A Society Designed for the Benefit of Men?

One definition of patriarchy is that men rule women. I've <argued> that women being the majority of the electorate means this isn't true of the US. There are no laws oppressing women. Whatever power men have is as a result of informal arrangements -- which admittedly can be very compelling.

Another definition is that the society is designed to benefit men at the expense of women. This allows for the fact that many women might support this society -- they have power but choose a society that benefits men disproportionately, objectively speaking. This post analyzes this possibility.

A short, simple observation: When nations have engaged in major wars, the young men who are forced to serve in the military, suffer extreme hardship and often die have not felt like the world was designed for their benefit.

Next, let's drop into the world of "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan, published in 1963. She described the genuine distress of many American housewives, who were expected to limit their horizons to being wives and mothers. It's certainly true that women's options were limited in that time, but so were men's options. Men were under great pressure to get promotions and raises. Those who were shunted to the sidelines and especially those who were fired suffered a great deal. Those who would have preferred to stay home, doing housework and raising children, did not have the option to do so. (Recall that one source of fierce criticism of Friedan came from women who felt very happy being wives and mothers -- this life path was satisfying to many women, so why would it not be to many men?) Yet I don't recall any books from such men complaining of their limited options. One possibility is that there were very few of them, but I propose another explanation. Women who wanted professional engagement and couldn't get it had the drive, intelligence, and articulateness to write books like Friedan's, to read them, to organize, and to change society. Men who would prefer the non-competitive world of children and housework would tend on the whole to have much less drive, organization and articulateness. Their suffering was largely silent. It's great to want to loosen gender roles so that people can choose the life they want regardless of gender -- I'm all in favor. But as long as both men and women are constrained in their choices, it's not evidence of a society designed to benefit men.

Others have pointed out that Friedan's critique was specific to middle class white American housewives. It was economic boom times, when good jobs that paid well were available to middle class white men, and many women would have liked to be doing those jobs. But let's shift to lower socioeconomic classes. I suspect that most of us would prefer to stay home with children than to work in slaughterhouses. I'm not sure coal mining, factory work, construction, lumbering, farming or fishing were so rewarding either. I doubt the men whose employment prospects were limited to such jobs would all feel that society was designed to benefit them at the expense of their wives. Nor would their wives.

So far I've been assuming the traditional model of a married heterosexual couple functioning as a single economic unit to raise children.

Let's turn to US urban poor communities as they developed in the decades after 1963. Few men could get jobs that paid well enough to support a family. Well-intentioned government policies provided financial support for single women with children, but not married women. If the government payment was more than the men could (or did) bring in, this created an incentive to dismantle the family unit, and that's what happened. Unemployed, unmarried men have lots of time on their hands and lots of life options (as long as they do not require money), but does anyone think this led them to be happy, or that the society is designed for their benefit? With the availability of contraception and abortion, women could choose that same lifestyle if they wished. But they also had the option of becoming mothers and raising children. Parenthood is a lot of hard work and drudgery, but there are also rewards. Poor urban people love their mothers above all. Father figures who came and went, not so much. Now, single motherhood in poverty may often be extremely stressful, but recall that such mothers had another option -- to remain childless. There are plenty of precedents for people who elected not to have children if they didn't feel they could support them well enough. Single fatherhood was not a realistic option for men.

Turning to today's workplace, there certainly are careers where women face discrimination. Yet, in comparison to Friedan's day, women have made their way into just about every profession in large numbers. Once again, the driven, intelligent, articulate women can tell us about the obstacles they face. What about men who would actually prefer a pink-collar job? Or a job in child care? They face serious discrimination. They tend to be less driven, articulate and intelligent, so we hear from them a lot less.

Even in today's world where both partners tend to work, there still are a large number of women whose husbands earn decent incomes who are happy choosing not to work and staying home, with or without children. They face no stigma. A man who wishes to live that life may have much more trouble finding a woman who wishes to support him, and he will face social stigma if he does.

Something of an aside: As I said, Friedan's housewives faced serious constraints on their life choices, and some were genuinely unhappy. I am reminded of the English gentry as portrayed in such TV series as "Upstairs, Downstairs" or "Downtown Abbey". They had plenty of money, their social roles prohibited them from working, and many suffered from a lack of purpose. America in 1963 had emerged from the Great Depression, middle class people were confident about the economic future, women did not have the challenge of running a frugal household, and labor-saving devices meant they really had lots of free time. Does that not parallel the situation of the British gentry to some extent?

I am still waiting to hear of the important respects in which US society is designed for the benefit of men at the expense of women. I like to think I'm always open to learning new things, but I have a hunch that in this case I will be informed of things I simply hadn't considered.