A comment on my last entry

"I am referring to your observation that in the bill that was passed, "98% of the jobs being created tend to be male-oriented jobs, construction, road-building, bridge-building, school-building and remodels. Very little in there for all the single moms trying to raise their families with no support from the dads!" There may very well be a problem with the design of the bill and the group - or class - of workers that appear to be the beneficiaries. I was really struck by the inference that there are jobs that are only for men (and not women) and other jobs that are (apparently)suitable for women. I sort of wonder if you really meant to say that. I guess one of my observations in terms of the current financial crisis might also be that most of the jobs you referred to are equally unsuitable for paunchy middle aged (male) bankers, mortgage or stock brokers. Possibly the problem should not be seen or articulated strictly in terms of gendered work. Setting aside, just for the sake of this discussion, consideration of what might have been better hoped for outcomes of the bill that was passed, suppose that building schools, roads and bridges really was the only important work of our nation at this time. Is there some reason I am unaware of that would prevent single moms that need jobs from working on those projects?

"Honestly, it is my sense that women's exclusion from forms of work that are considered "important" (read "men's work"), often due to the social construction of suitability, has historically been the basis for continuing a wage system that still disadvantages women in the workplace. A statistically significant wage differential persists in spite of sustained legislative efforts to eliminate it. If some work is done by men and other work is done by women then it remains relatively facile to assert that men, as workers, do stuff that is somehow harder as well as more important. Men then "deserve" to be paid more than women who do: other work.

"Clearly workers who have been involved in doing construction work will welcome the creation of new jobs in their field of work and it might even raise wages in that employment sector. There are enormous numbers of displaced workers -- not construction workers; both women and men who will likely feel that this bill has not created new jobs for them. This is not the result, primarily, of intrinsic gendering of jobs but rather a variety of factors, not least of which is class.

"Just a few thoughts."

I asked permission to post the above and the very touching response followed. Thank you, Robyn!

"Of course you may share this as you wish. My only reluctance might be that since I chose deliberately to write you privately, not in a public comment, there is not even a prefatory acknowledgment of your own certainly brave and clearly groundbreaking engagement with the issue in real life. I continue to admire you greatly for what you have done in your own life. I would be uncomfortable being critical. When it mattered you were on the right side of history. I wrote to comment largely because I thought what you said in your blog post was much at odds with that history."