Washington Post: 'It's time for New Deal feminism'

Submitted by anthony on Tue, 2009-12-15 03:00

Article here. Excerpt:

'We are in the midst of a sexual revolution at work. Thanks in part to the recession, women now hold close to half of all jobs in the economy, mothers are the main or co-breadwinners in two-thirds of American families, and men can claim the dubious honor of being a majority of the jobless. But this is one sexual revolution that hasn't produced much joy of late -- at work or at home. For many, decent wages and economic security remain elusive, and the stress of long hours and job competition has frayed social relationships.
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Feminism today should concentrate on the economy and the workplace -- and on the huge transformations that are needed there to get greater equality and security. These are issues that can unite women across class and culture and allow feminism to speak to the fears and concerns of everyone. A few women's organizations and groups have been moving in this direction for a long time. But what often gets lost is how much we can draw not only from the great feminist upsurge of the late 1960s and 1970s but also from the movement that preceded it. The next women's movement should look a lot more like the one in the 1930s than the one in the late 1960s.
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It wasn't enough for women to gain access to what had traditionally been men's work. All too often that meant entering dangerous or poorly paid jobs and adjusting to a work world premised on the ideal of an unencumbered wage-earner without home or community responsibilities. Rather, what was needed, they argued, was to transform the world of work, its values and its practices.'

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"All too often that meant entering dangerous or poorly paid jobs and adjusting to a work world premised on the ideal of an unencumbered wage-earner without home or community responsibilities."

Rosy the Riveter had a dirty and dangerous job. Her old man had a dirtier and more-dangerous one, though; it was called "combat".

But after WWII, all the 'newly-empowered' women headed home, but soon grew disenchanted with suburban life, then headed back to work - well, back to office work. So they were fine processing payroll for the men who returned from WWII to factory jobs, then got tired of that and wanted to start managing them - from an office, though, even if they had no real experience outside of typing and complaining to bosses about how they weren't getting a chance to prove themselves yet even without anything to recommend them. That not enough, they started suing for the chance, and got it. It didn't matter if the men they started managing got the shaft. No one cared except them, whose opinions were not considered too important. (Once a private under command, subject to an authority that places him in death's way, it is always so. He has been a proven disposable asset and thus justice for him is not a relevant concern for others. That's how it works.)

But I wonder if the author has really thought this out... I mean, just how does one transform the kind of work an electrical lineman restoring power after a storm to something as being with as much danger as playing Minesweeper during a lunch break?

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2009-12-15 04:36