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Richard's avatar

Very informative. Being conservative in America used to mean, among other things, being in favor of inhibiting changes to cultural institutions in order to retain what they considered to be an acceptable status quo. That included the roles of women, and the status of POC.

Today, the dominant, decidedly non-conservative outlook on the right is one of advocating radical changes to existing institutions in order to return to a perceived cultural ideal. This requires reversing any signs of evolving into a more perfect union of equality and equity for all.

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Ro's avatar

I am very glad you wrote this! People don't know it.

It's surprising because it seems so obvious. When I first heard the statistic, it was the first thing I thought. One can simply observe it. Maybe you have to come from a working class community.

In the public sector, where some good jobs remain, the men can much more easily become firemen, cops, various types of maintenance workers (the kind that require technical skills)...in the private sector, there's construction and many trades open to men. Women who are going into the jobs that seem accessible to them HAVE to have college degrees to make even close to the same income--to be a teacher, a nurse, or any municipal or county or state work in the public sector--all the women's jobs tend to require degrees. Pink collar jobs require degrees more and more--like paralegal, etc. As you point out! Even in tech, some of the jobs don't require a degree and if they don't and they are well-paid they are dominated by men.

So, in my family, to move up in the world, a lot of the women become teachers. The women teachers observed to me that teachers often date cops and others in law enforcement type jobs (which is also true of some of my female relatives), which has a mixed ratio of success. But the cops and firefighters, etc. make more money over time. They are the same class status, even though the women have degrees. Their degree does not translate into the 'elite status' the right wing is so anxious about. Teachers have less social status than firemen and police. However, some of the women do move into the professions of higher pay and status because they are motivated to do so given that they have to seek higher education. And this is likely what the right is panicking about, among other things.

The teachers stay flat broke, though, even though they have masters' degrees. They barely get raises and if they're single moms, they are basically poor and cannot support themselves.

One of my female cousins just qualified to become a firefighter though! Hooray!

It's a very easily deniable kind of sexism because people would say 'you are not doing the SAME JOB. Or 'this job is not as difficult' instead of saying 'women dominate this profession.' Even online sometimes the men's rights people will claim that men are 'not allowed' to become teachers and nurses because of 'fears of pedophilia' (which is utter nonsense...schools are always looking for male teachers and my children have had a number of male teachers, even in preschool....and this is GOOD for them to look for male teachers.) Caretaking work is not seen as work as it is 'women's work' even though it is completely essential to society--perhaps the most essential thing besides growing food, something we cannot survive without. Women are expected to 'give' caretaking so the value for this as labor (which it is) in our culture is very low. However, all these roles, particularly teaching and nursing, require high levels of education and training. They are professions!

The right wing knows that they would cannibalize and destroy capitalism with their attacks on women in professions and their education. I doubt they are this irrational, although many might be. Like immigration and other of their hobbyhorses, the goal is not to end the practice that they squawk about but to make the people we are all dependent on lower in status, and afraid of their position so they can be more exploitable.

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