gender: history

Something I read in another blog sent me digging into the statistics on homicide between husbands and wives or other “intimates.” I remembered from my days in the crim biz that the US was unique in that wives here killed their husbands almost as frequently as husbands killed wives. This statistic, the “spousal rate of killing” (SROK), was introduced in a now-classic 1992 article by Margo Wilson and Martin Daly. In most countries, that rate is 25-30%. In the US, Wilson and Daly pointed out, it was about 75%.

But something has happened, over the last thirty years or so (data here). And as far as I can tell from a quick search on the Internet, nobody seems to have noticed.

(Click on the graph for a larger view.)

Between 1976 and 2005, the number of women killed by their male partners decreased by about 25%, less than the decrease in all homicides nationwide. But the number of men killed by women dropped dramatically, from 1300 to 330, a 75% decrease (since the population increased in those three decades, the change in rates is probably even greater. The SROK fell from 82% to 28%.

My Internet search for explanations was cursory at best, but it turned up nothing. I have only two ideas:

1. Men Behaving Better. Men have stopped doing those things that made women want to kill them.

I offered this explanation to two women in the Justice Studies department here. They rejected it out of hand and without comment. (Maybe they didn’t like the blaming-the-victim assumption: if women kill men, it’s because of what men do. Or maybe they were using a convenience sample of anecdotal data on men’s behavior.). One of these women, Lisa Anne Zilney, offered a counter-explanation . . .

2. Women Having Options. Women’s shelters and other facilities have given women an alternative. Without these, the only way to escape an intolerable situation at home was to get rid of the cause. Providing abused and desperate women a safe place to go saves lives – and apparently not just the lives of women.

I’m not wild about either of these explanations for the steep decline in the SROK (and as I recall, Wilson and Daly weren’t wild about any of their explanations of why it was so high).

Any ideas?

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Thanks Jay!  Read his other guest post: When grown men loved teddy bears.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

We’ve offered many examples of companies co-opting feminism in order to sell products.  In the video below, we see that the co-optation of feminism is nothing new:

(At Vintage Videosift.)

Actually, I shouldn’t be so flippant.  Inventions like the washing machine did, indeed, save women a great deal of time and effort.  From what I understand, however, as women’s cleaning became more efficient, standards of cleanliness rose.  So even as time-saving devices were introduced, the time women spent cleaning did not substantially change.  I’d love to hear more from scholars who have a better handle on this history.

Here’s another step in the trajectory, this one from 1971, also about cleaning appliances (found here):

Text:

The American Appliance Industry has always championed women’s liberation.

There was a time when women washed clothes by hand in water carried from a well…

…shapped every day because there was no way to refigerate food…

..tried to keep house with just a broom…

…made clothes without a sewing machine!

It’s obvious.  America’s appliances have freed women from the oppression of endlessly dull, backbreaking work.  They’ve helped liberate the American woman to enjoy a more stimulating, more interesting life…

In or out of the home.

Women who seek successful careers in the arts, sciences, business, industry, education, or the professions are finding themselves.

It’s all part of America’s new freedom of preference.  And Republican Steel Corporation, a leading supplier of steels to the appliance industry, is proud to be a part of it.

Visit your nearest appliance dealer and you’ll see hundreds of our modern steels — intricately shaped and beautifully finished in the world’s finest consumer appliances.

Like to help liberate the women in your life from some hard work and drudgery?

Buy her one of the new convenience appliances this weekend.

Or maybe a whole houseful.

Notice that women’s liberation DOES NOT involve men sharing housework responsibilities, but men replacing women’s labor with tools he purchases for her.  Ultimately, even if she has a “successful career” in “the professions,” it is her responsibility to make sure that the housework is completed (and apparently still wouldn’t be able to buy herself one of these machines).

For contemporary examples, see these posts on make up (here and here), botox, cigarettes (here and here), right-hand diamond rings, cooking and cleaning products, fashion, and other miscellaneous products (here, here, and here).

These clothing ads from 1928, featured on Jezebel, portray an ideal female form that is wildly different than the one we have today.  Note the straight lines (no hips or boobs) and very short hair cuts:

I also like how the first image reads “Summer 1928 Apparel.”   Seasonal fashion, it appears, is nothing new.

Laura W. sent us a link to a review of sex education in the U.K. that featured a three minute video. The video is a clip from a 1917 film, called “Whatsoever a Man Soweth,” encouraging Canadian soldiers to refrain from having sex with prostitutes. It was important for states to keep their soldiers from hiring prostitutes because soldiers filled up the sick bay with sexually transmitted infections that, during World War I, were not easily cured with antibiotics. Watch it here.

Also in soldiers and STIs: “Bad” women as disease vectors.

This week in the New York Times, Catherine Rampell explained how the recession was affecting the ratio of female to male workers:

The proportion of women who are working has changed very little since the recession started. But a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men, who are heavily represented in distressed industries like manufacturing and construction. Women tend to be employed in areas like education and health care, which are less sensitive to economic ups and downs, and in jobs that allow more time for child care and other domestic work.

Here are the results:

Excluding farm workers and the self-employed, women held 49 percent of the nation’s jobs as of November. Including farm workers and the self-employed, women held 47 percent of jobs.

But, Rampell reminds us:

Women may be safer in their jobs, but tend to find it harder to support a family… Women are much more likely to be in part-time jobs without health insurance or unemployment insurance. Even in full-time jobs, women earn 80 cents for each dollar of their male counterparts’ income…

If the recession continues as it has, the U.S. workforce may soon be majority female.

See also this post on job segregation.

In From Motherhood to Citizenship, Nitza Berkovich traces a global shift.  Sometime during the 20th century, nation-states became convinced that women could boost national economies and foster development.  Accordingly, states began thinking of their women as potential productive workers instead of reproductive mothers.  It was this economic argument, not necessarily a feminist one, that led to women’s incorporation into the public sphere as citizens (workers, voters, etc).

I was reminded of Berkovitch’s book by a short video sent in by Fran.  The video, produced by a non-profit called Girl Effect*, argues that if you get girls into school and give them cows, the world will be a better place.  As Fran puts it:  “Apparently, girls are only worth supporting if they improve the economy!” Here is an image from the website:

“Girl Effect” is defined as:

The powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.

The logic is not that girls deserve education or the opportunity to sustain their livelihoods (a feminist argument); the logic is that we should invest in girls because it is good for the world (a global improvement or humanist argument or something).  I’m not arguing that the former is better or worse than the latter, only pointing out that it’s interesting that feminist initiatives (helping girls) can be supported with non-feminist logics.

The video:

*  As an aside, I always think it’s interesting when and how people choose to use the word “girl” as opposed to “woman.”  In this case, I suspect the activists think girls are more sympathetic than women.  Kids always pull at the heart purse strings moreso than adults.  I suppose this is because we ascribe to children a sort of innocence.  That, in itself (though socially constructed), doesn’t seem troublesome… but, if we can give the benefit of the doubt, we can also take it away.  I always wonder, for example: When do boys growing up in poverty transition from innocent victims of circumstance to potential criminals?  When do their sisters transition to welfare queens?  When do we decide to retract our generous offering of benevolence and replace it with malevolence?  These are just things I wonder.

In Something from the Oven, Laura Shapiro explains that, after WWII, the U.S. government made a huge push to get women out of jobs and back into the kitchen. So much for Rosie the Riveter.

Part of the propaganda involved a return to time-consuming home cooked meals. But this propanganda was up against a contradictory need of food-related companies to market to the general public the advances they had made during the war in non-perishable and pre-cooked and packaged food.  So, on the one hand, women were encouraged to spend all day on a roast and, on the other hand, they were encouraged to take advantage of new food technologies. 

This ad, from the 1940s, incites women to take advantage of Campbell’s pre-made soup:

Text:

“WOULDN’T I BE SILLY TO MAKE IT MYSELF?”

“Go to all that bother.. when Campbell’s is so homey and nourishing?  Not me!”

“When I was a little girl I remember we always made our own vegetable soup.  Mother used to devote just hours to to it. But one day when she was rushed, she tried Campbell’s Vegetable Soup.  My dad’s not so easy to please, but he ate a bowlful, and then another.  Since the Mother has served Campbell’s… and Dad’s been as pleased as a kid!

“I’m married now myself and — well, we young-marrieds all feel that same way.  I mean why bothe to make vegetable soup when Campbell’s Vegetable Soup is so wonderful — a grand-tasting beef stck and all those fifteen garden vegetables.  Why, every time I serve it my husband says: ‘Gosh, daring, this is really swell!’  And what better music can a wife hear than that?  Now I ask you!”

Ad via Found in Mom’s Basement.

Naama Nagar sent in these images from a “booklet that was intended to assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees at RCA plants,” according to the National Archives, Southeast Region (found via Michael Zilberman’s history blog; sorry it’s in Hebrew):

Text:

When you supervise a woman…Make clear her part in the process or product on which she works. * Allow for her lack of familiarity with machine processes. * See that her working set-up is comfortable, safe and convenient. * Start her right by kindly and careful supervision. * Avoid horseplay or “kidding”; she may resent it. * Suggest rather than reprimand. * When she does a good job, tell her so. * Listen to and aid her in her work problems.

Text:

Finally–call on a trained woman counselor in your personnel department…to find out what women workers think and want. * To discover personal causes of poor work, absenteeism, turnover.  * To assist women workers in solving personal difficulties. * To interpret women’s attitudes and actions. * To assist in adjusting women to their jobs.

Text:

When you put a woman to work…Have a job breakdown for her job. * Consider her education, work experience and temperament in assigning her to that job. * Have the necessary equipment, tools and supplies ready for her. * Try out her capacity for and familiarity with the work. * Assign her to a shift in accordance with health, home obligations and transportation arrangements. * Place her in a group of workers with similar backgrounds and interests. * Inform her fully on health and safety rules, company policies, company objectives. * Be sure she knows the location of rest-rooms, lunch facilities, dispensaries. * Don’t change her shift too often and never without notice.

These are interesting from a gender perspective, of course, but they’re also sort of fascinating for what they tell us about changing assumptions about what the workplace is (or should be) like. While there were many problems with the World War II (and post-war) workplace, there was also a certain assumption that companies would take care of their employees to some degree in return for employees’ loyalty and hard work. This comes through in instructions such as “Assign her to a shift in accordance with health, home obligations and transportation work” and “Don’t change her shift too often and never without notice.” The idea is that workplaces, including factories, should think about their employees’ lives and how their work schedules fit in with their other obligations, as well as provide things like dispensaries. Now, I’m sure many companies didn’t actually meet these ideals, but this booklet sent out to managers at least acknowledges that they exist. Today, most workplaces don’t even pretend to aspire to such ideals. While some privileged white-collar workers may have options like flexible hours or working from home, many workers find that their hours and schedules change from week to week, making it difficult to arrange child care or work around other obligations. McDonald’s is well known for making workers sign out during slow periods during their shift to keep payroll down (workers are expected to be available, however, should business pick back up) and Wal-Mart has been sued for failing to pay overtime or for asking workers to work off the clock, again to reduce payroll costs.

So these might be useful for a discussion of work and what we expect from the worker-employer relationship. Is it simply a contractual financial exchange? Do workers and employers owe each other anything besides an hour of work and an hour of pay at the agreed-upon price? How have employers pushed concerns about schedule disruptions and payroll reductions off on workers, forcing them to accommodate the company’s needs?

Thanks, Naama!