes, I was motivated essentially because I do a lot of work in
firms and firms are under pressure to increase the presence of
women in particular occupations. So for example, if you go over
to the city and you talk to people in finance, they’re asking
questions, why aren’t there more women on the trading floor?
And if you look backwards, you’d find that essentially women
don’t choose the type of degrees that would lend them to get
access to trading jobs. And if you go even further back, which is
what my research that you’re referring to is you’ll find that
during childhood it does seem that different preferences
emerge between boys and girls. I’ve done a study recently that
leave, which is three cohorts studies in the UK. So these are for
kids born in 1958 1970 and 2000 and this is joint work with war
and luck.
Speaker 8:
04:54
Funko who is at the CP here at the LSE and also holds a position
in Thailand and we were really interested in it because it does
show that over time we see women sorting into jobs they
traditionally did not necessarily start into. So that’s good news
and in some ways we’re stating the obvious there. We all know
that women are more often represented in science technology
than they were in the past and are more often accountants than
they were in the past. However, what we noticed for the boys is
that it seems that they are choosing more often jobs that are
competitive and jobs that are higher income. So why we see
preferences moving for females over time. We also see
preferences moving for boys over time and if you are somebody
who cares about having a kind of close to 50 50 and
occupational representation or free choice for boys and girls,
this is quite disturbing because it essentially tells us that boys
are going to be choosing even more than they did before
traditional male jobs.
Speaker 8:
05:45
So there’d be more competition for those jobs among men or
women. And we’re going to end up with quite disappointed
people when they can’t get what they want to do. Let’s do we
just need to talk more about the men. I mean I guess in ways
when we think about gender equality, you could argue that
we’ve over-focused on females and because of that we haven’t
asked the metric revolution where women are sorting into jobs
that they did not traditionally sort into, but men aren’t sorting
into the traditional feminine jobs. So jobs like social work,
psychology, teaching, nursing, these are jobs that we don’t
really see too many men sought into. I’m doing some work at
the moment, again in schools on experiments and I have labeled
jobs for some children and not labeled jobs for others. So if you
were in the labeled treatment, you would essentially see a
description of a nurse and you would know it’s a nurse and if
you’re not in the label, the treatment, you would see the
description of what a nurse does so that they care for people
that there is, it’s quite a physical job, so it requires heavy lifting
and some other attributes of the job.
Speaker 8:
06:47
And what’s fascinating to me is that boys actually do choose to
do nursing until they know that it is nursing. So when you take
away the label, the occupation doesn’t turn them off. But it
seems to be something about their gender identity. So you
might say that men have had the floor for an extraordinary long
time, but that’s in the traditional male jobs. What I’m interested
in is encouraging boys or getting them to rethink their choices
with respect to jobs that were previously feminized. Parenting is
also a role that has traditionally been viewed as being primarily
the mother’s domain. I asked grace if this was a view she was
still finding in her research. Yes. So I mean if you do, if you
analyze the 2000 cohorts, so bear in mind that these children
are now 1819 years of age, these are our next generation of
professionals.
Speaker 8:
07:36
You do still see these m gender attitudes. You know, if a mother
has worked in the child’s home, all his or her life, you do see an
erosion of those attitudes. So this is why it’s important to have
mom going to work in some guys. If what we want to do is
change attitudes to of what’s going to work. I do want to make
clear that I am pro choice, but I would like it to be that women
and men choose equally to stay at home, to look after the
children rather than it just see me to be the the the females
position. I do find it in the schools that I do experiments and
also you do still see these gender roles and I do think
particularly for boys, it is harder to choose feminized
occupations than it is for girls now to choose the masculinized
occupations.
Speaker 8:
08:19
And you know, I think if you do a survey of parents, regardless
of sphere, you will always find that mom and dad are happier
more often to give their little girl a truck and happier, less often
to give their son a Barbie. And I guess you have to ask the
question why that is. Why don’t very young children have free
choice over choice. If many is still falling foul of these often
subconscious stereotypes, how might we break the cycle of
young people self sorting into jobs as a result of their gender?
So at the moment I’m involved in a trial that has soft skills in
um, in schools. And what we’ve actually looked at so far or what
we’ve released so far to the public are the effects on traditional
soft skill outcomes. So the effects on externalizing behavior,
internalizing behavior and health. And what I’ve been working
on is how it changes occupation choice added surprisingly
because we don’t tuck off gender pacifically in the soft skill
forum, but we do tackle thinking about your choices in the
future, thinking about bringing your future self forward.
Speaker 8:
09:14
And surprisingly we find that children in secondary school who
did this soft skill education are more open to choosing jobs that
aren’t along traditional lines. So I think if we are really keen to
open up the choices of boys, there is space in the classroom for
the soft skill education, which the government do seem to be
getting behind now. Not to say to boys that they need to
become a nurse. So they need to become a teacher, but to get
boys and girls to really think about what their preferences are,
um, give them more information on the occupations that
they’re going into so they match appropriately. Coupled with
that, and I do care about gender pay equity, so I want to use
this opportunity to say that I do think that nurses and teachers
are underpaid. And I think if you did increase the salaries of
nursing, given that a lot of boys do still see themselves as
breadwinners, you might get more sorting just because of that
pay increase.
Speaker 8:
10:06
Also we’ll tell the career one might end up pursuing the arrival
of children can leave some with no option but to reduce work
hours or take a career break. Despite decades of women’s rights
campaigning, the role of primary caregiver is still often seen as a
woman’s responsibility. I asked grace if as well as changing the
messages we give to children, we need policy changes to make
employment easier for working parents. So I mean I think this is
因為 家事 沒有去污名化？
總是女性較為犧牲奉獻，
如果家事也被認為偉⼤大，
那可能更更多⼈人想做
a great point. So bargaining in the home does cause some of the
gender pay gap and also causes men and women to choose
different types of occupations. So if you’re a female and you’ve
internalized the need to be the person to do the second shift,
you’re probably going to go towards an occupation that has
more flexibility. And we do see among couples now as
compared to to the 1970s for example, that men are doing
more at home.
Speaker 8:
10:51
But nonetheless, the burden of picking up and all of the
flexibility when the child is l still is falling much more often. Um,
to females. I mean life is always easier if it’s a blanket policy
when it’s in firms, there’s always some firms would want to rock
the boat and do the right thing and then there will be other
firms who just see themselves as too busy and won’t be able to
put these pillars in place. So until it’s actually policy, you’re not
going to see the changes in the gender pay gap. I the payer
starting in the way that you might like to see them. But
nonetheless, I do think that there are opportunities for firms to
rock the boat and I think they can rock the boat by not just
creating these policies, but leading from the top and showing
that, you know, senior men who women report into along the
way are taking breaks in exactly the same way that those
women might might actually want to.
Speaker 8:
11:39
Letting them know that it’s okay. Um, I teach on an executive
program and one of the men on the program actually sent me
an email last week and he mentioned that at a International
Women’s Day forum, they went around the table and one
woman said that, that one of the biggest things that her
manager did for her was to give her an open calendar so she
could see what he was doing on his day to day. And the fact that
he prioritized his children very often over work made a feel it
was okay for her as well as giving closer thought to the different
ways women could be supported at work. Grace Sarkeys that
companies could also be focusing attention on the ways they
promote their occupation to younger people. I think firms have
a responsibility to put role models in for children and allow
children meet those role models. And essentially I think you
want to have that both in the traditionally male occupations
and also the traditionally female occupation.
Speaker 8:
12:28
So the one lesson that I think is really important for people who
think about gender equality is it’s not just about women
needing to be brought into the Organization of women can do it
themselves and having a conversation with women. It’s about
everybody in the organization, you know, men and women
together having conversations. What you really want is within
the organization to ensure that best person is going to get the
job. But everyone gets equal opportunities. And it’s the latter is
the problem for women. Very often they’re not getting equal
opportunities. And when you’re not getting equal opportunities,
it’s very hard to demonstrate that you’re the best person. And I
would also like to see a movement towards having sabbaticals
because I think we’re working for an incredibly long period of
time. And I think if we don’t have the label, this is maternity
leave, but it’s a life break for both men.
Speaker 8:
13:14
And women and it can be used for other things, carrying
responsibilities. Maybe people just want to go and tour
Southeast Asia and have a mental health break. We should see
some erosion of women not getting plum projects not getting
taken seriously because they’re expected to go on the mommy
track. Women who have taken the mummy track of the subject
of a new book by Shiny or get a professor in the CS Department
of Media and communications heading home motherhood work
and a failed promise of equality focuses on former professional
women all married to men with high paying careers of their own
who had made the choice to become stay at home mothers. I
asked her why she chosen to study this specific group of
women.
Speaker 3:
13:52
The reason I was interested in is partly informed by my own
experience living in a leafy neighborhood in north London
where every morning I would drop off my kids at the school
gate and see a lot of women who I knew used to have a career
at some point and quit their careers. And they were all now
what is often being referred to a stay at home mothers. And I
was very curious about why these women gave up what must
have been years of education and trainings, some of whom I
knew had quite successful careers. But I didn’t probe and I
didn’t ask, but it did make me look at the statistics. And with the
help of Julian, Paul was an economist. We’ve done a big
[inaudible] kind of analysis of labor for a survey. And we found
out that interestingly, actually among this group of women who
are married or in relationship with partners, the top earning
income, quarter of these women were stay at home mothers,
the majority of whom are educated.
Speaker 3:
14:55
So statistically it was an outstanding kind of finding, which
puzzled me even further, particularly in the context of a
contemporary environment and media environment, which
celebrates women who are combining motherhood and career.
And the normative message seems to be not only that it’s
possible, but that, that, that this is the desirable kind of gold
unlike previous generations. So this has led me to start the
進⾏行行休假
的運動
產假 休假 照
顧⼩小孩的污
名化，是否
都來來⾃自 對陰
性的貶低？
study, which was very much interested in this puzzle of why
would women who are able to afford childcare made a choice
that seemingly is a retrogressive choice that seems to
incompatible with the dominant cultural message, which is very
much about not just encouraging women to go into and get into
the work force, but also stay in it rather than leave. You called
the bit to failed to promise of equality. Um, and in one sense,
couldn’t we say that these women have all the, the choice
available to them.
Speaker 3:
15:54
So what you’re saying is very much the narrative I started from,
because it’s been articulated both, both in theory, but also in a
lot of popular conversation and popular, um, this course that
this is the choice that is women made. And as you say, these are
women who could make this choice unlike other women that
are unable to make this choice. But the interesting thing I found
throughout my interviews is that while these women made a
choice and that they are very, um, aware of the choice they
make, they also concurrently refer to it as a forced choice, a
choice that was forced by toxic workplaces, workplaces that
were utterly incompatible with family life, not just their own
workplaces, but crucially their partners, workplaces, which
meant that two parents were literally absent and had to
outsource childcare almost fully throughout the week. At least.
F a choice that was forced by attitudes and perceptions,
stubborn perceptions about the mother being quote unquote,
the foundation parents, the one that is the natural.
Speaker 3:
16:57
So quote unquote with carer, a choice that was forced by
messages, quite oppressive and quite difficult messages that
they received on a daily basis in their workplace from peers and
from their employers, from school teachers and head teachers,
from friends and acquaintances, from their own mothers, from
their own mother-in-laws about them having to be occupied, a
role of the primary parents and take responsibility of raising the
kids. I should say all the women I interviewed except one were
very clear about wanting to return to the workforce. The
difficulty was that some of them are eight years, 10 years, 12
years, 12 years outside the workforce. So it was this kind of
fantasy that they didn’t feel capable and that the structures and
the arrangements of their family life and the partners worked
into enable them to actually realize this fantasy and it’s a
fantasy that kind of keeps, uh, becoming further and further
away as the years poss does there need to be more look at
policy level at will.
Speaker 3:
18:02
What happens once women do leave the workforce in order to
try and maybe make it easy for them to return? I think there has
to be room and there has to be much more significant thinking
about why women leave and how they can be retained. There.
Some organizations like women returners that are doing
wonderful job in trying to encourage women but also give them
training and to help them get back into the workforce even a
decade or more, um, outside the workforce. But I think that’s in
parallel to these really fundamental efforts, the structural
changes at the policy level that are required or far deeper. And
they are ones about making work cultures and work life more
humane, I would say. And fundamentally more compatible with
family life, let alone compatible with life. And so it’s about
shortening the working day. It’s about changing very, very deep
seated norms that might not be written but are practiced about
what a woman is expected to do and who is for instance,
suppose to be absent when a child is ill.
Speaker 3:
19:17
I think beyond policy, one of the key things that has come out
from my research speaks to the urgency of expanding our
imagination through images and through narratives and
through representations of what we men work and family.
What this relationship consists of. Allowing a much more varied
understanding of the ways in which women can combine work
and family rather than being kind of hooked and very much
limited by a very narrow sense of a woman’s success as the kind
of career woman who juggles work and family. You know, a a
very a figure that’s been with us for over you know more than
two decades now and he’s changing but I think more change in
this direction and the level of media representations, both
popular representations but also in terms of what policy
suggests is do and quite urgently I must suppose campaigners
should also consider this.
Speaker 3:
20:20
We may be doing a disservice in the way that the arguments are
being made at the moment. So I think I would start by a
bullishing the notion of working mothers versus non working
mothers because the mothers I’ve interviewed, however
privileged they are and they are work and work very, very hard.
So to me, you know, a key to this complaining would be to think
about, um, mothers and cares more generally as I’m doing a
fundamental job that is job that has to be valued. It’s the
devaluing of this care work, whether you are in paid
employment or whether you’re not really valuing care work and
the work that is so fundamental for the vitality of our society
and for the economy, but is yet left in the background as a kind
of a, you know, a background condition that facilitates it but
remains invisible and crucially undervalued and unpaid or paid
very poorly. And also there’s so much talk about bringing men
on board, you know, care work is not and should not be the
concern also of women of course. So if it’s, I think to me an
effective way to think about it is how we all men and women of
different, you know, across sexualities across age, across gloss,
really put care at the front of our political agenda in terms of
fighting for its recognition, for its valuing and for its valuing
economically and not just, you know, um, emotionally
Speaker 7:
21:52
Shawnee’s research highlights how deep rooted these
narratives around gender roles are. The question of whether
women can or can’t have it all comes up all the time. Yet the
difficulties of managing both career and family or rarely asked
of men. I asked Shaney if she felt this was part of the problem.
Speaker 3:
22:08
Well I think these messages are both wider cultural messages,
messages that are being perpetuated and circulated in popular
culture and that although we can’t necessarily point out to say
this is what influenced me, it’s a cumulative kind of influence
that really shapes the way we imagine things to be and shapes
normative perception of what is a woman’s role, what is a man’s
role in sewn. I think that concurrently these were messages
indeed that they received from their own parents and that’s one
of the most problematic findings that I found is now the
messages that they indeed possum to their own children. And
the interesting thing there was that despite these women, many
of them identifying as feminist and many of them highly able of
articulating the problems, the structural problems that are
impeding in our standing in the way of achieving gender
equality today and having them selves being disillusioned by a
promise of equality and a reality that really he then they
nevertheless give their own daughters messages that are about
the adjusting to a reality that is perceived or constructed as if it
was fixed.
Speaker 3:
23:26
And they very sadly, some of them admitted that they’re giving
different messages or different advice to their daughters into
their sons. One of my interviews I think put it really eloquently
when she said, you know, I tell to my daughter, I tell, you know,
go learn, study, be ambitious. But if you can, a GP don’t be a
cardiologist by which she meant curb your ambitions. Look for a
job that would be already compatible with family life,
something that you would not advise her son. Quite a few of my
interviews ended up or at some point kind of were involved
with tears. These were sad interviews
Speaker 7:
24:03
alongside the cultural messages, difficult work structures and
demands of family life that all serve to maintain the status quo
is the issue of misogyny and ingrained prejudice against women.
While many men support the call for a more gender equal
world, there are many others who refute the idea that gender
inequality is a problem at all. Some even who argue that men
are now the ones facing discrimination. Sarah Banay wiser
professor and head of the Department of Media and
communications or Telissi is author of empowered popular
feminism and popular misogyny. The book presents popular
feminism and Misogyny as an intwined relationship. I asked her
what this means.
Speaker 9:
24:39
I started out this book writing about feminism and popular
feminism because it seemed like everywhere you turn you see
something, you know, that is a, that is an expression of
feminism. Um, and it soon became really, really clear that every,
every, no matter what it was, every expression or practice of
feminism that I examined, there was some kind of hostile
rejoined or, or hospital hostile response and, and hostile ranged
on a continuum of, you know, fat shaming and body shaming
and slut-shaming in terms of comments online, two death
threats and rape threats to outright violence. And so, so I, I
began to kind of think about both misogyny and feminism in this
V in this media landscape and, and see them as kind of
responding to each other. So misogyny reacts to this heightened
visibility of feminism and also a heightened in a very visible way.
Speaker 7:
25:38
There’s always a certain amount of push back when people try
and change things. Um, has the type of misogyny that we’re
seeing changed recently or is it just that social media is maybe
amplifying feelings that have always been there?
Speaker 9:
25:52
I think it’s both of those things. I think certainly social media has
amplified a misogyny has been around for centuries, and also
anytime feminism becomes something that is visible, there’s a
backlash to it because it’s seen as a certain kind of threat. I think
that we’re in a particular moment right now that is, both has
residuals from those, from those histories and those centuries
of misogyny. But I also think that there’s an increasing
normalization of misogyny. I think that there was a moment in
the United States where a president who was on tape admitting
to sexual assault and saying, if you’re a person in power, you
can do whatever you want with women dismissing sexual
assault, dismissing consent. So blindly there was a moment
when that actually wouldn’t, would have prevented that person
from getting elected. That moment is no longer here. And so I
do think that we need to kind of confront Patriarchy and
confront, confronted misogyny in a different way than we have
before because it feels, you know, there, there are differences
and the way it’s being expressed. And I also think that massage
Winnie is a central part of the agenda in lots of the extreme
right movements across the globe. So increasingly this
normalized misogyny is also violent and that’s, it feels different.
Speaker 7:
27:15
Toxic masculinity is a term that has gained prominence in recent
years referring to the idea that some traditional cultural
masculine norms may be harmful to not just men, but women in
society. Overall. I asked Sarah if focusing more on men’s rights
might help reduce the misogynistic views that have become
ever more present.
Speaker 9:
27:33
Good question. The answer for me, it’s not about so much
about bringing men into the conversation. Men have controlled
the conversation for many, many years. It is more about men
giving space to women to set the terms of the conversation. I
also think toxic masculinity is a crucial part of what feminism is
kind of struggling against, and so they’re not separate issues.
And I do think that if men would recognize toxic masculinity and
the limitations it puts on them, that would be really important. I
mean, I think that it’s, it’s like obviously patriarchy benefits
some men. It also disadvantages lots of men, right? It’s it. And
so when you have these men’s rights organizations who are
fighting against women and feminists, it’s the context of
Patriarchy and competition and individualism that has also
created toxic masculinity where men feel inadequate. So it’s like
the, I think the target, that’s the problem right now is that
women are seen so often to blame for this context rather than
take a broader, you know, more global look. And you can see
that in the like crazy backlash to the Gillette ad. Um, use the
words toxic masculinity and you had everyone all over the place
saying you’ve gone too far and here’s Morgan. Let boys be boys.
Let men be damn men. You know, like this idea that somehow
this was threatening instead of an opening for a conversation is
really problematic.
Speaker 7:
29:07
There’s been a lot of anger over a lot of allegations and stories
that the me too campaign kind of brought to light. But we seem
to be in a bit of a phase now where a lot of the people who had
to resign or lost their jobs even, and now kind of coming back or
being, you know, quietly given new jobs. So if all of that
collective anger does not change anything, what would it take
to actually really make an impact or a difference?
Speaker 9:
29:31
Oh, I wish I could give you a really good answer to that. Um, I
think that you’re right about, uh, the me too. I’ve actually called
this the comeback economy. Um, because it’s, you know, these
very powerful men who have been accused, many of them are
wealthy, very wealthy. They can afford, a PR agent is going to
tell them, sit back, just wait for the next thing to happen. So you
know it that, you know, when, when this head of an
entertainment company gets fired, then you can go back on the
comedy circuit. So it is also a very corporate and very cynical
environment. I think that me too did something really, really
important. And it did bring awareness to the fact that there is
widespread and normalize sexual harassment across all
industries. I’ve had lots of people talk to me about how both
men and women, about how behavior, you know, some people
very resentful that behavior has to change in the workplace.
Speaker 9:
30:30
Some people are saying, oh, I just, I’m so nervous about saying
anything. That’s fine with me. Be nervous for a while. Women
have been nervous for a really, really long time, so I do think
that there are changes that are happening that said sexual
harassment is not an issue that is limited to that actual act. It is
also something that is about the structure of organizations, how
these structures are not friendly towards women. It’s about pay
gap. It’s about all these different factors and so I think we need
to approach it not as a single issue, but as a sort of collection of
struggles and figure out how it is that these things, all these
different issues form a context of discrimination. By focusing on
single issues. It’s really easy to not think about the structural
ground that provides a very welcoming context for sexual
harassment in the first place.
Speaker 9:
31:25
Of course, military women is penalized for the agenda. I’ll Sarah,
if by focusing on gender inequality we might be doing the
coolest or disservice. Was this not more about Palette and
privilege? Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean I think that one
of the things that I’ve really tried to do in my work and in talking
about this book is assume a context that is about some kind of
diametrically opposed genders, right? That there’s men and
there’s women in that we know exactly what that means. We
don’t know what that means. And it is often about power. It’s
also about related to that about class privilege and it’s about
racial privilege. And so I think that the, you know, the kind of
current system is beneficial to people who are in positions of
power and women are sometimes in those positions of power.
So it’s not a surprise that you know that women would also
defend the status quo. The status quo has worked for some
women. Right. So I do think that it is about power and privilege.
It is also about gender. And so I don’t want to take out gender
from the equation because it is also about even for women in
those positions of power, it’s about a gender, US construction of
gender, which always positions women in, you know, kind of
lower on the social and political and economic hierarchy than,
so I think
Speaker 8:
32:40
that it is about gender, but I think you’re absolutely right to say
that this is not about bodies necessarily. It’s not about men and
women, it’s about gender and about power and how those two
kind of work to maintain the status quo, to maintain the norm
with so much baggage over what gender means for the way we
all live, our lives added to the fact that those with power may
feel they have too much to lose, to push with genuine change. Is
Gender equality possible? He is grace Lauden. I mean I’m an
economist so I embrace this idea of tipping. So I believe that at
a certain point attitudes, tip and everything will go the way that
you might expect it to go. I think at the school level if we
brought in these soft skills that really try to desex occupational
choice and let children really think about what it is they want to
do when they’re adults that we might get close to tipping.
Speaker 8:
33:29
I think it’s too difficult to get messages to individual parents at
this point, but I do want to remind people that we’ve seen
extraordinary change even over my lifetime. You know, I mean I
come from Ireland, I was born in the 80s the idea that we would
vote should be one of the first countries to bring in gay
marriage, which I’m really happy about, would never have
dawned on me when I was in my teens. It seems so far away.
The idea that we will be discussing abortion again when I was in
my teens seems so far away. So attitudes and society can
change. They can change actually quite quickly and what you
really need to do is Garner momentum and I’m hopeful. But if
the soft skills training went into schools and more children were
exposed to it, you would get positive externalities in the home.
And you know, people would see that it’s not a bad thing if their
boy chooses a previously feminized occupation and it’s not a
bad thing if their little girl wants to choose a traditionally male
occupation Shani or get who makes a particular point about the
women featured in her book hitting home.
Speaker 3:
34:26
No way is the book intended to critique or criticize these
women as individuals. In fact, I am precisely criticizing the
culture we live in, which so often blames women for the choices
they make and for the failures to meet up to some kind of
ideals. So my critique throughout is of the structures that have
failed these women. I think one of the main themes that I’m
discussing it is that these women who are educated and are
capable and are confident, are finding it extremely difficult to
challenge and to change the deep seated structure, deaths,
sustain inequality. And one of the questions I raise is these
women are unable to do this. How would it feel? And what
would it be for women who are far less privileged and have less
resources. And nevertheless, I do really wants to maintain hope.
And I think part of it is the realization of how much things have
changed in some ways as are hops of indication of why we
shouldn’t give up and why things can change and should
change.
Speaker 3:
35:40
So I wouldn’t want to, you know, give up on the possibility, but I
think very much to me the possibility of reaching gender
equality would be one that would depend on tackling the social
and cultural and political structures rather than demanding
women and men, but the dominantly women as individuals to
resolve it. So I’d think my answer would be yes, it is possible,
but not as long as the demand of achieving or reaching gender
equality is focused almost exclusively on women working on
themselves as individuals becoming more confident, more
assertive, more demanding, and more pushing and so on. As
long as this is the message, then gender equalities would be left
far on the horizon.
Speaker 9:
36:28
And Sarah Bonnie Wiser, is it possible? I think that the terms
that we’ve been using to talk about gender equality are not
going to allow us to reach that goal. Equality itself needs to be
kind of interrogated for what the what grounds, what are the
grounds in which it is constructed and it is understood. I think
that for me thinking about feminism, it has made more sense
rather than thinking about equality, to think about value and to
think about how it is that we value women and we value men
and what are those differing values depending on things like
race and class privilege and think about ways to address those
differing values rather than equality because that already
there’s already a ground there that is going to be really hard to
reach because it was, it’s you know, constructed in ways that
are already unequal. Can we change the system enough to bring
about real change? Why not? Tell us what you think using the
Hashtag LSE IQ
Speaker 1:
37:31
[inaudible]
Speaker 2:
37:32
this episode of LSC IQ was brought to you by Oliver Johnson,
Tom Williams, and just went to Stein. It was based in part on the
following research, empowered popular feminism and popular
misogyny by Sarah B’Nai, wiser cross cohort evidence on
gendered sorting patterns in the UK, the importance of societal
movements versus childhood variables by grace Lauden and
worn and like Funko hitting home motherhood work and the
failed promise of equality by Shani or Gannon. For more
episodes of this podcast, and to subscribe on Apple podcasts
and Soundcloud, please visit lse.ac.uk for Slash IQ. Well, search
for LSC IQ in your favorite podcast app, and please consider
leaving us a review as this makes the podcast easier for new
listeners to discover. Join us next time when we ask, why do we
need food banks?
Speaker 1:
00:03
[inaudible].
Speaker 2:
00:03
Welcome to LSU IQ, a podcast from the London School of
Economics and political science where we asked leading social
scientists and other experts to answer an intelligent question
about economics, politics or society 2018 already a standout
year for gender equality in the U K 2018 could be the year of the
woman out Loring pay gaps me to pink waves, 20 eighteens
biggest gender equality wins worldwide. Just some of the
headlines embracing the idea that 2018 might be a good year
for women. Yet despite the surge in positivity, 2018 was also
the year that revealed how common gender hate incidents
were leading to calls from a such need to be recognized as a
hate crime across the u k the year that continued to see a
substantial portion of mothers withdrawing from employment
after childbirth and the year of a sobering report by the World
Economic Forum that suggested women would now need to
wait 108 years to close the global gender gap and 202 years to
bring about parity in the workplace. Despite global activism,
political promises and policy changes, gender inequality appears
stubbornly hard to address in this episode of LSCI Q just went to
Stein asks, is gender equality possible?
Speaker 3:
01:32
So in the literal way men rule the world and this made sense it
thousand years ago because human beings lived then in a world
in which physical strength was the most important attribute for
survival, the physical [inaudible] that person was more likely to
lead and men in general are physically stronger. Of course there
are many exceptions, but Sudan we live in a vastly different
world. The person more likely to lead isn’t not the physical
stronger person. It is the more creative person, the more
intelligent person, the more innovative person and there are no
hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to
be intelligent, to be creative, to be innovative. We have
evolved, but it seems to me that our ideas of gender have not
evolved a lot longer. Guide was an article about what it means
to be young and female. Illegals and and acquaintance told me
it was so angry. Of course it was angry. I am angry. Gender as it
functions today is a grieving justice. We should all be angry
Speaker 4:
02:48
right across the board in every single sphere. There’s work to be
done is work to be done in terms of fiscal representation.
There’s work to be done in terms of equal pay, um, in terms of
social inequalities and violence against,
Speaker 5:
03:00
as we’ve seen the attacks on the fight for gender equality
continue much as they did in 1918 but tonight we are
celebrating and historic achievements. So let’s finish on a
positive. Well, firstly, CNN has declared 2018 to be the year of
women. Yay. We’ve won. The year, only took 2018 attempts
against
Speaker 6:
03:22
quantify it.
Speaker 5:
03:24
Go with it.
Speaker 7:
03:32
That was author Chimamanda and it goes here at ICI. Women’s
rights activist had an a Pankhurst and the mash reports Rachel
Paris giving their take on gender inequality in recent years,
whether it’s a lack of equity in pay or the continued presence of
the glass ceiling. The struggle of women to achieve fairness in
the world of work has long been acknowledged as a problem.
Grace Lauden is associate professor in behavioral science. At
LSE, although interested in inequality in the workplace. Her
recent research which found the gender pay gap could be set to
widen, has been focused on understanding the choices that
children are making. I asked her to explain,
Speaker 8:
04:09
yes, I was motivated essentially because I do a lot of work in
firms and firms are under pressure to increase the presence of
women in particular occupations. So for example, if you go over
to the city and you talk to people in finance, they’re asking
questions, why aren’t there more women on the trading floor?
And if you look backwards, you’d find that essentially women
don’t choose the type of degrees that would lend them to get
access to trading jobs. And if you go even further back, which is
what my research that you’re referring to is you’ll find that
during childhood it does seem that different preferences
emerge between boys and girls. I’ve done a study recently that
leave, which is three cohorts studies in the UK. So these are for
kids born in 1958 1970 and 2000 and this is joint work with war
and luck.
Speaker 8:
04:54
Funko who is at the CP here at the LSE and also holds a position
in Thailand and we were really interested in it because it does
show that over time we see women sorting into jobs they
traditionally did not necessarily start into. So that’s good news
and in some ways we’re stating the obvious there. We all know
that women are more often represented in science technology
than they were in the past and are more often accountants than
they were in the past. However, what we noticed for the boys is
that it seems that they are choosing more often jobs that are
competitive and jobs that are higher income. So why we see
preferences moving for females over time. We also see
preferences moving for boys over time and if you are somebody
who cares about having a kind of close to 50 50 and
occupational representation or free choice for boys and girls,
this is quite disturbing because it essentially tells us that boys
are going to be choosing even more than they did before
traditional male jobs.
Speaker 8:
05:45
So there’d be more competition for those jobs among men or
women. And we’re going to end up with quite disappointed
people when they can’t get what they want to do. Let’s do we
just need to talk more about the men. I mean I guess in ways
when we think about gender equality, you could argue that
we’ve over-focused on females and because of that we haven’t
asked the metric revolution where women are sorting into jobs
that they did not traditionally sort into, but men aren’t sorting
into the traditional feminine jobs. So jobs like social work,
psychology, teaching, nursing, these are jobs that we don’t
really see too many men sought into. I’m doing some work at
the moment, again in schools on experiments and I have labeled
jobs for some children and not labeled jobs for others. So if you
were in the labeled treatment, you would essentially see a
description of a nurse and you would know it’s a nurse and if
you’re not in the label, the treatment, you would see the
description of what a nurse does so that they care for people
that there is, it’s quite a physical job, so it requires heavy lifting
and some other attributes of the job.
Speaker 8:
06:47
And what’s fascinating to me is that boys actually do choose to
do nursing until they know that it is nursing. So when you take
away the label, the occupation doesn’t turn them off. But it
seems to be something about their gender identity. So you
might say that men have had the floor for an extraordinary long
time, but that’s in the traditional male jobs. What I’m interested
in is encouraging boys or getting them to rethink their choices
with respect to jobs that were previously feminized. Parenting is
also a role that has traditionally been viewed as being primarily
the mother’s domain. I asked grace if this was a view she was
still finding in her research. Yes. So I mean if you do, if you
analyze the 2000 cohorts, so bear in mind that these children
are now 1819 years of age, these are our next generation of
professionals.
Speaker 8:
07:36
You do still see these m gender attitudes. You know, if a mother
has worked in the child’s home, all his or her life, you do see an
erosion of those attitudes. So this is why it’s important to have
mom going to work in some guys. If what we want to do is
change attitudes to of what’s going to work. I do want to make
clear that I am pro choice, but I would like it to be that women
and men choose equally to stay at home, to look after the
children rather than it just see me to be the the the females
position. I do find it in the schools that I do experiments and
also you do still see these gender roles and I do think
particularly for boys, it is harder to choose feminized
occupations than it is for girls now to choose the masculinized
occupations.
Speaker 8:
08:19
And you know, I think if you do a survey of parents, regardless
of sphere, you will always find that mom and dad are happier
more often to give their little girl a truck and happier, less often
to give their son a Barbie. And I guess you have to ask the
question why that is. Why don’t very young children have free
choice over choice. If many is still falling foul of these often
subconscious stereotypes, how might we break the cycle of
young people self sorting into jobs as a result of their gender?
So at the moment I’m involved in a trial that has soft skills in
um, in schools. And what we’ve actually looked at so far or what
we’ve released so far to the public are the effects on traditional
soft skill outcomes. So the effects on externalizing behavior,
internalizing behavior and health. And what I’ve been working
on is how it changes occupation choice added surprisingly
because we don’t tuck off gender pacifically in the soft skill
forum, but we do tackle thinking about your choices in the
future, thinking about bringing your future self forward.
Speaker 8:
09:14
And surprisingly we find that children in secondary school who
did this soft skill education are more open to choosing jobs that
aren’t along traditional lines. So I think if we are really keen to
open up the choices of boys, there is space in the classroom for
the soft skill education, which the government do seem to be
getting behind now. Not to say to boys that they need to
become a nurse. So they need to become a teacher, but to get
boys and girls to really think about what their preferences are,
um, give them more information on the occupations that
they’re going into so they match appropriately. Coupled with
that, and I do care about gender pay equity, so I want to use
this opportunity to say that I do think that nurses and teachers
are underpaid. And I think if you did increase the salaries of
nursing, given that a lot of boys do still see themselves as
breadwinners, you might get more sorting just because of that
pay increase.
Speaker 8:
10:06
Also we’ll tell the career one might end up pursuing the arrival
of children can leave some with no option but to reduce work
hours or take a career break. Despite decades of women’s rights
campaigning, the role of primary caregiver is still often seen as a
woman’s responsibility. I asked grace if as well as changing the
messages we give to children, we need policy changes to make
employment easier for working parents. So I mean I think this is
因為 家事 沒有去污名化？
總是女性較為犧牲奉獻，
如果家事也被認為偉⼤大，
那可能更更多⼈人想做
a great point. So bargaining in the home does cause some of the
gender pay gap and also causes men and women to choose
different types of occupations. So if you’re a female and you’ve
internalized the need to be the person to do the second shift,
you’re probably going to go towards an occupation that has
more flexibility. And we do see among couples now as
compared to to the 1970s for example, that men are doing
more at home.
Speaker 8:
10:51
But nonetheless, the burden of picking up and all of the
flexibility when the child is l still is falling much more often. Um,
to females. I mean life is always easier if it’s a blanket policy
when it’s in firms, there’s always some firms would want to rock
the boat and do the right thing and then there will be other
firms who just see themselves as too busy and won’t be able to
put these pillars in place. So until it’s actually policy, you’re not
going to see the changes in the gender pay gap. I the payer
starting in the way that you might like to see them. But
nonetheless, I do think that there are opportunities for firms to
rock the boat and I think they can rock the boat by not just
creating these policies, but leading from the top and showing
that, you know, senior men who women report into along the
way are taking breaks in exactly the same way that those
women might might actually want to.
Speaker 8:
11:39
Letting them know that it’s okay. Um, I teach on an executive
program and one of the men on the program actually sent me
an email last week and he mentioned that at a International
Women’s Day forum, they went around the table and one
woman said that, that one of the biggest things that her
manager did for her was to give her an open calendar so she
could see what he was doing on his day to day. And the fact that
he prioritized his children very often over work made a feel it
was okay for her as well as giving closer thought to the different
ways women could be supported at work. Grace Sarkeys that
companies could also be focusing attention on the ways they
promote their occupation to younger people. I think firms have
a responsibility to put role models in for children and allow
children meet those role models. And essentially I think you
want to have that both in the traditionally male occupations
and also the traditionally female occupation.
Speaker 8:
12:28
So the one lesson that I think is really important for people who
think about gender equality is it’s not just about women
needing to be brought into the Organization of women can do it
themselves and having a conversation with women. It’s about
everybody in the organization, you know, men and women
together having conversations. What you really want is within
the organization to ensure that best person is going to get the
job. But everyone gets equal opportunities. And it’s the latter is
the problem for women. Very often they’re not getting equal
opportunities. And when you’re not getting equal opportunities,
it’s very hard to demonstrate that you’re the best person. And I
would also like to see a movement towards having sabbaticals
because I think we’re working for an incredibly long period of
time. And I think if we don’t have the label, this is maternity
leave, but it’s a life break for both men.
Speaker 8:
13:14
And women and it can be used for other things, carrying
responsibilities. Maybe people just want to go and tour
Southeast Asia and have a mental health break. We should see
some erosion of women not getting plum projects not getting
taken seriously because they’re expected to go on the mommy
track. Women who have taken the mummy track of the subject
of a new book by Shiny or get a professor in the CS Department
of Media and communications heading home motherhood work
and a failed promise of equality focuses on former professional
women all married to men with high paying careers of their own
who had made the choice to become stay at home mothers. I
asked her why she chosen to study this specific group of
women.
Speaker 3:
13:52
The reason I was interested in is partly informed by my own
experience living in a leafy neighborhood in north London
where every morning I would drop off my kids at the school
gate and see a lot of women who I knew used to have a career
at some point and quit their careers. And they were all now
what is often being referred to a stay at home mothers. And I
was very curious about why these women gave up what must
have been years of education and trainings, some of whom I
knew had quite successful careers. But I didn’t probe and I
didn’t ask, but it did make me look at the statistics. And with the
help of Julian, Paul was an economist. We’ve done a big
[inaudible] kind of analysis of labor for a survey. And we found
out that interestingly, actually among this group of women who
are married or in relationship with partners, the top earning
income, quarter of these women were stay at home mothers,
the majority of whom are educated.
Speaker 3:
14:55
So statistically it was an outstanding kind of finding, which
puzzled me even further, particularly in the context of a
contemporary environment and media environment, which
celebrates women who are combining motherhood and career.
And the normative message seems to be not only that it’s
possible, but that, that, that this is the desirable kind of gold
unlike previous generations. So this has led me to start the
進⾏行行休假
的運動
產假 休假 照
顧⼩小孩的污
名化，是否
都來來⾃自 對陰
性的貶低？
study, which was very much interested in this puzzle of why
would women who are able to afford childcare made a choice
that seemingly is a retrogressive choice that seems to
incompatible with the dominant cultural message, which is very
much about not just encouraging women to go into and get into
the work force, but also stay in it rather than leave. You called
the bit to failed to promise of equality. Um, and in one sense,
couldn’t we say that these women have all the, the choice
available to them.
Speaker 3:
15:54
So what you’re saying is very much the narrative I started from,
because it’s been articulated both, both in theory, but also in a
lot of popular conversation and popular, um, this course that
this is the choice that is women made. And as you say, these are
women who could make this choice unlike other women that
are unable to make this choice. But the interesting thing I found
throughout my interviews is that while these women made a
choice and that they are very, um, aware of the choice they
make, they also concurrently refer to it as a forced choice, a
choice that was forced by toxic workplaces, workplaces that
were utterly incompatible with family life, not just their own
workplaces, but crucially their partners, workplaces, which
meant that two parents were literally absent and had to
outsource childcare almost fully throughout the week. At least.
F a choice that was forced by attitudes and perceptions,
stubborn perceptions about the mother being quote unquote,
the foundation parents, the one that is the natural.
Speaker 3:
16:57
So quote unquote with carer, a choice that was forced by
messages, quite oppressive and quite difficult messages that
they received on a daily basis in their workplace from peers and
from their employers, from school teachers and head teachers,
from friends and acquaintances, from their own mothers, from
their own mother-in-laws about them having to be occupied, a
role of the primary parents and take responsibility of raising the
kids. I should say all the women I interviewed except one were
very clear about wanting to return to the workforce. The
difficulty was that some of them are eight years, 10 years, 12
years, 12 years outside the workforce. So it was this kind of
fantasy that they didn’t feel capable and that the structures and
the arrangements of their family life and the partners worked
into enable them to actually realize this fantasy and it’s a
fantasy that kind of keeps, uh, becoming further and further
away as the years poss does there need to be more look at
policy level at will.
Speaker 3:
18:02
What happens once women do leave the workforce in order to
try and maybe make it easy for them to return? I think there has
to be room and there has to be much more significant thinking
about why women leave and how they can be retained. There.
Some organizations like women returners that are doing
wonderful job in trying to encourage women but also give them
training and to help them get back into the workforce even a
decade or more, um, outside the workforce. But I think that’s in
parallel to these really fundamental efforts, the structural
changes at the policy level that are required or far deeper. And
they are ones about making work cultures and work life more
humane, I would say. And fundamentally more compatible with
family life, let alone compatible with life. And so it’s about
shortening the working day. It’s about changing very, very deep
seated norms that might not be written but are practiced about
what a woman is expected to do and who is for instance,
suppose to be absent when a child is ill.
Speaker 3:
19:17
I think beyond policy, one of the key things that has come out
from my research speaks to the urgency of expanding our
imagination through images and through narratives and
through representations of what we men work and family.
What this relationship consists of. Allowing a much more varied
understanding of the ways in which women can combine work
and family rather than being kind of hooked and very much
limited by a very narrow sense of a woman’s success as the kind
of career woman who juggles work and family. You know, a a
very a figure that’s been with us for over you know more than
two decades now and he’s changing but I think more change in
this direction and the level of media representations, both
popular representations but also in terms of what policy
suggests is do and quite urgently I must suppose campaigners
should also consider this.
Speaker 3:
20:20
We may be doing a disservice in the way that the arguments are
being made at the moment. So I think I would start by a
bullishing the notion of working mothers versus non working
mothers because the mothers I’ve interviewed, however
privileged they are and they are work and work very, very hard.
So to me, you know, a key to this complaining would be to think
about, um, mothers and cares more generally as I’m doing a
fundamental job that is job that has to be valued. It’s the
devaluing of this care work, whether you are in paid
employment or whether you’re not really valuing care work and
the work that is so fundamental for the vitality of our society
and for the economy, but is yet left in the background as a kind
of a, you know, a background condition that facilitates it but
remains invisible and crucially undervalued and unpaid or paid
very poorly. And also there’s so much talk about bringing men
on board, you know, care work is not and should not be the
concern also of women of course. So if it’s, I think to me an
effective way to think about it is how we all men and women of
different, you know, across sexualities across age, across gloss,
really put care at the front of our political agenda in terms of
fighting for its recognition, for its valuing and for its valuing
economically and not just, you know, um, emotionally
Speaker 7:
21:52
Shawnee’s research highlights how deep rooted these
narratives around gender roles are. The question of whether
women can or can’t have it all comes up all the time. Yet the
difficulties of managing both career and family or rarely asked
of men. I asked Shaney if she felt this was part of the problem.
Speaker 3:
22:08
Well I think these messages are both wider cultural messages,
messages that are being perpetuated and circulated in popular
culture and that although we can’t necessarily point out to say
this is what influenced me, it’s a cumulative kind of influence
that really shapes the way we imagine things to be and shapes
normative perception of what is a woman’s role, what is a man’s
role in sewn. I think that concurrently these were messages
indeed that they received from their own parents and that’s one
of the most problematic findings that I found is now the
messages that they indeed possum to their own children. And
the interesting thing there was that despite these women, many
of them identifying as feminist and many of them highly able of
articulating the problems, the structural problems that are
impeding in our standing in the way of achieving gender
equality today and having them selves being disillusioned by a
promise of equality and a reality that really he then they
nevertheless give their own daughters messages that are about
the adjusting to a reality that is perceived or constructed as if it
was fixed.
Speaker 3:
23:26
And they very sadly, some of them admitted that they’re giving
different messages or different advice to their daughters into
their sons. One of my interviews I think put it really eloquently
when she said, you know, I tell to my daughter, I tell, you know,
go learn, study, be ambitious. But if you can, a GP don’t be a
cardiologist by which she meant curb your ambitions. Look for a
job that would be already compatible with family life,
something that you would not advise her son. Quite a few of my
interviews ended up or at some point kind of were involved
with tears. These were sad interviews
Speaker 7:
24:03
alongside the cultural messages, difficult work structures and
demands of family life that all serve to maintain the status quo
is the issue of misogyny and ingrained prejudice against women.
While many men support the call for a more gender equal
world, there are many others who refute the idea that gender
inequality is a problem at all. Some even who argue that men
are now the ones facing discrimination. Sarah Banay wiser
professor and head of the Department of Media and
communications or Telissi is author of empowered popular
feminism and popular misogyny. The book presents popular
feminism and Misogyny as an intwined relationship. I asked her
what this means.
Speaker 9:
24:39
I started out this book writing about feminism and popular
feminism because it seemed like everywhere you turn you see
something, you know, that is a, that is an expression of
feminism. Um, and it soon became really, really clear that every,
every, no matter what it was, every expression or practice of
feminism that I examined, there was some kind of hostile
rejoined or, or hospital hostile response and, and hostile ranged
on a continuum of, you know, fat shaming and body shaming
and slut-shaming in terms of comments online, two death
threats and rape threats to outright violence. And so, so I, I
began to kind of think about both misogyny and feminism in this
V in this media landscape and, and see them as kind of
responding to each other. So misogyny reacts to this heightened
visibility of feminism and also a heightened in a very visible way.
Speaker 7:
25:38
There’s always a certain amount of push back when people try
and change things. Um, has the type of misogyny that we’re
seeing changed recently or is it just that social media is maybe
amplifying feelings that have always been there?
Speaker 9:
25:52
I think it’s both of those things. I think certainly social media has
amplified a misogyny has been around for centuries, and also
anytime feminism becomes something that is visible, there’s a
backlash to it because it’s seen as a certain kind of threat. I think
that we’re in a particular moment right now that is, both has
residuals from those, from those histories and those centuries
of misogyny. But I also think that there’s an increasing
normalization of misogyny. I think that there was a moment in
the United States where a president who was on tape admitting
to sexual assault and saying, if you’re a person in power, you
can do whatever you want with women dismissing sexual
assault, dismissing consent. So blindly there was a moment
when that actually wouldn’t, would have prevented that person
from getting elected. That moment is no longer here. And so I
do think that we need to kind of confront Patriarchy and
confront, confronted misogyny in a different way than we have
before because it feels, you know, there, there are differences
and the way it’s being expressed. And I also think that massage
Winnie is a central part of the agenda in lots of the extreme
right movements across the globe. So increasingly this
normalized misogyny is also violent and that’s, it feels different.
Speaker 7:
27:15
Toxic masculinity is a term that has gained prominence in recent
years referring to the idea that some traditional cultural
masculine norms may be harmful to not just men, but women in
society. Overall. I asked Sarah if focusing more on men’s rights
might help reduce the misogynistic views that have become
ever more present.
Speaker 9:
27:33
Good question. The answer for me, it’s not about so much
about bringing men into the conversation. Men have controlled
the conversation for many, many years. It is more about men
giving space to women to set the terms of the conversation. I
also think toxic masculinity is a crucial part of what feminism is
kind of struggling against, and so they’re not separate issues.
And I do think that if men would recognize toxic masculinity and
the limitations it puts on them, that would be really important. I
mean, I think that it’s, it’s like obviously patriarchy benefits
some men. It also disadvantages lots of men, right? It’s it. And
so when you have these men’s rights organizations who are
fighting against women and feminists, it’s the context of
Patriarchy and competition and individualism that has also
created toxic masculinity where men feel inadequate. So it’s like
the, I think the target, that’s the problem right now is that
women are seen so often to blame for this context rather than
take a broader, you know, more global look. And you can see
that in the like crazy backlash to the Gillette ad. Um, use the
words toxic masculinity and you had everyone all over the place
saying you’ve gone too far and here’s Morgan. Let boys be boys.
Let men be damn men. You know, like this idea that somehow
this was threatening instead of an opening for a conversation is
really problematic.
Speaker 7:
29:07
There’s been a lot of anger over a lot of allegations and stories
that the me too campaign kind of brought to light. But we seem
to be in a bit of a phase now where a lot of the people who had
to resign or lost their jobs even, and now kind of coming back or
being, you know, quietly given new jobs. So if all of that
collective anger does not change anything, what would it take
to actually really make an impact or a difference?
Speaker 9:
29:31
Oh, I wish I could give you a really good answer to that. Um, I
think that you’re right about, uh, the me too. I’ve actually called
this the comeback economy. Um, because it’s, you know, these
very powerful men who have been accused, many of them are
wealthy, very wealthy. They can afford, a PR agent is going to
tell them, sit back, just wait for the next thing to happen. So you
know it that, you know, when, when this head of an
entertainment company gets fired, then you can go back on the
comedy circuit. So it is also a very corporate and very cynical
environment. I think that me too did something really, really
important. And it did bring awareness to the fact that there is
widespread and normalize sexual harassment across all
industries. I’ve had lots of people talk to me about how both
men and women, about how behavior, you know, some people
very resentful that behavior has to change in the workplace.
Speaker 9:
30:30
Some people are saying, oh, I just, I’m so nervous about saying
anything. That’s fine with me. Be nervous for a while. Women
have been nervous for a really, really long time, so I do think
that there are changes that are happening that said sexual
harassment is not an issue that is limited to that actual act. It is
also something that is about the structure of organizations, how
these structures are not friendly towards women. It’s about pay
gap. It’s about all these different factors and so I think we need
to approach it not as a single issue, but as a sort of collection of
struggles and figure out how it is that these things, all these
different issues form a context of discrimination. By focusing on
single issues. It’s really easy to not think about the structural
ground that provides a very welcoming context for sexual
harassment in the first place.
Speaker 9:
31:25
Of course, military women is penalized for the agenda. I’ll Sarah,
if by focusing on gender inequality we might be doing the
coolest or disservice. Was this not more about Palette and
privilege? Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean I think that one
of the things that I’ve really tried to do in my work and in talking
about this book is assume a context that is about some kind of
diametrically opposed genders, right? That there’s men and
there’s women in that we know exactly what that means. We
don’t know what that means. And it is often about power. It’s
also about related to that about class privilege and it’s about
racial privilege. And so I think that the, you know, the kind of
current system is beneficial to people who are in positions of
power and women are sometimes in those positions of power.
So it’s not a surprise that you know that women would also
defend the status quo. The status quo has worked for some
women. Right. So I do think that it is about power and privilege.
It is also about gender. And so I don’t want to take out gender
from the equation because it is also about even for women in
those positions of power, it’s about a gender, US construction of
gender, which always positions women in, you know, kind of
lower on the social and political and economic hierarchy than,
so I think
Speaker 8:
32:40
that it is about gender, but I think you’re absolutely right to say
that this is not about bodies necessarily. It’s not about men and
women, it’s about gender and about power and how those two
kind of work to maintain the status quo, to maintain the norm
with so much baggage over what gender means for the way we
all live, our lives added to the fact that those with power may
feel they have too much to lose, to push with genuine change. Is
Gender equality possible? He is grace Lauden. I mean I’m an
economist so I embrace this idea of tipping. So I believe that at
a certain point attitudes, tip and everything will go the way that
you might expect it to go. I think at the school level if we
brought in these soft skills that really try to desex occupational
choice and let children really think about what it is they want to
do when they’re adults that we might get close to tipping.
Speaker 8:
33:29
I think it’s too difficult to get messages to individual parents at
this point, but I do want to remind people that we’ve seen
extraordinary change even over my lifetime. You know, I mean I
come from Ireland, I was born in the 80s the idea that we would
vote should be one of the first countries to bring in gay
marriage, which I’m really happy about, would never have
dawned on me when I was in my teens. It seems so far away.
The idea that we will be discussing abortion again when I was in
my teens seems so far away. So attitudes and society can
change. They can change actually quite quickly and what you
really need to do is Garner momentum and I’m hopeful. But if
the soft skills training went into schools and more children were
exposed to it, you would get positive externalities in the home.
And you know, people would see that it’s not a bad thing if their
boy chooses a previously feminized occupation and it’s not a
bad thing if their little girl wants to choose a traditionally male
occupation Shani or get who makes a particular point about the
women featured in her book hitting home.
Speaker 3:
34:26
No way is the book intended to critique or criticize these
women as individuals. In fact, I am precisely criticizing the
culture we live in, which so often blames women for the choices
they make and for the failures to meet up to some kind of
ideals. So my critique throughout is of the structures that have
failed these women. I think one of the main themes that I’m
discussing it is that these women who are educated and are
capable and are confident, are finding it extremely difficult to
challenge and to change the deep seated structure, deaths,
sustain inequality. And one of the questions I raise is these
women are unable to do this. How would it feel? And what
would it be for women who are far less privileged and have less
resources. And nevertheless, I do really wants to maintain hope.
And I think part of it is the realization of how much things have
changed in some ways as are hops of indication of why we
shouldn’t give up and why things can change and should
change.
Speaker 3:
35:40
So I wouldn’t want to, you know, give up on the possibility, but I
think very much to me the possibility of reaching gender
equality would be one that would depend on tackling the social
and cultural and political structures rather than demanding
women and men, but the dominantly women as individuals to
resolve it. So I’d think my answer would be yes, it is possible,
but not as long as the demand of achieving or reaching gender
equality is focused almost exclusively on women working on
themselves as individuals becoming more confident, more
assertive, more demanding, and more pushing and so on. As
long as this is the message, then gender equalities would be left
far on the horizon.
Speaker 9:
36:28
And Sarah Bonnie Wiser, is it possible? I think that the terms
that we’ve been using to talk about gender equality are not
going to allow us to reach that goal. Equality itself needs to be
kind of interrogated for what the what grounds, what are the
grounds in which it is constructed and it is understood. I think
that for me thinking about feminism, it has made more sense
rather than thinking about equality, to think about value and to
think about how it is that we value women and we value men
and what are those differing values depending on things like
race and class privilege and think about ways to address those
differing values rather than equality because that already
there’s already a ground there that is going to be really hard to
reach because it was, it’s you know, constructed in ways that
are already unequal. Can we change the system enough to bring
about real change? Why not? Tell us what you think using the
Hashtag LSE IQ
Speaker 1:
37:31
[inaudible]
Speaker 2:
37:32
this episode of LSC IQ was brought to you by Oliver Johnson,
Tom Williams, and just went to Stein. It was based in part on the
following research, empowered popular feminism and popular
misogyny by Sarah B’Nai, wiser cross cohort evidence on
gendered sorting patterns in the UK, the importance of societal
movements versus childhood variables by grace Lauden and
worn and like Funko hitting home motherhood work and the
failed promise of equality by Shani or Gannon. For more
episodes of this podcast, and to subscribe on Apple podcasts
and Soundcloud, please visit lse.ac.uk for Slash IQ. Well, search
for LSC IQ in your favorite podcast app, and please consider
leaving us a review as this makes the podcast easier for new
listeners to discover. Join us next time when we ask, why do we
need food banks?

Purchase answer to see full
attachment