We have been bombarded over the years by feminist academia with claims that gender roles for women were socially designed by the Patriarchy for the subjugation of women. Examples of these types of claims can be found on page 432 of documents like "Deviance and Social Control: A Sociological Perspective":
So, let's investigate their claims shall we? The claim was made that women are socialized into being nurturers and being pushed to nurturing jobs instead of being CEO's. Is that true? Is there a school or government curriculum where women are alienated from pursuing other competitive jobs? My answer to that question is an unequivocal "hell no!" In fact, women still go for more risk-free, nurturing professions just as they did over 50 years ago, despite women's liberation:
"You've Come a Long Way Baby... Or Have You?
Think back to the most common jobs that women held in your mom's day, and if that's not far enough back, think about your grandmother. Do secretaries, nurses, teachers and retail sales clerks come to mind? Now think about the most common jobs for women today: Are you envisioning managers and administrators, lawyers, marketing specialists, content producers andentrepreneurs? If so, you'd be wrong. It seems we haven't "come a long way baby" at all.
In fact, according to the latest numbers released by theUnited States Department of Labor, the Leading Occupations of Employed Women for 2009 aresecretaries, nurses, teachers and cashiers, in that order. And in the first three, women represent over 80 percent of all those employed. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just a little surprising that even with technology and society experiencing phenomenal upheaval on a daily basis, things haven't changed much for the working woman during the past 50 years. 20 Leading Occupations of Employed Women:"
Percent of jobs held by women: 96.8%
Median weekly earnings: $619
Percent of jobs held by women: 92%
Median weekly earnings: $1,035
Percent of jobs held by women: 81.9%
Median weekly earnings: $891
4. Cashiers
Percent of jobs held by women: 74.4%
Median weekly earnings: $361
5. Nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides
Percent of jobs held by women: 88.5%
Median weekly earnings: $430
Percent of jobs held by women: 51.9
Median weekly earnings: $443
7. First-line supervisors/managers of retail sales workers
Percent of jobs held by women: 44.1%
Median weekly earnings: $597
Percent of jobs held by women: 71.6%
Median weekly earnings: $363
Percent of jobs held by women: 89.9%
Median weekly earnings: $371
Percent of jobs held by women: 67.9%
Median weekly earnings: $587
Percent of jobs held by women: 95.1%
Median weekly earnings: $364
Percent of jobs held by women: 92.3%
Median weekly earnings: $627
Percent of jobs held by women: 95.1%
Median weekly earnings: $516
14. First-line supervisors/managers of office and administrative support
Percent of jobs held by women: 71.3%
Median weekly earnings: $705
15. Managers, all others
Percent of jobs held by women: 34.1%
Median weekly earnings: $1,037
Percent of jobs held by women: 61.8%
Median weekly earnings: $902
Percent of jobs held by women: 91.6%
Median weekly earnings: $474
18. Cooks
Percent of jobs held by women: 41.5%
Median weekly earnings: $371
19. Office clerks, general
Percent of jobs held by women: 82%
Median weekly earnings: $594
Percent of jobs held by women: 85.2%
Median weekly earnings: $406
"It might come as some consolation that in 2010, women overtook men in the workplace, mostly because the biggest layoffs were in the male-dominated fields of manufacturing and construction, while the female-dominated fields of education and health care were considerable safer. Women now make up about 51 percent of the work force; the numbers above are from 2009, when women made up 47.4 percent of the workforce. So it's true that times, they are a-changin' -- but just at a snail's pace."
Source: http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2010/07/27/where-women-work/
Not only are women choosing safer, and more nurturing careers, but they overtook men in the workforce by a whopping 51% but the writer of this article STILL complains that the process is slow... What's the end game I'd ask here? Women completely overtaking the workforce? While we're at it, let's examine some concrete evidence that despite men and women having agency and rational choice, nature does motivate both genders statistically into different roles:
Source: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~shors/pdf/gender_brain_Apr30_2006.pdf
Radical feminists claim that female sexuality is under the control of a society dominated by men, yet plethora of biological and psychological studies will tell you that females are the sexual selectors and compete with each other through sexuality. For example,the NY Daily News reports on two studies which reveal that ovulating women tend to be more competitive and less generous towards other women, while being nicer and flirtatious towards men with more masculine symmetrical features, more aggressive and deep voice, all the traits feminists call "toxic masculinity":
Source for the study: http://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/164458.pdf
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826202/
And when it comes to the socialist feminists' claims that not only patriarchy but capitalism also oppresses women, but we have already debunked that idea many times in this blog considering women out earn men when met in the same conditions (single and childless), hold over half the wealth in the U.S, are majority of voters and are over 60% of college graduates in our capitalist society.
And the claims of post-modern feminists claims about social deviance (women are not as aggressive as men) is due because that's how patriarchy has brainwashed women to behave (nurturing and passive or passive-aggressive), hence why women don't deviate from their socially imposed norms. This very laughable "social construct" myth being already debunked by the previous studies cited in this post clearly defining women as less competitive and aggressive compared to men when it comes to biological and evolutionary empirical evidence.
Any excuses feminists make for deliberate or biologically induced female behavior, we can definitely see that women do have agency and dominant traits attributed to their gender. Their buzzwords like "Patriarchy" or "Social Construct", carry no weight when exposed to the light of facts.
Not only are women choosing safer, and more nurturing careers, but they overtook men in the workforce by a whopping 51% but the writer of this article STILL complains that the process is slow... What's the end game I'd ask here? Women completely overtaking the workforce? While we're at it, let's examine some concrete evidence that despite men and women having agency and rational choice, nature does motivate both genders statistically into different roles:
"That women and men think differently has little to do with whether they are handed dolls or trucks to play with as infants. After all, when infant monkeys are given a choice of human toys, females prefer dolls and males go after cars and trucks.
The differences, researchers are beginning to discover, appear to have a lot more to do with how powerful hormones wire the female and male brain during early development and later in life. Among the newest findings: A previously unknown hormone appears to launch puberty's sexual and mental transformation; growth hormone is made in the brain's memory center at rates up to twice as high in females as in males; and the brain's hot button for emotions, the amygdala, is wired to different parts of the brain in women and men.
Scientists hope the findings may help explain such mysteries as why females are often more verbal, more socially empathetic, more nurturing and more susceptible to depression, while males tend to be more aggressive, more outdoorsy, more focused on things than people and more vulnerable to alcohol and drug addiction.
"Males and females look different, we act different, so of course our brains are different," said Rutgers University psychologist Tracey Shors, who is studying the effects of growth hormone on the brain. "Sex hormones along with stress and growth hormones change the brain's anatomy, and in that way you change behavior, your ability to think and learn."
Sex differences begin with the X and Y sex chromosomes a person is born with. But scientists now believe that whether the brain and nervous system are wired as female or male depends a lot on the early influence of estrogen, the so-called female hormone, or testosterone, the male hormone.
The brain's sexual identity is first established when those hormones are briefly released before and shortly after birth, which may influence a child's preference for dolls or trucks. "There's a peak of testosterone in males at birth that's very important for future sexual behavior," said Dr. Sophie Messager of Paradigm Therapeutics in Cambridge, England. "If you block that, the male rats behave like females for the rest of their life."
The sex hormones then lie dormant until they get turned on again in puberty to make the body ready for reproduction. That is where a recently discovered hormone called kisspeptin comes in. Created in the brain, it unleashes a cascade of hormones that race down to the gonads--ovaries in females and testes in males. There they stimulate the production of estrogen or testosterone, starting the physical transformations of puberty.
Messager proved in animals that blocking kisspeptin prevented those changes from happening. But there is another target for this activity: the brain. The hormonal downrush kicked off by kisspeptin comes full circle when estrogen and testosterone travel back to the brain, imprinting neural circuits with female and male characteristics, Messager said. Animal studies show that genetic females will behave like males if their estrogen is blocked and replaced by testosterone.
Genetic males, in turn, act like females if their testosterone is knocked out. Until kisspeptin was discovered, scientists had generally accepted the idea that sex differences were centered in the hypothalamus, a small organ on the underside of the brain. It was thought that the hypothalamus originated the flow of hormones that start puberty, determine male and female physical characteristics and orchestrate mating behavior.
"The bias of mainstream neuroscience for the last 25 years has been, `OK, sure there's some sex differences way down deep in the brain in this little structure called the hypothalamus, but otherwise the brains of men and women were pretty much the same,'" said Larry Cahill, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine. "That was wrong, as wrong as could be," said Cahill, who is using imaging technology to show how male and female brains are wired for emotions. "Sex matters a lot in how the brain works and we neuroscientists have to change our tune."
Source: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~shors/pdf/gender_brain_Apr30_2006.pdf
Radical feminists claim that female sexuality is under the control of a society dominated by men, yet plethora of biological and psychological studies will tell you that females are the sexual selectors and compete with each other through sexuality. For example,the NY Daily News reports on two studies which reveal that ovulating women tend to be more competitive and less generous towards other women, while being nicer and flirtatious towards men with more masculine symmetrical features, more aggressive and deep voice, all the traits feminists call "toxic masculinity":
According to new research, ovulation alters women's behavior on a subconscious level, prompting them to focus more on social standing in comparison to other females.
Researchers from the The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management conducted three studies, one of which featured the popular "dictator game experiment." Fifty-eight ovulating and non-ovulating women were each given a set amount of money, which they could share with another if desired. Non-ovulating women shared about 50% of their money with others, while ovulating women shared about 25% of funds and kept the rest.
'We found that ovulating women were much less willing to share when the other person was another woman. They became meaner to other women,' said Kristina Durante, assistant professor of marketing at the UTSA College of Business and lead study author
In another experiment, 309 women were asked to choose between "Option A" - to have a $25,000 car while other women received $40,000 cars - and "Option B" - a $20,000 car while the other women received $12,000 cars. Ovulating women preferred "Option B," which provided "higher social standing" compared to the others.
'What's interesting about this finding is that ovulating women are so concerned about their relative position that they are willing to take less for themselves just so that they could outdo other women,' said study coauthor Vladas Griskevicius, associate professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.
Ovulating women had different reactions when playing the same games against men. While ovulation seemed to make women meaner to one another, it resulted in 'nicer' behavior towards men.
'These findings are unlike anything we have ever seen in the dictator game. You just don't see people giving away more than half of their money,'noted Durante. 'One possibility is that we're seeing ovulating women share more money as a way to flirt with the men.'
The results, entitled "Money, Status, and the Ovulatory Cycle," were published in the February issue of Journal of Marketing Research. It builds on previous studies from Durante and colleagues, including the role of ovulation in consumer choices and behavior towards men. Such studies found that ovulation subconsciously encourages women to choose "sexier" outfits in hopes of outdoing other attractive women, and to flirt more heavily, especially with men who have assorted genetic fitness markers."And when looking into the source of the study, we can find how empirical evidence concludes that women prefer manly men specially when ovulating.
Source for the study: http://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/164458.pdf
And in yet another biological study from an evolutionary standpoint, it finds that women use indirect aggression against competitors for preferred mates, thus further telling us that women have always been the selectors of men and judges of other females, specially rivals:
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826202/
And when it comes to the socialist feminists' claims that not only patriarchy but capitalism also oppresses women, but we have already debunked that idea many times in this blog considering women out earn men when met in the same conditions (single and childless), hold over half the wealth in the U.S, are majority of voters and are over 60% of college graduates in our capitalist society.
And the claims of post-modern feminists claims about social deviance (women are not as aggressive as men) is due because that's how patriarchy has brainwashed women to behave (nurturing and passive or passive-aggressive), hence why women don't deviate from their socially imposed norms. This very laughable "social construct" myth being already debunked by the previous studies cited in this post clearly defining women as less competitive and aggressive compared to men when it comes to biological and evolutionary empirical evidence.
Any excuses feminists make for deliberate or biologically induced female behavior, we can definitely see that women do have agency and dominant traits attributed to their gender. Their buzzwords like "Patriarchy" or "Social Construct", carry no weight when exposed to the light of facts.
