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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 38, Number 11. May 29, 1975

Veil of Tradition — The Changing Roles of Men and Women

Veil of Tradition

The Changing Roles of Men and Women.

Recently, I was given a book to read called The Changing Roles of Men and Women'. As I flipped through the book some of the headlines and illustrations captured my interest immediately. One of the first that caught my eye was a full page photo of a young apron-clad boy, up to his elbows in a sink of dishes. On the reverse side was a full page photo of another family scene, This time 'Mum' was up to her elbows in table-clearing and baby-holding. Dad, (you guessed it!) was lying, fully stretched out on the sofa and engrossed in his newspaper! Paragraph titles such as 'Data concerning the Children of Employed Women', and 'Employer Attitudes to Female Employees', drew me further into the book. Further on, another full page photo captioned 'lessons in domestic science' showed the progress of a class of seventh form boys who were learning how to dress and bath living babies! The importance of these contrasting examples struck me as being this; that women's liberation fundamentally presumes the nature of a larger problem in our society that involves not only increasing awareness of the liberation of women from role preconceptions but the liberation of men and children also, from the same.

Since it is International Women's Year, however, I will talk about a chapter in this book whose topic is one within which women have presistently been oppressed. The chapter is called 'The Positions of Men and Women in the Labour Market', and deals specifically with the data and information that has been collected in Sweden only. Many graphs scatter the pages of this chapter and are interesting in themselves. One graph on the Composition of the Swedish Labour Force indicates that the percentage of married women inside the labour force as compared with the percentage of married women outside, is much lower than the same percentage for single women. Many young women feel antagonised by the thought of marriage and child-rearing simply because, as the figures show, their chances of remaining in the labour force and perhaps pursuing interests other than those maternal and domestic, are low. The statistics on the length of weekly working hours reveal that the majority of women either married or single, work a considerably shorter week than the majority of their male counterparts.

In Sweden, the problem of role preconception, has been partly ameliorated by better than usual day care centres for children. After-school centres cater for the young school children of working parents. In 1966 there were 3000 such places in Sweden that were mostly centred around Stockholm. It is considered that this figure has quadrupled since then. Meanwhile, New Zealanders find it hard to obtain community and government finance for pre-school centres, let alone after-school centres. Attitudes need changing. Further, attitudes, once changed, are often difficult to put into practice, especially during the course of one's daily routine. Most mothers today subscribe to the attitude that their sons and daughters should be brought up equally. But it is often demonstrated that in practice this is not the case. It is often easier for a mother to permit her young son to be excused from the dishes rather than to listen to constant complaints that his schoolmates will brand him a sissy. It is often easier for a mother to make excuses for her young daughter on account of fear for her femininity when she is asked to help with repairs or in the garden. This unconscious role conditioning of young children by fearful parents is indirectly the reason why later on few girls are to be found engaging in heavy work in the labour force and why so many men are reluctant to take on traditionally female jobs such as nursing and kindergarten teaching.

Figures on unemployment demonstrate that women almost always are the most severely affected by retrenchment in the labour force. It is suggested that this is because throughout most of the labour market women have been cast in the role of manpower reserve. In Sweden in 1966, 116,000 people were 'latent job applicants'. 99,000 of these persons, or the great majority were women. In New Zealand should this situation arise and women need to apply for the unemployment benefit, it is important for married women to realise that the most they can receive weekly is only $23.00 as opposed to a married male's unemployment benefit of $45 or more!

Job opportunities open to men are often quite different to those available to women. Throughout the western world newspapers advertise employment on the basis of two separate labour markets. Few 'Situations Vacant' advertisements advertise asexually, i.e. without stressing which sex must apply. Figures for Sweden's manufacturing sector confirm the well-known belief that women usually work in the lower paid, more repetitive and generally low status jobs. The percentage of female clerical workers to male reveals this anomaly. In 1965 in Sweden 89% of women employed in the manufacturing industry were clerical workers. 3% of the men in the same industry, but only .05% of the women held managerial positions. Discriminatory company practises and discriminatory education practises are often to blame. It was discovered that employers in the manufacturing sector often apply different wage training, recruitment and promotional policies to men than women. Within the New Zealand education system boys are encouraged to take scientific and technical subjects. Opposingly girls are encouraged to concentrate on the more vague humanitarian subjects (such as English) gaining qualifications that open up fewer job opportunities later on in life. When I went to school, girls automatically went to the cooking prefabs and boys to the woodwork rooms when it was time for our few hours a week 'practical studies' class. To this day, and to my detriment as a woman, I find it difficult to find the confidence to wield hammer and nail in the most fundamental way!

DO YOU PROMISE TO: FREE OF MONETARY OR OTHER REMUNERATILON, TO HONOR, OBEY WASH, COOK, CLEAN, CHERISH, BE FAITHFUL, MEEK, WILLING, HELPFUL, QUIT, RAISE HIS CHILDREN, KEEP HIS HOUSE-TEND HIS BODILY NEEDS, ETC. ETC.

In Sweden, in the 60's people involved in the education system were well aware of this situation of role preconception. Consequently today Sweden has somewhat transformed its schooling. The central belief to motivate all change was that all students regardless of sex, or social background should enjoy equality of educational opportunity. The new aims of the Swedish education system, however, were not expected to greatly alter the anomalies between male and female job opportunity later on.

'The Changing Roles of Men and Women' was edited by Edmund Dahlstrom. By the very nature of its elaborate facts and figures it stresses the need for societal liberation as a greater answer to women's liberation. It is important for women to remember in International Women's Year 1975 that both men and women need to work together to overhaul economic systems that are sexually oppressive.

In the preface of this book Alva Myrdal wrote, 'This book should be viewed as a challenge by all who read it. Let people in other countries be prompted to pierce the veil with which convention and tradition and comfortable conformism conceal our visions for the future, a future which could be more reasonable and profitable for society, and more creative and rewarding for the men and women who inhabit it.'