本帖最后由 123runfordream 于 2010-1-25 15:04 编辑
Women
This house believes that women in the developed world have never had it so good.
The moderator's rebuttal remarks
Jan 22nd 2010 | Adrian Wooldridge
This debate has got off to an excellent start: we thank our debaters and the many people who have contributed online. Now the debaters have laid out their starting propositions, the arguments are beginning to deepen, with serious questions asked about what success means and what it means to say that women have never had it so good.
Terry O'Neill rightly objects to the complacency implied by "never had it so good" (which is why, of course, Harold Macmillan's phrase became notorious in the first place). This complacency implies that women should call it a day rather than continue to agitate for a better deal.
She points out that even though women have lots more choices than they used to have, their choices are still more constrained than men's. They invest in their educations only to drop out of full-time work when they have children. They are granted a theoretical right to abortion only to see abortion clinics closed down.
She also points out that sexism is still more widespread than polite people recognise. Female political candidates are subjected to a level of personal scrutiny, some of it strikingly vitriolic, that men do not have to endure. I was shocked, in covering the last presidential campaign, about the sort of things that were said, in public and even more in private, about Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.
Richard Donkin starts off by sticking closely to the terms of the motion. He believes that there is no doubt that women in the developed world are better off now than they have ever been. But then—as if he were not already on dangerous enough ground as a man defending the notion—he raises the question of whether some feminists have defined success too narrowly. What about women who are more interested in motherhood than the economic rat race? His point is that women should not be prisoners of a calculus that has them constantly competing with men for quantitative equality: they need to stop for a moment, celebrate their achievements and then ask some deeper questions about where they want out of their lives.
So far the voting is going heavily in favour of the proposition. But I would suggest that people ought to bear two things in mind before voting for the motion. The first is Ms O'Neill's point about self-satisfaction. "You've never had it so good" is not simply an objective description of historical change. It is also a suggestion that you should be happy with where you are. The second is that there is some evidence that women are not better off than they used to be. I have already mentioned that living standards have been stagnating. Several studies also suggest that people are no happier than they used to be. The fact that women have conflicting choices—particularly over whether they should find fulfilment in motherhood or careers—is creating a great deal of angst. And in trying to do both things many women are bearing a burden that their mothers were spared.
The proposer's rebuttal remarks
Jan 22nd 2010 | Richard Donkin
In entering this debate we were asked to consider the proposition that women in the developed world had never had it so good. Since that is the proposition I will confine my remarks to debating that point and that point alone.
The problem with steering the debate in another direction, however much we may sympathise with the arguments and frustrations in doing so, is that it avoids discussion of the specific motion. Moreover, it removes the opportunity for women to take stock of their lives, to look around and to make some comparisons of then and now.
If we had been invited to discuss the plight of people—not just women—in the developing world, we would have needed far more than the space allotted here. But this debate is focused on women in the developed world and the general question of whether they are better off now than they have ever been.
The debate, I should add, is not seeking to determine whether women are better off than men in the workplace. As has been established, and I would not quibble with any of the evidence on women's pay, the struggle for equal pay for equal responsibilities in the workplace between men and women has a long way to run. But that is not the proposition.
The question we are here to discuss is whether women in developed countries today are better off than their mothers were. I do not think that this debate is necessarily about pay and careers but about perceptions, and self-perceptions at that. What do we mean by "never had it so good"?
Are women simply going to measure their progress in society by financial comparisons? Isn't that the sort of thing that men do? I thought women were smarter than that.
Many working women today will have had an entirely different experience of the workplace from that of their mothers, some of whom may never have held down a full-time job. Does that mean that these modern women can view themselves as better off than their mothers were?
The answer depends on the way an individual woman understands her role in society. An important consideration here must be self-fulfilment and, as Fay Weldon the novelist once said, men are irrelevant in women's considerations. "Women are happy or unhappy, fulfilled or unfulfilled, and it has nothing to do with men," said Weldon. That is harsh, but women must believe this of themselves if they are to reshape a better future than the conflict-strewn path of history carved by men.
This brings us to the nub of the debate: do women have a better opportunity today to realise their potential than they did in the past? I think the answer must be a resounding "yes".
Within western industrialised nations, at least, young women today are rarely singled out by their parents, as my wife was, and channelled into a career that, in her case, her father decided would be a "good career for a woman. When I was at school, 35 years ago, careers advice for most of my female contemporaries did not extend much beyond suggestions of teaching or filling some clerical roll. Today women get the same educational opportunities as boys without assumptions that they will be seeking to pursue a particular predestined career path.
A generation ago there were few of the safeguards in the employment system that protect women today. Sexual discrimination laws were in their infancy and equal opportunities legislation was just beginning to make a difference. Today all that has changed.
If there is modern discrimination against women in contemporary education it is probably directed at those who might want to raise a family at home. That option is no longer on the agenda for those in school or college. Women are educated today in order to fulfil an economic role in society. The traditional role of motherhood, they find, must be slotted within career breaks, then juggled in ever more complex organisational demands of combining salaried work with domestic cares.
That cannot be right. I would like to see leaders of the feminist movement fighting to restore the dignity of motherhood in our lives. Men need to be part of that struggle, directing some of their own ambitions in the direction of good parenting, so that the raising of families is accepted as something that demands equal input and that is valued in society, particularly by governments and employers.
For all the talk of growth economies, of productivity, of richer nations enjoying greater spending power than less successful neighbours, the end game of humanity is not a fistful of dollars but about relative happiness and contentment over a lifetime. Women play a unique role in that equation, always have, always will.
Keeping a family together, raising children as they should be raised, creating responsible citizens: these require values and skills common to all humanity, that transcend rich and poor countries and that should transcend the sexes. Men need to learn this lesson. Women know it innately but my fear is that in the battle for workplace equity they could lose sight of some of the defining aspects of womanhood.
Why is the caring role—whether looking after children or the elderly—perceived by some as a raw deal? Helping children to understand the world around them is one of the most rewarding experiences that life can offer, while sharing the twilight years of the elderly can be equally rewarding if we can rid ourselves of the shabby images of caring: brattish, screaming infants and incoherent oldies gathered round the TV. Care in the family need not be like that, but valuing everything in monetary terms has diminished humanity, importing elements of the production line to birth, life and death.
We can all agree there are still too few women in politics, still too few in the most senior professional and management roles. But we should always take into consideration those women who do not choose this path in life. The late Mother Teresa seemed capable of finding a proper perspective that all of us with families, not just women, could adopt. She said: "Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world."
The women's struggle, the women's movement must carry on, but women might do themselves a service if they took stock for a moment, looked around and counted their blessings as much as their victories. It is good to celebrate now and then and women deserve to celebrate for just a moment perhaps. Tomorrow there will be more work and women should embark on the rest of their journey, wherever they believe they should be heading, in the knowledge that they are second to no man. But today it is time to discover their own distinctive futures, an inclusive future for all, not the future of men.
The opposition's rebuttal remarks
Jan 22nd 2010 | Terry O'Neill
Richard Donkin makes several good points about the progress that women have made in the United States and other developed nations, and I appreciate his agreement that there is "still much work to be done". But I take issue with several of his specific arguments as well as his larger theme.
In his second paragraph, after acknowledging the transformational advancements of the vote, the pill and divorce, Mr Donkin lists a number of other prizes he claims women have won on our continuing march towards equality. Might I suggest a few trades for some of these dubious rewards? How about we exchange Chippendales dancers for freedom from domestic violence and rape? Might we also swap pedicures for an end to the relentless attacks on our reproductive rights? And let us replace retail therapy with women's rights being written into the US constitution. (We'll probably vote to keep multiple orgasms and suits with pants, thank you.)
OK, maybe Mr Donkin was just being cheeky. But really! Did women filch "relatively easy divorces when their marriages didn't work out" or did they finally win the autonomy to liberate themselves from unhappy, abusive marriages? And where Mr Donkin might see a woman raiding her soon to be ex-husband's bank account, I see the sobering reality that women generally fare worse economically than their exes do, largely because of child-care obligations and wage discrimination.
To Mr Donkin's optimism, my response is: if only. The assertion that women in power generally are met with respect, thus they "have nothing left to prove", is a gross overstatement. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have been ridiculed in the media for their appearance and supposedly unladylike drive and ambition. Pundit Tucker Carlson, for instance, has referred multiple times to being afraid of Ms Clinton because he finds her "castrating, overbearing and scary". Ask any woman politician, including the former GOP vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, and I bet she has at least one story where she saw herself portrayed through a lens that focused on her "feminine" characteristics rather than her positions or qualifications. These assessments might seem slight, but they contribute to women not being taken seriously in the workplace, in all industries and at all levels.
It was indeed cause for celebration when the prime minister of Iceland, Johanna Siguroardottir, became Europe's first openly lesbian head of government without much objection. But that hardly means that homophobia, and for that matter racism and other forms of oppression, don't continue to plague developed countries. A woman who is a lesbian, and/or a woman of colour, not to mention a woman with a disability, faces challenges that have yet to be fully dismantled.
Which brings me to my biggest beef with Mr Donkin's argument, and that is his over-arching premise that women have been given more choices than ever, and it is up to us to make the right ones. This has emerged as one of the most common rationales for why feminists should just call it a day, at least in the developed world, and stop pestering everyone with our critique of patriarchal privilege.
In reality, women's choices are severely constrained. Is it really a choice when a woman leaves an otherwise good middle management job because of relentless harassment by men unwilling to accept female leadership? Is it really a choice when a woman drops out of the workforce because her employer won't make any accommodations for her need to care for kids or other family members?
In recent years, the media have reported on the trend of women starting their own businesses, often from home. But here is the rest of the story: women are doing it because they hit the glass ceiling at work, not because of some burning desire to be entrepreneurs. Their work life might be improved in some ways, but not in others, like pay and benefits. Regardless, it can be a forced "choice".
Yes, it is entirely possible for a society to make a number of options legally available to all, while these opportunities remain effectively out of reach for many.
I can think of no better example than women's fundamental right to abortion. We are about to mark the 37th anniversary of the US Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, which recognised the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion in this country. However, huge numbers of women have no reproductive choice because the government blocks their access to funding for abortion care, which is tantamount to blocking access to services altogether. Clinics and doctors who provide abortion care dwindle as anti-abortion violence and harassment drive them away. And when they continue to care for women in need despite continued threats, heroic physicians like Dr George Tiller are murdered.
Additionally, women's right to abortion care is a perennial political football to be put into play during critical negotiations, such as the recent health-care reform debate in the United States. We might gain a sliver of health insurance reform, but we will surely lose a significant degree of abortion coverage in the process. What other right in the industrialised world is under such constant scrutiny, under such concerted attack, but the right to abortion? That it is a right only women can exercise should not be lost on us.
Lastly, I can help Mr Donkin with the patronising question of what women want. I assure him that our pretty little heads can handle a vast array of choices. But those options must be honest ones, not Catch-22s or false promises. Women want full equality, and we want the space and time to tell you what all that entails. Oh, and we want to stop being told that we never had it so good.
http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/450
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发表于 2010-1-24 09:55:14
发表于 2010-1-24 13:24:30
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