IMAGINING OTHER
Political Philosophy
Part 2
Feminism and political
philosophy (pp21)
Women and Inequality - a few notes…
Links: Imagining Other Home Page
For other aspects of feminism, see: (not all completed/uploaded yet…):
Notes on feminism Simone
de Beauvoir (feminism and existentialism) Feminism: extracts (a small selection of
quotes).
Feminism and Postmodernism Feminism Today (miscellaneous notes on various topics relevant to feminism, taken
from the press etc).
The
Women's Movement (a historical account of the activities of women in the
movement for liberation).
See also CSR chapter 8 and updates
to CSR chapter 8.
Note: dealing with economic
inequality separately is not to imply that this is the most serious aspect of
the problem of the relation between the sexes, as can be seen from other notes
here. Amartya Sen’s contribution below also notes some of these wider aspects.
For socialist feminists,
however, economic inequality underlies all the other aspects.
Statistics
and notes on women, violence and inequality.
Violence:
Amartya Sen, the economist,
points out that:
- There are some 100 million “missing women” in the world - i.e. women
who would be alive today if they had received the same quality of nutrition and
health as men.
- Each year some 100 million girls suffer genital mutilation.
- Approximately 1 million children, mostly girls, per year are forced
into prostitution.
- In
- One third of women in Barbados, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand,
Norway and the U.S. report having been sexually abused as children or
adolescents.
- In the
Source: notes by Professor Stephen Darwall,
In
- One in four women will experience domestic violence according to the British Crime Survey (2009).
- Domestic violence accounts for 16% of all violent incidents reported
to police.
- On average, two women a week are killed by their partner or former
partner in England and Wales – over 100 a year.
- Women who are abused by their partners are likely to be attacked 20
times before they report it.
Some statistics from 2007
(Emine Sauer, Guardian 24.08.07):
- 81% of domestic violence is committed by men against women.
- Over 50,000 women and children seek safety in refuges every year.
- Up to 10 commit suicide every week.
- Police receive nearly half a million calls a year from women about
domestic violence – almost certainly only the tip of the iceberg.
- Only 13,000 cases are considered by the Crown Prosecution Service in
England and Wales.
- Women’s Refuges, and Charities: The first refuge was set up in West
London in 1971 by Erin Pizzey, and there are now around 400 refuges in England
and Wales.
Prostitution:
* November 2009: After the
revelation as to the true identity of ‘Belle de Jour’, there has been much
discussion of the real nature of prostitution. Tanya Gold (Guardian 17.11.09)
quotes a 2003 study published in the Journal
of Trauma Practice (after interviews with 854 working prostitutes) in 9
countries: 70 – 90% were physically assaulted, 60 – 75% raped, 65 – 95% had
been sexually abused as children, and over two-thirds developed post-traumatic
stress disorder (twice the number of Vietnam veterans). According to a 1985
report a prostitute is 40 times as likely to die early – and 89% of prostitutes
want out of the ‘profession’.
Women’s Pay:
*November 2009:
- According to D Orr (G
* November 2008:
- Government figures (Office of National Statistics, November
2008, reported Guardian 06.01.09, and agreed by the Fawcett Society) indicates that men are paid 17.1% more than women
for full-time work, and 36.6% more for part-time work. This averages out at 21%
(i.e. when take full-time and part-time together).
- Over a lifetime, women will
be paid £369,000 less than men in the same full-time jobs.
-
- The government’s equalities
office is drawing up proposals to ‘name and shame’ companies that do not treat
men and women equally. The minister in charge of the equality bill, Vera Baird
(solicitor general) is sympathetic to the idea, as is Sarah Veale, TUC’s head
of equality and employment rights. ‘Employers have been resisting equality
legislation for 35 years (since the Equal Pay Act of 1970, which came into
force in 1975)… a voluntary approach hasn’t worked.
NB: Median salary in
Women in management:
* September 2007 (G, 050907):
- Chartered Institute of Management report showed the gender pay gap among managers across
Women managers averaged
£43,571 in 2006, men averaged £49,647. Gap averaged at £6,076. Women are
quitting their jobs because of this – sometimes to set up their own businesses.
The gap had been shrinking from 13.6% of earnings in 2003 to 11.8% in 2005, but
in 2006 it was 12.2% (among managers of all grades).
At director level the gap
increased from 20% to 23%... The worst gaps are in the food and drinks industry
– male mangers earn 46% more than female counterparts. Pensions and insurance:
43.2% (£30,144 to £43,168 – gap of £13,024). HR (!): 40%. Retailing: 33.9%.
Best: IT: 11.7% and public sector and charities: 0.7% (£31,787
to £31,995 – gap of £208).
- NB: More than a third of
managers are women, and they are younger than their male counterparts at given
levels.
- In 2006, G survey of top
100 companies found only 2 had female chief executives, and their pay lagged
well behind the male average.
*November 2007 (Gdn 08.11.07):
- Survey by
Childcare:
* February 2008
- Figures from report by Dr Gillian Paull, published in The Economic Journal 2008 (noted by
Rosie Boycott, Guardian 28.02.08): after the 1969 Divorce Act, the outlook for
women, in terms of ability to take on a career, improved; 36 years on men are
no more involved in childcare than they were:
- before having children, 85%
of working women are in Full Time employment, after having a child it drops to 34%
of mothers of pre-school age children, and 41% of mothers of school-age
children. However, the proportion of men
working Full Time after their wife has children goes up. Boycott says: ‘Real
equality between men and women is still a pipe dream… The world is still
organised to meet the wishes of men.’ She argues that we must legislate to get
employers to offer flexi time working that doesn’t mean loss of status and
career prospects for women. Every woman in
Women in the media:
*July 2007
Peter Wilby (Guardian
02.07.07): although things have changed, there are still only 10% of leading
positions on national papers held by women. ‘The macho culture of newspapers
dies hard…’
The media contribute to the
assumption that women are not ‘up to the job’ – for example, the treatment of
Harriet Harman’s election as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party:
- the Daily Mirror had the
headline ‘Harriet’s shock win’
- most papers didn’t report
the process, but did say that Gordon Brown ‘snubbed’ her by denying her the
deputy premiership (though it had been made clear long before that the two
posts would not go to the same person)
- a Times lead article said
the choice doesn’t reflect well on the party
- the Sun said her election
had been a cloud in an otherwise perfect day for Brown, and called her ‘hapless
Harriet’
- the Telegraph said that she
was poor at administration and has to be heavily briefed before media
appearances
- the Mail’s Quentin Letts
was especially misogynist: she ‘waddled up on stage’ she was a ‘hectoring,
bleating, finger-wagging nanny’ a ‘frightful, posh, humourless ticker-offer’, a
‘monumental, gold-plated, ocean-going hypocrite’
- even female journalists
write of the ‘bossy Blair babes’ and ‘horrible Harman’ (Mirror’s Sue Carroll)
‘mad old ladies’ and Harman ‘cannot keep the melon-sliced smirk off her face,
grinning like a brain-washed political Moonie’ (Telegraph’s Jan Moir – recently
in trouble for her comments on the ‘dangers of a gay lifestyle’).
Can we imagine this level of political abuse being
leveled at a male politician?
Other issues could be discussed as relevant to feminist thought:
Anorexia – primarily a
disease of young women – raises questions about body-image, self-worth, control
over the body, powerlessness etc.
Madness – ‘hysteria’ was
originally something only women could suffer from (the name derives from the
Greek for ‘womb’); women who were ‘promiscuous’ and unmarried mothers have been
shut away in mental asylums in the past.
Autism as ‘hypermale’
behaviour – inability to communicate with others, complete lack of social
awareness and skills, obsessive behaviour involving counting and mechanical
operations (collecting objects)… could be the result of over-exposure to male
hormones when the infant was in the womb.
Women drivers – it is often
alleged that women are worse drivers than men, and yet 94% of fatal accidents
are caused by men (particularly young men).