Marc Sobel sent in this IBM memo from 1951 that announces a “temporary modification” of corporate policy to allow married women to work at the company:
This is the type of thing that often turns out to be a hoax so I spent some time searching, but I can’t find any evidence that it isn’t authentic.
Also see: reasons not to hire women and if you don’t fire women, men have to be bums.
Sanguinity sent in an interesting, if disheartening, report by Insight Center for Community Economic Development. The report looks at the assets owned by women of color and the wealth gap between them and men of different racial/ethnic groups.
An overview of wealth (the value of all assets minus the value of debts) broken down by race/ethnicity and type of household:
Of course, the most striking finding there are the major disparities by race, particularly how much wealth White non-Hispanics have compared to all other groups (largely due to owning more valuable homes). Notice that single White men and women have higher median household wealth than married Black or Hispanic couples. This is astounding.
Blacks and Hispanics are more likely than Whites to have no wealth at all, or to have debts outweigh all assets; again, unmarried Whites are better off in this regard than are married Blacks and Hispanics:
Among single parents, women appear to bear a disproportionate amount of the financial hardships of caring for children. White single mothers with children of any age (second column) have only 57% as much wealth as White single fathers; the equivalent ratio for Blacks is 0.4% and for Hispanics, 5%. Read that again: 0.4% and 5% as much wealth as single fathers from the same race! And take a look at the actual cash value: median wealth for Black women is $100, and for Hispanic women, it’s $120!
But then look at that third column! If you’re a single mother and have children under the age of 18 — who are more likely to be living with you than with their father — your financial picture is pretty dismal. Black and Hispanic women with children under age 18 have a median wealth of zero, meaning half have no wealth at all or owe more than all their assets combined are worth. Even White women, who are absolutely wealthy by comparison, have only 14% as much wealth as White single fathers with children under age 18.
Thinking about the implications of those numbers — the very meager financial resources available to many families, the particularly difficult situation of single mothers of all races, what this means for a family’s ability to cope with a crisis such as a car breaking down or a medical emergency, the ability to come up with deposits for an apartment — is mind-blowing.
The report has quite a bit of other information too, so if you’re interested in this topic, go check it out.
Dan S. alerted us to an image, purportedly of an article from the May 13, 1955, episode of Housekeeping Monthly. In it there is a photo of a woman bending over an oven with a list of tips for being a good wife, such as “a good wife always knows her place.” We’ve gotten this image before and never posted on it, much like the list on “How to Be a Good Wife,” attributed around the web to a “1950s home economics textbook.”
So why haven’t we posted the image before? Because it’s a fake. According to Snopes, the list was circulating widely on its own long before it suddenly appeared with the damning image…which is a completely unrelated image from a cover of John Bull magazine (not Housekeeping Monthly) that appeared in 1957, not 1955. Notice the text along the upper right corner of the image–it says “Advertising Archives.” According to Snopes, no one has ever turned up the economics textbook the “How to Be a Good Wife” list supposedly comes from, either.
So what gives? Why do these hoax 1950s-era images/lists keep appearing? I think Snopes makes an interesting case:
It has become fashionable to portray outdated societal behaviors and attitudes — ones we now consider desperately wrongheaded — to be worse than they really were as a way of making a point about how much we’ve improved. When we despair over the human condition and feel the need for a little pat on the back, a few startling comparisons between us modern enlightened folks and those terrible neanderthals of yesteryear give us that. We go away from such readings a bit proud of how we’ve pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and with our halos a bit more brightly burnished.
The juxtaposition of wonderful modernity with a tawdry past also serves to reinforce the ‘rightness’ of current societal stances by making any other positions appear ludicrous. It reminds folks of the importance of holding on to these newer ways of thinking and to caution them against falling back into older patterns which may be more comfortable but less socially desirable. Such reinforcement works on the principle that if you won’t do a good thing just for its own sake, you’ll surely do it to avoid being laughed at and looked down upon by your peers.
A typical vessel for this sort of comparison is the fabricated or misrepresented bit of text from the “olden days,” some document that purportedly demonstrates how our ancestors endured difficult lives amidst people who once held truly despicable beliefs.
Of course, as the Snopes article goes on to discuss, all kinds of very sexist stuff existed in the ’50s, and there were home-ec textbooks, magazines, etc., that included suggestions along the lines of those listed above.
Given that, it’s not shocking that when we see images of this sort, they immediately seem authentic, and get re-posted around the web despite the sketchy aspects of their origin stories. It’s not like we’ve never posted anything on Soc Images that we later figured out was a hoax (we also get things that we hope, desperately, are hoaxes but turn out to be real).
So there’s a truth behind the general gist of these types of lists, but many of the images themselves are fakes, created to make fun of our hopelessly, and hilariously, sexist past. And given how many real examples of sexist propaganda you could find from the 1950s, it’s worth pondering we find so many fake ones, and how, for some people, they may function to delegitimate concerns about gender inequality or sexism today, because come on, ladies — look how much better we have it than our grandmas did!
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
We’ve posted many times on the way that cleaning is gendered feminine in a way that makes women ultimately responsible for housework. The Today segment embedded below, however, does not suggest that cleaning is a feminine task. Instead, it turns the tables by arguing that men are better at cleaning and that women need to learn how to “Clean Like a Man.” Ah-mazing. The second cleaning is framed as masculine, it becomes a story about men’s superiority over women.
And, of course, for men cleaning is a war (“Gather the troops,” “Establish a plan of attack,” “Plan the victory party”) and women reward themselves by drinking white wine, playing music, and watching a chick flick.
For examples of how women are responsible for the home, see help cleaning, Olympic laundry, this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, who buys for the family, liberation through quick meals, “give it to your wife,” so easy a mom can do it, men are useless, and my husband’s an ass.
See also our historical examples of the social construction of housework: husbands “help” wives by buying machines, gadgets replace slaves, feminism by whirlpool.
Hat tip to Jezebel.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Breastfeeding is widely believed to carry significant health advantages for infants and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) would like to see all mothers breastfeed their children for at least 12 months, with no supplemental food for the first six.
Breastfeeding, however, is a big job. Even if a newborn takes to breastfeeding without any problems (some mothers struggle mightily with less-than-cooperative infants), mothers must feed their children around the clock (they now recommend every two hours, 24-hours a day for newborns). If it takes a half hour to settle the baby down and fill it up, you’ve got an hour and a half before the next feeding time.
Mothers who have the privilege to stay home with their babies — for three, six, or even twelve months — then, are going to find it much easier to follow the AAP guidelines. For mothers who return to work, those who work in flexible positions that award some degree of autonomy and respect will also be more likely to continue breastfeeding. In other words, a lawyer with a private office and a work schedule under her own control can stop several times a day and express milk to bring home to her child; in contrast, a woman working the cash register at McDonald’s with a boss hovering over her doesn’t have the same autonomy or privacy and may be forced to give up breastfeeding.
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that breastfeeding rates are higher among more educated women and White and Asian women. Both of these variables tend to correlate with class privilege:
There are some interesting things, however, that don’t correlate with this class thesis. First Hispanic women are more likely to breastfeed than White women and people with less than a high school education are more likely to breastfeed, especially at six and 12 months, than people with a high school education.
I can think of some reasons why… I’ll let you discuss it in the comments.
Borrowed from Philip Cohen’s Family Inequality Blog. For more data on rates of breastfeeding, including U.S. state comparisons and changes in rates over time, see here.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Cross-posted at Jezebel.
…Good Morning America interviewed Cynthia Shackelford, who won $9 million in a lawsuit against her husband’s mistress last week. When asked what she’d like to tell cheating spouses, Shackelford puts all the blame on other women:
My main message is to all those women out there who might have their eyes on some guy that is married to not come between anybody… Lay off… It’s not good to go in there. It hurts the children. My children are devastated. I’m devastated.
Hear that ladies? Stop targeting happily married men, drugging them, and forcing them to have sex with you. Think of the children!
But wait — is it possible mistress Anne Lundquist isn’t the only one to blame for Shackelford’s divorce? A jury in North Carolina, one of only seven states to allow “alienation of affection” lawsuits, certainly thinks she’s at fault, but Allan Shackelford posted a statement (in the third person, no less!) on the Greensboro News & Record website. Note the twist at the end!
Allan Shackelford and Cynthia Shackelford had significant problems in their marriage for years, including three rounds of marital counseling that failed. Allan Shackelford had been involved in numerous affairs going back to the first two years of their marriage. Cynthia Shackelford told Allan Shackelford that she wanted to divorce him at least two years before he began a relationship with Anne Lundquist. Their marriage did not break-up because of Anne Lundquist. It ended because of the problems that Allan Shackelford and Cynthia Shackelford created for themselves. But, Cynthia Shackelford was never prepared to look in the mirror and take responsibility for her own mistakes. I know, because I am Allan Shackelford.
When asked about her husband’s statement, Shackelford said she, “Had absolutely no knowledge of any of these other affairs. We had a great marriage. He was very affectionate. We have two wonderful children. I mean, this is all a shock to me.”
What happened to Shackelford is horrible, and she probably is in shock and isn’t thinking clearly. But just because she thinks the marriage was “great” doesn’t make it so — it just means her husband was a really good liar. Sleeping with a man you know is married is a shitty thing to do, but someone needs to explain to Shackelford that her husband, not his mistress, is the one who broke a vow to be faithful.
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Wife’s $9M Message to Mistresses: ‘Lay Off’ [ABC News]
Spurned Spouse Gets Her Due [Greensboro News-Record]
Send an email to Margaret Hartmann, the author of this post, at margaret@jezebel.com.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Anna sent in another example of a brand marketing itself as for-manly-men-only. Add this one, featuring McCoy Crisps, to some of our other examples: Dockers, Klondike Bar, Alpo, Oberto beef jerky, and Ketel One.
The first thing that the McCoy Crisps Pub site requires is that you tell it what kind of shoes you’re wearing:
If you answer “incorrectly,” the website says: “No, not right. Get inside and learn how to be a real man.”
When you enter the online pub, the first thing you see is a woman that you are supposed to be disgusted by. Immediately a set of beer goggles flies up onto your face (because you wouldn’t want to look at her for more than a split second, apparently):
Then you see this (phew! that was close!):
Alongside playing darts, drinking games, and playing manly trivia, you can get tips on how to be more manly. Such as “How Not to Look Like a Girl Watching TV” and “How to Get Away with Not Ironing”:
And you can also take a manly quiz to find out how manly you are. The quiz nicely tells you exactly how you are allowed to behave and what you are allowed to like. Some examples of questions:
So being a guy means manipulating women with puppies, making fun of your brother-in-law for being a good husband and father, making women cook for you, eschewing personal grooming and healthy eating as much as possible, objectifying women, and enjoying the Pirelli company calender.
Oh, and, if you haven’t seen the Pirelli calendar, you really, really, really don’t want to click here (NSFW; trigger warning).
So there you have it: another marketing campaign that assumes that men are stupid, shallow, sexist, sport-o-holics. I don’t understand why men tolerate it.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
The Marital Bliss Bar, sent in by Chenoa A.:
The description of the candy bar at the source says:
Here’s a sweet way for “soon-to-be-married” or “brand-new” grooms to get used to the fact that they’ll have to re-learn how to calculate percentages once married….talk about new math!
So, just to be clear, the narrative is:
Guys… in marriage, women get more; getting used to it is the only way you’re going to be happy.
Turns out the data suggest otherwise. The following things are true, on average:
1. Married men are happier than unmarried men. But the opposite is true for women. Unmarried women are happier than married women.
2. Women are more likely to file for divorce than men and, after divorce, women are happier, while men are less happy.
And yet, time and again, we’re told that getting men hate the idea of getting married and are wives are such a drag (see here and here for examples).
(One of the reasons, by the way, that women are less happy in marriage is because they do a disproportionate amount of housework and childcare.)
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
