THE POLITICS OF WORK AND FAMILY

1. THE POLITICS OF WORK AND FAMILY • Feminism: Lecture 1

2. PLAN • Some types of disadvantage and discrimination relating to work (and work in the family) that women specifically face • Whether we should try to mitigate all these types of disadvantage • Some proposals to mitigate these types of disadvantage • A closer look and case study: women in philosophy

3. TYPES OF DISADVANTAGE & DISCRIMINATION FACED BY WOMEN RELATING TO WORK

4. DISADVANTAGE & DISCRIMINATION RELATING TO WORK • Explicit Sex Discrimination

6. DISADVANTAGE & DISCRIMINATION RELATING TO WORK • Explicit Sex Discrimination

7. DISADVANTAGE & DISCRIMINATION RELATING TO WORK • Structural Disadvantage/Discrimination in Employment: Job Descriptions • Examples: • Height and weight requirements • Expected working hours and overtime

8. DISADVANTAGE & DISCRIMINATION RELATING TO WORK • Structural Disadvantage/Discrimination in Employment: Job Descriptions • Disadvantage in the Family: Women are far more likely to do far more housework and be primary caregivers for children

9. DISADVANTAGE & DISCRIMINATION RELATING TO WORK • Structural Disadvantage/Discrimination in Employment: Job Descriptions • Disadvantage in the Family: Women are far more likely to do far more housework and be primary caregivers for children • 2&3 lead to a cycle of disadvantage

10. DISADVANTAGE & DISCRIMINATION RELATING TO WORK • For the most part expected (and expect themselves) to take time off and care for children if they have them • Dependent on their partnersto maintain standard of living • Choose jobs that allow themto do this • Less able to get a job, and a good jobonce quit job • Because they are in lower paid jobs = more likely to be the one who quits • These jobs are lower paid

11. DISADVANTAGE & DISCRIMINATION RELATING TO WORK • Structural Disadvantage/Discrimination in Employment: Job Descriptions • Disadvantage in the Family: Women are far more likely to do far more housework and be primary caregivers for children • 2&3 lead to a cycle of disadvantage • Part of and one of the effects of this cycle of disadvantage is Disadvantage/Discrimination in Divorce Settlements

12. SHOULD WE TRY TO END OR MITIGATE THESE TYPES OF DISADVANTAGE?

13. SHOULD WE TRY TO END OR MITIGATE THESE TYPES OF DISADVANTAGE? • The Choice Argument: Mothers choose to be primary caregivers. And disadvantage that is the result of free choices need not be mitigated • Someone had to be the primary caregiver • Not a free decision to be caregiver or not • Not a free decision to get married • But isn’t it still your choice to become a mother? • Do choices really matter this much?

14. SHOULD WE TRY TO END OR MITIGATE THESE TYPES OF DISADVANTAGE? • The Private Sphere Argument • The family is a private area where we and the state should not intervene • Without a ringfenced private existence we would have no privacy • Responses • Privacy is crucially important. But it is only possible to have privacy if one is protected from abuse • Life in a private family still involves power dynamics that can be dangerous for women • Violence in the family is not a merely private matter • Families are social institutions backed up by laws. The existence and limits of a private sphere are the result of political decisions

15. SHOULD WE TRY TO END OR MITIGATE THESE TYPES OF DISADVANTAGE? • The Different Norms for the Family Argument • Families are not within the purview of justice • Families, unlike the rest of society, are governed by norms of love and affection (or ought to be) • Principles of justice should not govern dishwashing

16. SHOULD WE TRY TO END OR MITIGATE THESE TYPES OF DISADVANTAGE? • Equal Opportunities • The Rawlsian Argument • A just society is one whose institutions act in line with principles chosen in the original position • In the original position agents reason from behind the veil of ignorance • Okin: agents behind the veil of ignorance would want to bring an end to the link between gender and family and employment roles • Rawls held that any inequalities in a society must be attached to positions or offices which are open to all - but not only formally open to all • Utilitarian Concerns

17. PRACTICAL PROPOSALS

18. PRACTICAL PROPOSALS • Daycare • Problems: • Only helps those with enough to pay for daycare • Universal Free Daycare? • Norms of good motherhood • Mothers should not have to place their child in childcare centres in order to have careers

19. PRACTICAL PROPOSALS • Family Friendly Policies • Parental Leave • Part-time work and flexibility

20. PRACTICAL PROPOSALS • A New Model of Work and Family • Part-time workers should be allowed to advance at a rate proportionate to their accomplishment not to the fact that they are part time • Workweeks shortened & no mandatory overtime • In divorces where one partner earns substantially more because the other is caring for their child, courts should view income as jointly earnt • Objections • Impracticality

21. ‘Andy Marks is a successful Washington lawyer with an intensive commercial litigation practice. Two part-time lawyers work with him at a senior counsel level on litigation matters. This is remarkable because the nigh-unchallenged common knowledge is that part-time work is impractical in litigation because lawsuits proceed according to court deadlines over which lawyers themselves often have little control. None of which deterred Marks or his firm. “Both of these extremely talented and experienced attorneys were in the process of leaving their existing firms and were looking for a new firm that would enable them to spend more time at home with their young children than a full-time commitment would permit. We decided that we could and would hire them on a less than full-time basis.” In thinking this through, Marks recalled an incident several years earlier. • We had an outstanding woman associate who had been working with me on a piece of major litigation and who became involved in a second matter that required her to work two days a week outside the office for a different partner. I was faced with the choice of whether to have her continue to work on my case three days a week or to find a different associated who could devote full time to my case. I decided to take three days a week. And then I realized: Virtually every associate who works with me works on cases for other partners and is therefore a part-time lawyer as far as my cases are concerned. • All lawyers regularly find ways to accommodate the demands of other cases; finding a way to accommodate an attorney’s desire to work on less than a full-time basis is not all that different…’(Williams, Unbending Gender, pp. 84-85)

22. ‘One strong message of the existing work/family literature is that no single solution works best in all workplaces…The Engelhard Corporation addressed the 150 percent rate of turnover, high absenteeism, high accident rates, and large amount of product waste in its Hunstville, Alabama, chemical plant by allowing workers to vote on a flexible schedule. They chose a four-day workweek with work beginning at 5 A.M and ending at 3 P.M. When the schedule was implemented, absenteeism dropped from an average of twenty to three days a year and both turnover and product waste decreased to less than 1 percent… For other businesses, flexible hours are less important than on-site child care. Marquette Electronics president Michael Cudahy called the company’s on-site chilldcare centre “the best business decision [he] ever made in business.” One of the nation’s largest design and construction firms, BE & K Engineering and Construction Company, provides a mobile child care center that follows workers from one construction site to the next • (Williams, Unbending Gender, p. 86)

23. PRACTICAL PROPOSALS • A New Model of Work and Family • Part-time workers should be allowed to advance at a rate proportionate to their accomplishment not to the fact that they are part time • Workweeks shortened & no mandatory overtime • In divorces where one partner earns substantially more because the other is caring for their child, courts should view income as jointly earnt • Objections • Impracticality • Discrimination against non-parents

24. PRACTICAL PROPOSALS • But even these reforms would still leave women doing too much in the family • Proposals: Mitigating or abolishing Gender Roles regarding (a) women’s work & (b) women’s role as only ever supporting men

25. MITIGATING GENDER ROLES • Socialisation into Gender Roles • Stereotyped Perceptions at Birth • Watching Parents • Workplace policies • Toys, Books, Films

26. TOYS

27. TOYS

28. CHILDREN’S BOOKS

29. CHILDREN’S BOOKS

30. CHILDREN’S BOOKS • Male characters are central characters in 57% of children’s books published each year. 31% have female central characters

31. FILMS

32. FILMS • The Bechdel Test • To Pass a film has to • Have at least two women in it • Who talk to each other • About something besides a man • Most films don’t pass this test. Of those that do most pass this test because the female characters talk about marriage or babies

33. PROPOSALS TO MITIGATE GENDER STEREOTYPES • Toys - Successful campaigns & stamp • Films - Bechdel test rating in Sweden • Could mount similar campaigns for books & TV • Successful campaigns would stop mothers stereotyping their children in the long-run mitigate expectations about women & work • Distinguish: not about objectification

34. MITIGATING GENDER ROLES • Arguments Against Mitigating or Ending Socialisation into these Gender Roles • No one believes in Gender Roles anymore

35. MITIGATING GENDER ROLES • Splitting work along these gendered lines is natural • Cross-cultural uniformity • Women have ability to tolerate dull and repetitive tasks • If women are naturally better suited and more inclined to childcare and housework than men, then • We ought to keep women in childcare and housework • It is pointless to try to change current arrangements • Evolution and Arguments from nature

36. RADICAL PROPOSALS • Should we abolish all gender roles? • Should the family be abolished then?

37. A LITTLE CLOSERCASE STUDY: JOBS IN PHILOSOPHY

38. WOMEN IN PHILOSOPHY • Explanations: • Women’s preferences or ability • Women are impeded by implicit bias and stereotype threat

39. IMPLICIT BIAS • Most people, even explicit and sincere egalitarians, have implicit biases against groups such as women, black people, gay people • Academics are affected by implicit Bias • The Journal, Behavioural Ecology went from non-anonymous to anonymous review and found a 33% increase in representation of female authors • CVs. 238 academic psychologists (120 f/118m) evaluated CVs randomly assigned a male or female name. All gave the male CVs better evaluations and were more likely to hire the males.

40. STEREOTYPE THREAT

41. STEREOTYPE THREAT • Under perform at a task because unconsciously preoccupied by fears of confirming stereotypes about their group • E.g. if you ask 5-7 year old girls to colour in drawings of girls holding dolls before taking a maths test their performance is reduced

42. IMPLICIT BIAS & STEREO TYPE THREAT IN PHILOSOPHY • Not so implicit bias • Logic • Objectivity • Lack of women in Philosophy (and the history of philosophy) leads to stereotype threat

44. IMPLICIT BIAS & STEREO TYPE THREAT IN PHILOSOPHY • Not so implicit bias • Logic • Objectivity • Lack of women in Philosophy (and the history of philosophy) leads to stereotype threat • Journals and Refereeing

46. IMPLICIT BIAS & STEREO TYPE THREAT IN PHILOSOPHY • Not so implicit bias • Logic • Objectivity • Lack of women in Philosophy (and the history of philosophy) leads to stereotype threat • Refereeing • Stereotype threat even for successful philosophers

47. REMEDIES • Breaking down stereotypes about women and women in philosophy. Exposing people to excellent women in philosophy • Blocking effects of stereotypes: anonymising • Altering thought patterns than enhance effects of stereotypes • Raising awareness of implicit bias and stereotype threat • Abandon the view that if you’re biased against stigmatised group, then you’re a bad person or blameworthy • Reasons to be hopeful that remedies can work

48. SUMMARY • The disadvantages that women face in relation to work and family • Why we should do something about these disadvantages • How we can do this

49. NEXT WEEK • Sexual Harassment • Feminism and Language Change • Required Reading: Saul, Feminism, Chapters 2 & 6