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A New Female Order
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| Lebezniatnikov |
A recent article in Foreign Policy predicts that we are witnessing a global redistribution of power - not between rich and poor, but among men and women. The author points out that the two sectors of the economy most hit by the global recession are traditionally male-dominated - housing and finance. Construction jobs are melting away particularly quickly in the West, and global finance centers aren't faring any better. Wall Street is projected to lose 46,000 jobs and $70 billion by the beginning of 2010, the stock market in Dubai has already lost something like 70% of its value and Hong Kong 50%, and 25,000 jobs have been lost between Tokyo and London's main trading institutions. In the United States, 80% of those laid off since October 2008 have been men. That trend is true also in Europe, and it will likely continue.
In addition, the continuing trend among Western states to decrease relative defense spending as a proportion of total state spending is going to place emphasis on other more social segments of the economy. As defense, construction, and finance all struggle, sectors like education and health care face a resurgence of importance. Rather than explicitly targeting shovel-ready construction and infrastructure projects, a great deal of the stimulus went towards down-paying investments in health care, green technology, and education initiatives. With over 70% of health care professionals already female, the hypothesis of the article immediately becomes apparent.
The implications of this shift are many - the author terms the phenomenon "the death of macho" - but the biggest impact will be on the nuclear family, as more women become breadwinners, and more men share the burden of raising children. Another implication is empowerment - many Western countries have already turned the reigns over to females to govern - since 2008, both Lithuania and Iceland made the change, prompting newspaper headlines akin to "Iceland turns to a woman for a change."
Though the developing world is not seeing this shift on the same level, the author argues that it is one that looms on the horizon. Regimes like China purposefully craft policy that will preserve the male-dominated hegemony, but in the long run may cause more damage than anything - 90% of the Chinese stimulus package goes directly toward infrastructure projects (though it is hard to argue that China does not need them).
Any global shift is not without danger, and one outcome of global empowerment of women is obviously conflict. In fact, the article argues that future international conflict will not be ideological or civilizational, but motivated primarily by gender realignment. This author has already stated that the War on Terror represents a manifestation of the tension between states where women are empowered and ideologies that would deny them that empowerment.
It's an interesting perspective, and well worth the read:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articl..._death_of_macho |
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| secked |
| Domestic violence is up though, so no worries. :toocool: |
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| Magnetonium |
I always thought that having more women in power would be of great benefit for the world. |
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| Krypton |
| Wonder who the first female dictator will be.. |
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| Renegade |
Apparently this shift is already starting to play out, in Australia at least:
| quote: | WOMEN are the surprise winners from the changes that have flowed from the global financial crisis, with the latest jobs figures showing that female employment has been climbing at a time when male employment has been sliding.
In the first six months of this year an extra 25,800 women have found jobs at a time when the number of men with jobs has fallen by 56,400. And the extra jobs for women are not — as widely believed — part-time. Trend figures produced by the Bureau of Statistics show that the number of women employed full-time has climbed 26,500 over the course of this year while the number of men employed full-time has fallen by almost 100,000.
Asked why he thinks women should be doing well at a time when men are suffering, Melbourne Institute labour economist Mark Wooden said the male story was a "classical downturn story".
"The female story, on the other hand, is completely bizarre," he added. "The only explanation I can come up with is that the industries that are continuing to do well are those that employ women."
An examination of industry trends reveals that employment has been growing in the fields of health care, social administration and arts and recreation while shrinking in the fields of mining, manufacturing and real estate, lending weight to Professor Wooden's suspicions. |
http://www.theage.com.au/national/w...90709-dep7.html
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
Wonder who the first female dictator will be.. |
Already been a few if you count queens. This is the kind of thing we can probably expect to see:
| quote: | | Catherine, throughout her long reign, took many lovers, often elevating them to high positions for as long as they held her interest, and then pensioning them off with large estates and gifts of serfs. After her affair with her lover and capable adviser Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin ended in 1776, he would allegedly select a candidate-lover for her who had both the physical beauty as well as the mental faculties to hold Catherine's interest (such as Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov). Some of these men loved her in return, and she always showed generosity towards her lovers, even after the end of an affair. One of her lovers, Zavadovsky, received 50,000 rubles, a pension of 5,000 rubles, and 4,000 peasants in the Ukraine after she dismissed him.[5] The last of her lovers, Prince Zubov, 40 years her junior, proved the most capricious and extravagant of them all. |
| quote: | | Several stories about the circumstances of her death at the age of 67 probably originated soon after. A common story states that she died as a result of her voracious sexual appetite while attempting sexual intercourse with a stallion - the story holds that the harness broke and she was crushed. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_great
(j/k - we really do need more chicks in power.) |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by secked
Domestic violence is up though, so no worries. :toocool: |
That's actually included in the article as well - men who put particularly important stock in their "macho" identity will increasingly backlash against the changing norm. The hypothesis is that there will be two categories of men - those that can adapt to a world in which women have a larger stake of control, and those that will be bitter about the relative decline of "manly" characteristics as positive. That latter group may have a high propensity for violence to maintain the status quo, just as those who weren't able to relinquish the empowered status of whites had in the civil rights movement here in the US. |
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| Arbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
A recent article in Foreign Policy predicts that we are witnessing a global redistribution of power - not between rich and poor, but among men and women. |
I think this sentence perfectly illustrates the most immediately apparent flaw in the article's reasoning. Power is largely consolidated in the hands of the few, and those few are generally not rank-and-file workers in any industry.
Thus, there is no reason to expect that the distributon of power will track shifting employment trends. Just how much power does the author think those laid off construction workers really had as a result of their employment? I won't say it's "none," but at best it's on the scale of moving a few pebbles around when the real issue is plate tectonics.
That is not to say that I don't expect to see women making gains in power, but that trend is not new, and I do not expect that it will be substantially affected by more women working in mediocre jobs and supporting families rather than men working mediocre jobs and supporting their families. |
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| Kapedano |
| quote: | Originally posted by Krypton
Wonder who the first female dictator will be.. |
Your wife. |
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| Kapedano |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
I always thought that having more women in power would be of great benefit for the world. |
What makes you think that it will be a good thing? |
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| Lemonad |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
I always thought that having more women in power would be of great benefit for the world. |
Get the fark outta here!
Have you ever had a female boss? Quite different to their male counterparts.
Everything is taken personally. |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lemonad
Get the fark outta here!
Have you ever had a female boss? Quite different to their male counterparts.
Everything is taken personally. |
...and there would be intense negotiations every 28 days... |
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| Q5echo |
give'em whatever they want. all of it.
trust me, after a while they won't want it anymore. |
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