Find what, exactly? I think I am healthy, and I find many things appealing about work, and I say that as someone who was home with children until the youngest was in 2nd grade. Their father was not trustworthy and this played out in a number of ways, but the thing that finally made it clear that it was worthwhile to break up my family was his financial irresponsibility. So:
*Appealing to me is financial safety. I don’t ever have to tolerate infidelity or a sexless relationship because I can’t figure out how to support myself and my children. The kids are not in play any longer, but nonetheless. There’s a confidence I see in working women with young children that I don’t see in SAHM’s. Sure, they’re frazzled as well, but so are the SAHM’s.
*Appealing to me is friendship and collegiality. I love sharing good news with a team, and I like having people around when distressing things happen. I found my kids delightful, but my adult social life was less rewarding as a SAHM. I probably read three books a week, and those were my real adult companions. There was really no one to talk about the books with, because my friends were chosen for proximity, not commonality.
*Appealing to me is the sense that I am an important part of my community, contributing something of value.
Reading upthread I was tempted to talk about the difference I’ve found between nurses and doctors in terms of working with them, but didn’t have time, as I don’t now. But I’ve found female nurses to be strangely hive-like and difficult to work with, though many were very nice individually. I have speculation about power/powerlessness, but again, no time at present.
I think gender diversity in leadership is good and there are studies supporting the benefits of diversity for improving org level decision making (Anita Woolley). I also agree that leadership position should be based on merit/competence and that diversity for the sake of diversity is a bad idea.
I do not think that women are inherently less competent than men; HOWEVER, I do think that most of them end up being FUNCTIONALLY less competent due to childcare responsibilities or just spending more time thinking about their children in general. Even after pregnancy and postpartum (which sets women behind) it’s hard for a lot of them to set their kids aside and get things done, even if they are not obligated to do so. For example, my mum spent a lot of her workday on a parenting site and basically did the minimum necessary. She’s ambitious and had the skills to advance much further up the career ladder, but just wasn’t interested I’m pretty sure there’s a biological underpinning to this.
I’m not saying women shouldn’t have children or judging the decision of mothers to care more about their children than their careers. I’d argue that many of them would choose their children over a promotion without second thought.
i just think this is a factor that makes a lot of women more incompetent, on an absolute basis, and prevents “gender equality”
@BrickHead pls call me out if you think this is BS
Am I the only one who thinks women are, generally speaking, the smarter sex for not wanting to climb the cooperate and political later. I’d absolutely never want to be a CEO and I don’t understand why so many men and feminists think it’s the pinnacle of existence. Work 60-90 hours a week, never see my family, live under immense pressure and stress every day. No thanks.
Good post. Hence why I asked asked above about this fixation on work. My fiend is an orthopedic surgeon and has a very stressful job with many hours. It’s simply Part it the plan. He’s highly rewarded and satisfied with his profession, but he doesn’t make it out to be some utopian existence. Same with my engineer uncle who owns a glass company. He sure has a nice life, but again, it’s not like he’s in cloud nine all the time.
Probably for the same reason that there aren’t a bunch of men pushing to get into the housecleaning business. Professional success in high paying roles is something to which plenty of people from both genders aspire. That’s not a good comparison.
It is worth noting that if you compare men and women on an even playing field without marriage or children, women kick men’s collective butts. There is probably some selection bias to the criteria, but childless unmarried women out earn childless unmarried men by a significant margin. Women in that comparison earn like 117% of what men earn.
It’s not true that men are on top of everything, we aren’t. School and graduating for example, men are falling farther and farther behind. Even if you compare a recent college grads (taking out the fact that men don’t graduate nearly as often as women) women earn more.
It isn’t a patriarchy, men dominates both the “top” and bottom of positions in society. It’s more correct to say that the variance and distribution of men is wider. It’s even ironic to note that women who choose family and children, while they create the earnings gap, more than make up for it in a more important statistic, spending. What matters is access to wealth and ability to spend, most of which is done by women (which flips the earnings gap on it’s head). Women are perfectly capably of succeeding in the current business climate, they just choose not to. And looking at spending, the ones who don’t aren’t worse off for it. I for one don’t think that’s a bad place to be in regards to the opportunities and choices afforded to women.
There are plenty of people in both genders who don’t have the intelligence, talent, and characteristics for high paying jobs. So it’s a valid comparison.
I’m not sure where you’re going with the females in STEM, but I do think there have been and are still destructive social norms preventing females from entering STEM, starting at a young age, which should (and are) be addressed.
I don’t think females are inherently less capable in doing STEM, but I definitely remember getting the “science is for boys” vibe growing up. I also think my parents would have pushed me harder on continuing maths if I was their son, not daughter.
This isn’t to say that girls should be pushed into STEM against their will, but I think these norms are causing many girls to shoot themselves in the foot and rule out STEM before actually getting exposed
There are plenty of low-skill jobs that cater to men or women because of basic physical traits or social norms. What we’re talking about here are high-skill roles / positions that have nothing to do with physical attributes. So unless you believe that women are just naturally bad at math, critical thinking, risk assessment, decision-making, etc. then there’s no direct comparison between brick laying and working in the C-suite.
Props to @EmilyQ and @anna_5588 for even wading into this dumpster fire - that takes balls.
Eh, STEM tends to favor more masculine personality traits. If everything were perfectly equal, it would probably still be male dominated. That said I’m an engineer whose spent most of his career working for women. I also have a daughter who I’d love to be an engineer, but it probably isn’t going to happen. She’s highly intelligent, but it just isn’t what she’s interested in (at least at this point) despite my attempts. My son on the other hand has the nack and there is probably nothing anyone is going to be able to do to stop him. I am however accepting enough to support my kids in becoming who they want to become, whether than leads them into traditional gender roles or not. What I don’t like about many of the efforts to get girls to do the things society thinks they should is that pushing women to go into STEM or climb the cooperate ladder can be just as bad as teaching them they can’t.
I think there is confusion here between power/ leadership and task competency.
I will give a quick example. I hired a man to be a manager and on the work floor, he was literally like having 2+ employees in workload. However, l had to pull him aside and orient him towards managing the workload of the 25 people under him, not be the overly productive worker bee.
Maybe this was me being a leader. Or maybe it was me being incompetent at filling that position. Either way, l had to make the action and be responsible for it.
I was told once that people (men and women) without children are happier in their 20s than those with children.
For every decade after, childless people become less and and less happy compared to their peers who have children (and later grandchildren).
So, have kids at 29 for maximum happiness, haha.
I don’t know why I thought of that, but I’m going to agree with you and assume it’s fairly equal. Women might come into their “motherly instincts” more naturally but I don’t think men are without a desire to have relationship with and provide for partners and children. So I think they have the potential to feel as empty or lonely as women. (Provide as in care for. They can be a stay at home dad while the wife makes the money for all I care. Do what works for your family.)
In regards to women in STEM, there is some evidence that men on average are somewhat better at spatial and abstract reasoning. However, this is mostly irrelevant because most people won’t be in STEM, most people don’t want to be in STEM, and we don’t need most people to be in STEM. STEM is only a subset of jobs. Capabilities for men and women are spread out over a distribution and there are lots of women that have an aptitude for spatial and abstract reasoning while there are lots of men that don’t. I work in engineering and while most engineers are men, I have encountered many capable woman engineers.
The interesting thing is that women in STEM are much more common in poor countries. Women in rich countries with a wide range of good opportunities rarely choose STEM.
I find that the loudest voices pushing for women in STEM are people that aren’t even in STEM, men or women. Successful woman engineers want to be successful on their own merits, which are often plentiful. Pushing women in STEM undercuts them by creating the perception that they were given an unfair leg up. It’s HR lackeys, diversity managers, women’s studies majors, and their ilk that try to make a career out of “women in STEM.” They don’t actually want to work in STEM themselves because it’s complicated and requires making an actual contribution. They just want to make a career out of “advocating.”
