[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Wed Nov 22 16:47:20 UTC 2006

geni wrote:
> On 11/22/06, Tony Jacobs <gtjacobs at hotmail.com> wrote:
>   
>>> From: Puppy <puppy at KillerChihuahua.com>
>>> I don't want to sound
>>> misogynistic here - certainly some men were more biased, some less, some
>>> not at all, and some were feminists. But they still didn't clean the
>>> kitchen.
>>>
>>>       
>> If a man doesn't clean the kitchen, he's not a feminist.
>>
>>     
>
> You failed to say when though. Men generally will clean kitchens but
> only when they view them as unacceptably dirty. This is I suspect the
> problem.
>   
They could have been theoretical feminists, eh?

And I worked there for almost nine years. No man ever cleaned the 
kitchen, the entire time I was there. Every so often a woman would 
mention a rotating roster, so the same people would not always be 
cleaning the kitchen - but the men always shouted it down. Once we went 
on strike - didn't clean. When the kitchen got too nasty, the men 
started going out to lunch. One said, the refrigerator in the breakroom 
is starting to smell. I said, why don't you clean it then? He said, I'm 
not the maid. I said, we don't have a maid, who do you think has been 
cleaning the kitchen? And he said, That's right, why don't you clean the 
kitchen? No lie. He was one of the worst offenders though. He belonged 
to some church which believed women should subjugate themselves to men, 
and he had a hard time taking orders from women - not me, he didn't 
report to me, but he did report to a woman. The situation worsened, and 
everyone of the men was complaining. We kept asking, why don't you clean 
it then? And one of the other men said, if we wait long enough one of 
the women will clean it. He was an avowed feminist. Right. And four 
women finally cleaned the kitchen when bigwigs from corporate were 
coming. It seems the men were right - if they waited long enough, a 
woman would do it. I went to the corporate office several times, and 
guess who was cleaning the breakroom? A woman.

I'm not claiming my experience and observation hold true everywhere, but 
there was a study a few years ago - two career households, who did most 
of the housework - and, more tellingly, what the perception was. Men 
evaluated the share of the housework they did. Women almost always 
evaluated their share as larger than their significant others did - if 
the man said 50/50, the woman would say something like 20/80, or 10/90. 
Guess what? The men did a lot less than they thought. I cannot locate 
the study but this seems similar:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2445(198111)43%3A4%3C865%3ADPWHEM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K#abstract
"in order not to cross identity tension lines, today's professional 
women are going through a process of role expansion (adding new 
responsibilities without relinquishing old ones), rather than a process 
of role redefinition "And its still true: 
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20060728/ai_n16635205.. 
Study after study bears this out. Women with careers simply do it all. 
This study found that women doctors devote just as much time to patients 
and workload as men doctors, yet devote a great deal more time to 
domestic duties: 
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1983.tb00629.x
So women with careers don't get equal support on the domestic front. And 
this carries over to work - men simply don't realize for the most part 
how much housework there is. It is done, you see. They "pitch in" and 
feel they are supporting their wife - yet when their wife does domestic 
chores, they do not view it as their wife "pitching in" and helping the 
husband. I'm not sure how much of this is societal, how much is basic 
differences. We cannot neglect the fact that it is women who bear 
children, either - even if you take the minimum off from work, your 
career suffers somewhat. If you have complications it suffers even more. 
The average woman has gaps in her work history due to children, which a 
man does not have. This helps keep the wage gap wide, and I think many 
men - subconsciously or not - feel that if they are making 80% of the 
money and the woman is making 20% of the money, then a little calculator 
in his head, buried deep, figures that he only needs to do 20% of the 
housework. A woman with the same degree and experience as a man makes 
about 77% the salary, for the same education, experience, and hours at 
work. Add in lost experience due to having a family, and the gap widens. 
These statistics are US. 

Perceptions are still off, also: a recent study shows that women are 
currently *under* estimating the amount of housework men do: 
http://www.careerjournal.com/columnists/workfamily/20050520-workfamily.html
which shows that women (on average, based on this study) believe men do 
33% of the housework, but the men actually do an average of 39% of the 
housework - but the men think they do an average of 42% of the 
housework, so they are still overestimating their contribution. The 
recent change to women underestimating the effort men put forth may be 
discouraging to men, however - it seems likely.

It is a complex situation, and I think a little off topic. I don't know 
if there is anything here which will illuminate the gender bias and/or 
gender gap which we have on Wikipedia, or give insight as to how to 
approach better balance. Does any of this cause women to value 
themselves less? Do they do "cleanup" because they're used to it? Do 
they shy away from ArbCom or B'crat because they are 
non-confrontational? due to gender differences, or societal expectations 
(Pavlovian training)? The email which started this thread talked about 
"women's subjects" such as blow dryers and curling irons, and that was 
written by a female, yes? That's horrifying to me.

I'm going off to see if Nail polish could use a "woman's touch" - heaven 
forfend I actually put any chemistry into the darn article. (yes this is 
sarcasm, I have no intention of editing Nail polish.)

-kc, who has run on enough about a social issue with no direct bearing 
on Wikipedia