Poli 328 Blog 5

This week in class we discussed the role of women in power, government and labour. In class, when we broke up into smaller groups we talked about the devaluation of women's labour in our previous/current workplaces. Personally, I have noticed that the service industry is female-dominated. It is very rare to see a male server; men occupy managerial positions or work in the kitchen. At my workplace, the men are not "cooks" they are "chefs". There are no male servers and we only have hostesses, not hosts. This is a common occurrence in restaurants as women are cast as caretakers and men are the providers of female necessities; whether it is for the woman herself or cooking the food for her customers. This model is also easily applicable to higher up positions. As the Seager text illustrates, it is rare to find women occupying more than 50% of seats in government. Women are rarely CEOs or other high profile positions in companies. More often than not, women are responsible for service positions, such as servers, flight attendants and cashiers. Only the very well educated women seem to climb the social ladder. Women are the "workers and breeders of the state" (Federici, pg.46) not the employers or decision-makers. Even if they did reach a position of power, motherhood could take that away. As noted in the Federici piece, there are some rather harsh constraints placed on women of child-bearing age. Nowadays the government is not so harsh as to have surveillance on women but in some fields the first signs of pregnancy can lead to a woman's termination. As discussed in class, some employers would rather hire men than women because they don't want to deal with maternity leave.
On the other hand, male labour and masculinity have been put up on a pedestal that might be starting to shake from the pressure. Society expects men to be the strong soldiers bringing home the bacon for their woman to cook. The men who don't fit that norm are seen as defective or dysfunctional. Stay at home dads are looked at with scorn despite the fact that they have their family's interests at heart. It isn't fair to say that men give up more than women do to stay at home with their children.Why is it so hard to understand that a man actually wants a relationship with his kids? My dad worked during the day and watched us at night while my mom went to work, and some of our fondest memories are of the nights dad was home. He even took parental leave when my brother and I were born. Some of our family friends have done so as well, and they have better relationships with their children. So even though women are "the breeders" according to Federici, men have a very important role in upbringing of their children. If men always have to be the strong soldier how can they be fathers too?

Seager, Joni. "The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World"
Federici, Silvia. "The Devaluation of Women's Labour"