conferencia chiara piazzesi

Chiara PiazzesiUniversité du Québec à Montréal (Canada)

Academic Leaders Program - Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Querétaro

February 24th, 2014

ON THE “ILLUSION” OF HAVING IT ALL

Western women questioning their current condition

Increasing improvements in social, professional, reproductive, sexual chances for women

Crisis of men, of masculine norms and practices, of masculinity

Women as the “new” power, while men are struggling

“The End-of-Men” Camp

February 24th, 2014CHIARA PIAZZESI 2

A great deal is still to accomplish in order to empower women

Women still cannot have it all (career + family)

Women struggle for perfection in a way that may become self-destructive (high standards of efficiency, availability, success)

“Women-Can’t-Have-It-All” Camp


Hanna Rosin’s “The End-of-Men” (2010-)


• Evolution of economy has reduced the demand for male workers and increased the demand for female workers

• Post-industrial economy encourages communication, thinking, adaptability

• Growing number of college educated women

• Dominance of women in 13 out of 15 “fastest growing job categories” in the U.S.

• “Women are also starting to dominate middle management, and a surprising number of professional careers as well”

• Transformation of family (“matriarchy”) and women’s biographical paths (sex, marriage, reproduction)

The End of Men, really?


Source: Philip Cohen’s blog, http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/tag/hanna-rosin/

The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness(Stevenson, Wolfers 2009)


The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness

“Women in the U.S. have become less happy, both absolutely and relative to men [...]. The relative decline in women’s well-being is ubiquitous, and holds for both working and stay-at-home mothers, for those married and divorced, for the old and the young, and across the education distribution”.“[…] these same trends are also evident across those industrialized countries for which we have adequate subjective well-being data”.

B. Stevenson, J. Wolfers, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness”, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2009http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969.pdf?new_window=1


A.-M. Slaughter: “Women-Can’t-Have-It-All”


• Persisting structural factors thwarting women’s attempts to “have it all”

• Societal and economic arrangements, policies, and the organization of work should be thus blamed – yet women blame themselves, and each other

• Women are “told” that they can have it all, and nevertheless fail (even privileged ones)

• Highly demanding work schedules are to blame in the first place

• The consequence: less career advancement for women, less women at the top of the ladder

«The huge value that so many employers place on a standard work schedule affects more than the careers of women. Anyone who, for whatever reason, needs to take time off or work flexible hours gets penalized. The broader economy suffers when businesses are unable to make full use of highly educated and productive people».

C. Goldin, “Close the gender pay gap, change the way we work”, Bloomberg, jan. 21st, 2014


Change the way we work

Equality between working women and men?

Women are relatively absent from leading positions (due to the structure and the organisation of high-profile jobs)

“Gender wage gap”: 77 cents earned by a full-time working woman for every dollar earned by a full-time working man (U.S.)

The “gender wage gap” is not rapidly decreasing: it will probably be filled around 2057 in the U.S.


The gender wage gap (2011)


Source: Philip Cohen’s blog, http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/tag/hanna-rosin/

“To be sure, some professions may never be able to offer much flexibility. Merger-and-acquisition bankers, trial lawyers and the U.S. secretary of state have 24/7, on-call-all-the-time jobs. That said, the universe of such jobs is probably smaller than it appears”.

Claudia Goldin, “Close the Gender Pay Gap, Change the Way We Work”, Bloomberg, Jan. 21st, 2014


Change the way we work

Half-truth # 1

Having it all is possible if you are committed enough

a.k.a.

“The Ambition Gap”


Sheryl Sandberg: Lean in


“How are we going to take down the barriers that prevent more women from getting to the top ?”

“The Ambition Gap” according to S. Sandberg:

“in addition to external barriers erected by society, women are hindered by barriers that exist within ourselves. We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. We internalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives - the messages that say it’s wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men. We lower our own expectations of what we can achieve”.

From Lean in (2013)


Half-truth # 2

Having it all is possible if you marry the right person


Individual or collective responsibility?

“For the United States to catch up with its more successful neighbors, we’d need to reconsider some of our beliefs about community and government. Many Americans resist the idea of government help in abstract: they want to fix the stalled revolution privately”.

A. Hochschild, The Second Shift. Working Families and the Revolution at Home (1989-2012)



The Wonder Woman

Syndrome

(according to Debora Spar, 2013)

The Wonder Woman Syndrome(according to Debora Spar, 2013)

Women understood possibility as obligation (from “can be/have everything” to “'must be/have everything”)

Women assumed the obligation of being the perfect mother, the perfect worker, the perfect lover, of having the perfect home, the perfect body, the perfect children, the perfect garden etc.

Second-wave feminism contributed to spread and inculcate this (delusional) ambition


Wonder women


“Feminism” and capitalism?

“The rising new forces of consumer manipulation—mass media, mass entertainment, national advertising, the fashion and beauty industries, popular psychology—all seized upon women’s yearnings for independence and equality and redirected them to the marketplace. Over and over, mass merchandisers promised women an ersatz version of emancipation, the fulfillment of individual, and aspirational, desire. Why mount a collective protest against the exploitations of the workplace when it was so much more gratifying—not to mention easier—to advance yourself (and only yourself) by shopping for “liberating” products that expressed your “individuality” and signaled your (seemingly) elevated class status?”.

Susan Faludi, “Facebook Feminism, Like It or Not”, The Baffler, Nov. 23, 2013


“Feminism” and capitalism?

“On the one hand, [young girls], like their mothers, are being constantly urged to excel, to do whatever they want and be whoever they want to be. On the other hand, and at the same time, they are being pummeled by a bizarrely narrow set of gender stereotypes. Girls as princesses; girls as sex objects; girls as pretty things to

be dressed up, jeweled up, and carried off by men”.

Debora Spar, Wonder Women, 2013


Feminist critique of state capitalism(Nancy Fraser 2009)

Second wave feminism criticized capitalism’s economism (narrow conception of injustice & inequalities as simply economic)

Second wave feminism criticized capitalism’s androcentrism (gender division of labor which devalued activities performed by women)

Second wave feminism criticized capitalism’s étatism (it demanded strong political institutions capable to put economic life in the service of justice)

Inclusion of matters traditionally considered as “private”, such as sexuality, housework, reproduction, and violence against women

Erosion of the gender division of labor, fairer “work culture”

Growing political commitment for promoting social justice


Nancy Fraser on feminism & neo-liberal capitalism

What went wrong?

New economic framework promoting privatization, deregulation, and personal responsibility

Feminism ambiguously insisted on recognition at the expense of socio-economic struggles

Focus on recognition contributed to isolating individuals and categories

Critique of family wage promoted the shift to the “two-earner family”, thus supporting neo-liberal deregulation and “disorganization”

Gender justice turned into an “individual” matter (and no longer a social one)

“The cultural changes jump-started by the second wave [of feminism], salutary in themselves, have served to legitimate a structural transformation of capitalist society that runs directly counter to feminist vision of a just society” (Fraser 2009)


The Lean In Movement


Susan Faludi on the « Lean in » movement

“That Lean In is making its demands of individual women, not the corporate workplace, is evident in the ease with which it has signed up more than two hundred corporate and organization “partners” to support its campaign. The roster includes some of the biggest American corporations: Chevron, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Comcast, Bank of America and Citibank, Coca Cola and Pepsico, AT&T and Verizon, Ford and GM, Pfizer and Merck & Co., Costco and Wal Mart, and, of course, Google and Facebook. Never before have so many corporations joined a revolution”.

Susan Faludi, “Facebook Feminism, Like It or Not”, The Baffler, Nov. 23, 2013


[email protected]

Thank you!


conferencia chiara piazzesi

Education

womenchiara

2014chiara

philip cohens

chiara piazzesifebruary

gender wage

gender pay

declining

gender division