June 12, 2008
Work is hard
There's a great piece over at The Atlantic (gotta love the new free access!) about the fate of working women these days.
The conclusion? While staunch feminist types think, talk, and write about all the "human flourishing" that women are kept from by staying home,
"[T]he vast majority of those who publicly talk, think, and write about questions of gender equality, motherhood, and work in modern society are people who talk, think, and write for a living. And they tend to associate with other people who, like themselves, do not have "real" jobs--professors, journalists, authors, artists, politicos, pundits, foundation program officers, think-tank scholars, and media personalities."
Most people, and not just most women, have fairly inane, repetitive, jobs. They're mostly inside, and a lot of them involve doing unpleasant tasks for other people. Exactly why this is supposed to be more liberating than the tasks that need to be done around the house is beyond me. Personally, I get far more enjoyment out of staying home than going to work, but I still go, because it's the going to work that makes any staying home possible.
The author mentions Sweden, but I think she fails to emphasize a really critical fact about that particular welfare state: Swedes are dying faster than they're being born, and the only reason the population curve isn't negative right now is that there is a slightly positive net migration (1.66 per thousand individuals). Given that the total population growth is only 1.57 per thousand, this indicates that Sweden now has more deaths than births. Despite what environmental whackos may say, this is terrible for society. It's also makes the kind of welfare state they've created completely untenable, but they'll find that out soon enough. So will we, when it comes down to it.
