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 Equality, by the NumbersPosted on Jul 30, 2008Let me begin by raising a glass of champagne to the official closing of the math gap. It turns out that girls do not lack the math gene. Nor are they math-phobic. Nor is there any “intrinsic” difference—thank you, Larry Summers—between the abilities of girls and boys to succeed in the numbers business. There’s no reason at all for inequality. In fact, there’s no longer inequality. A new study of the math scores of 7 million students in 10 states shows that girls are now on a par with boys. How many years has it been since protesters stuck a sock in Barbie’s mouth for complaining that “math class is tough”? Girls have gotten to parity the new-fashioned way. By taking more math classes. This comes just in time for our young math whizzes to figure out a harder puzzle. There is another gender gap closing, this time in the workplace. After decades spent pursuing equality in wages and work, women have finally achieved it—ta da—in job loss. A report shepherded through Congress by Rep. Carolyn Maloney shows that since the 2001 recession, women have lost jobs and withdrawn from the workplace at the same rate as men. More to the point, they’ve remained out for the same reasons as men: layoffs, downsizing, outsourcing and wage stagnation. Needless to say, this is not the sort of equality we were looking for. But if there is any good news, it’s that this report may finally, permanently, firmly debunk the idea that droves of women are “opting out” of the workplace for a very different reason: full-time motherhood. The “opt-out revolution” has been one of the most tenacious story lines of the new century. It arrived full-born with the famous or infamous New York Times Magazine article of 2003 declaring: “Why don’t women run the world? Maybe it’s because they don’t want to.” The idea was that the best and brightest daughters of the women’s movement were choosing home and hearth over “having it all.” Since then, economists ran the numbers that ran down the myth. There’s no actual proof that motherhood causes women to drop out. On the contrary. Sociologists went to talk with opt-outers, who gave a far more complex picture of the day that work push came to child pull. But the little engine of the story kept chugging along on lifestyle pages and in conservative think tanks. Mathematically speaking, it divided women, especially mothers, and turned the sisterhood into a firing squad. This narrative didn’t just survive because it fit traditional views about a woman’s “real” place. It reflected the inner struggle of many mothers trying to balance work and home, boss and child, in the 24/7 work world. It even credited the second shift of caregiving as valuable work. In hard times too it was easier to tell yourself and others that you’d opted out than been pushed out. It framed the whole debate in the language of choice, suggesting that women have a buffet of lifestyle tidbits for our delight—work, home, both—rather than a series of hard decisions. The downside, the subtraction lesson, if you will, is that the “choice” frame makes it far too easy to reduce the problems of work and family to the lowest common denominator of one: one woman, one family, one personal decision. “If it’s true that women don’t want to work,” says one economist, “think of all the problems that disappear overnight. We don’t have to think about family leave or after-school or the day-to-day grind or the tough challenges of work and family.” Now along comes the congressional report on the equality we didn’t want. “When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” said congressional economist Heather Boushey. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.” That’s what math does to you. We are getting a fuller picture of the real troubles women and families face these days in what we aren’t supposed to call a recession. When men are downsized, outsourced and discouraged, we say they’re unemployed. But when women get pushed out of the economy, we like to say they “opted out.” But now we know that women too have the math gene. And this just doesn’t add up. Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment
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By Outraged, August 2, 2008 at 12:07 am #
Re: Ellen Goodman
Your point: “Since then, economists ran the numbers that ran down the myth. Theres no actual proof that motherhood causes women to drop out. On the contrary. Sociologists went to talk with opt-outers, who gave a far more complex picture of the day that work push came to child pull. But the little engine of the story kept chugging along on lifestyle pages and in conservative think tanks.
Mathematically speaking, it divided women, especially mothers, and turned the sisterhood into a firing squad.”
>Thank you for pointing this out. I lived this, and it was bizarre to say the least. At times I felt very much like I was in some surreal world where apparently many WOMEN hated me because I had children. During this “fantasy era”, I was at times literally accosted by some and then aggrandized by others. And from where I was standing the whole thing would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so incredibly sad that these polarizing inuendos even existed.
And yet, it seems the same old “divide and conquer” strategy was at work. One which has existed for thousands upon thousands of years and brought down many empires. There IS a war on against women and especially now we need to “close ranks”.
Report thisBy Outraged, August 1, 2008 at 9:28 pm #
Re: kath cantarella, August 1
Possibly I should have been more precise. The point I was making is that we should all be ALLOWED to do what we do best, since this is where we would most likely excel, enjoy our work, make our lives better and offer a greater contribution to the world. Nothing should be pre-determined by others, but I agree it many times is.
Aside from that, I AM a woman and in my life I have been very much sidelined, very much so indeed. And I realize this does happen to men, but I’ve never seen this happen to a man to the extent or severity that I’ve witnessed for women. NEVER…EVER.
Report thisBy kath cantarella, August 1, 2008 at 8:14 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Reply to Outraged:
‘you do what you do BEST and Ill do what I do BEST’
Who decides what you do best? Who decides what i do best? If i narrow your choices in life to what my perceptions of your abilities may be, you might have no choice but to exercise your fighting skills professionally, either in the military, the boxing ring, as security, etc. You would still have a few more choices than most women when someone decides to discourage them from doing anything other than what they are supposed to ‘do best’ i.e. have kids, clean house, perform menial jobs and maybe prostitution or porn if they are desperate for more money. What society allows a person ‘does best’ often has nothing to do with what one does best, but the power of the perception alone will push them into it, convince them it is so. What’s fair about that?
Report thisBy Spike, August 1, 2008 at 9:31 am #
Where do they get the ‘data’ for these OTW studies? Anybody with a lick of sense knows girls are born smarter; and, stay that way until they decide to marry.
Report thisBy Outraged, August 1, 2008 at 12:34 am #
See, the issue here is twofold. One, is why would anyone think girls wouldn’t or couldn’t excel in math, since the multitude of…well…at least married men, get this…right? Please tell me this is not my imagination. And I could go on and on with this, but I’ll spare you…and only say that if my ex gets hit by a train…well…I’ll be soooo….“sorry” and “feel just awful”.
Anyway. The other issue is…I forgot…(maybe it was that THIRD dose of liquor)...but PROBABLY NOT, c’mon, let’s be real. “Grampa’s medicine” is purely for medicinal reasons…which by the way…and I qualify this…works exceptionally well with somewhere between 800mg. to 1200mg. (sometimes even less, you need to “spread out” your toxins) of Ibprofen. Well for rheumatic conditions at least, and that reminds me…, why can’t people who are helped by marijuana have it..? Are they going to take away my anti-inflammatory too? Maybe the “evil” alcohol…? (Which by the way, does help ) Is it “not kosher”? You know, you can read every book available and ALL the research involved with riding a bike, but until you ride that bike… you don’t know shit. But I digress…
The other issue is; (and I remember now…maybe just “oldish” age presenting itself…), is that we constantly need to PROVE that “girls” are good at math. This immediately raises the question, “Why are girls required to PROVE they can do…well…one thing or another…in their elementary schooling. Is this REQUIRED of “boys”? Let’s take the workplace, do I NEED to PROVE that I can “take you down” intellectually or even factually, before I am “qualified”? Seriously… I don’t want to “PROVE” anything to you in this manner. It certainly wouldn’t be the highlight of my day if I could “kick your ass”. I would prefer to be proactive and work for the good of ALL OF US.
If…you INSIST that I “take you down” I can and WILL comply (for which, I have been fired more than once), but really… is this where we want to find ourselves? Let’s be empathetic, in fact, let’s go further than that….and be FAIR.
Interesting word “fair”....not even incredibly high class or high minded… imagine…the possibilities…you do what you do BEST and I’ll do what I do BEST. I say we can get along.
Report thisBy kath cantarella, July 31, 2008 at 8:41 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
HM, the women’s movement was not about proving a point. It was about achieving equal opportunities to live as a human being rather than an agent of reproduction. When people phrase the women’s movement in the terms you just did, it belittles what the movement was.
And i just have to add, for the sake of any fine conservative intellectuals who believe the freedom movements of the 60’s and 70’s led to our modern penchant for ‘moral relativism’, i think you have it backwards. It was all about ‘moral relativism’ before: morals were relative to how much power you had within a racist patriarchal system. There have always been absolutes in ethics, and before the freedom movements, many of those truths were grossly ignored. We still have a long way to go, and now is no time to backslide by blaming great humanistic movements for evils they did not engender. Consumerism and the rise of corporate culture created the ‘ME’ generation, not vice versa. Consumerism took hold not by the destruction of oppressive structures but by the failure to maintain positive structures (ethics and community) in the face of deregulation and corporate orgies. That is to say, the freedom of corporations should not be confused with the freedom of human beings.
Misogynistic social systems (misogynistic WOMEN, oh yes, as well as men) help create the circumstances for war which creates misogyny which creates war which creates misogyny… ad infinitum. Blind obedience to authority (a major part of the misogynistic patriarchal system) also helps create war. Each generation til the end of time will face the huge task of teaching adolescent males that they don’t have to ‘win’ and dominate others to be considered worthy people, and the complementary task of teaching adolescent girls their responsibility in not acquiescing, in standing up to male dominance and using their voices and courage to help create a better society for all.
We’ll always need a strong INTELLIGENT feminist movement. Because everything goes to Hell without one. At the moment i know we still have some strong intelligent feminists, but do we have a strong intelligent movement? It doesn’t feel like it to me.
Report thisAnd that should frighten everyone.
By P. T., July 31, 2008 at 2:34 pm #
Excuse me. Make that “latter,” not “later.”
Report thisBy P. T., July 31, 2008 at 9:39 am #
Whether or not boys score higher than girls on math tests depends on what is being tested, math fluency or math computation. Girls score as high as boys on the former but not the later.
Report thisBy HyperionsMadness, July 31, 2008 at 5:08 am #
And the race to the bottom continues… I always wondered when women would realize that even though there is an important point to be proved that women can do the majority of jobs that men do as well as men, that it would make women more stressed out, more tired, and more frustrated since centuries of paternalism means men will not typically not just overnight start to share/help in the duties that women are forced to take on in addition to working outside the home.
Report this