What is the patriarchy?

This is patriarchy:
Bestselling DVDs, currently on amazon.co.uk

Count how many of the covers feature a woman who is not one of the following:
a) highly sexualised
b) only exists in the story because she's a wife/girlfriend/mother (ie, because of her connection to a male character)
c) chasing or obsessing over a male character, as the main part of her storyline

Then reverse the genders and count again. That's Patriarchy. And those DVD covers are effectively picked at random, because the "bestsellers" will change over time, so I haven't picked a particularly biased sample.

Cross posted. math said it a lot more clearly.

Incidentally, while I am aware of the etymology and the connotations of the word 'value', and well aware it can be used in a quasi-religious, spiritual sense or in a moral sense, I think it's pretty obvious that both the kind of religion and the kind of morality in which 'value' is used in this way are misogynistic. And I think you know that.

The normal meaning of 'value' when we're actually talking about money - as we were - is neither spiritual nor moral, and pretending it is is bloody weird for someone who calls herself a capitalist.

How much do you/did you pay the nannies who took care of your children?

How did you arrive at that figure?

And in any case, that is not valuing childcare. That is being a patronising git. Valuing childcare means paying for it. Just as valuing nursing means paying for it, or valuing kindergarten teaching means paying for it. Or working in a mine.

How could it possibly be part of the patriarchy to value childcare?

You surely know that for the human race to continue, someone has to do childcare? And you like capitalism - well, under capitalism, people do get valued and paid for what they do. Unless you know about some kind of childcare fairies who work for nothing, how do you imagine childcare is going to be carried out?

It's all very well to say what you say, to claim it's patriarchial to value childcare and we should all go out and earn loads of money instead - but what exactly do you do at the end of the day when there are still, in fact, children who need looking after?

Who exactly are you talking about, Xenia? Who are these men? Names please.

No, it's part of the "patriarchy" to try to value childcare. All those awful sexist men saying their wives at homes are saints, that there is no way they could do what she does. They put the person doing the dull unpaid stuff on a pedestal so she is conned into the view that she is sanctified because she clean sup and does his shirts and minds his 3 under 5s but it is just a con to keep her in her place and almost hypnotise her into doing his bidding.

Gah. 'We all know perfectly well jobs are not allocated a place on the pay scale according to how fascinating the largest number of people find them.'

Proofreading, btw, is exceptionally dull, except when someone makes a typo of 'islamist' for 'tiramisu' and turns a thread about dinner-party manners into hilarity.

'If childcare were anything other than low grade and dull it would be very highly paid and men would be pushing to do it.'

Fine example of circular logic there..

Different people find different things boring. I expect everyone finds some aspect of what they do boring and I hope everyone finds at least one aspect interesting.

But it's not actually the point, is it? We all know perfectly well jobs allocated a place on the pay scale according to how fascinating the largest number of people find them. If that were true I could earn millions being Jonathan Rhys Meyer's dresser or the person who has to soap down Kate Winslet after a tough day on set.

'I don't accept chidlrecare should ever be well paid. it's boring and anyone can do it just like cleaning where as most of us could not do brain surgery. Of course men will subcontract cleaning their houses and minding screaming babies for 12 hours a day to women. So do women when they have decent jobs and enough money to do that. '

How wrong can one person be in a single post?

Doing wills and real estate conveyancing is boring. Tax law is boring. Divorce law is boring. Brain surgery is boring. Teaching tap dancing or physics is boring. Anyone could do most of those, given a little training and the ability to keep one step ahead of the class, and robots can do brain surgery.

How do I know some occupation is boring? It's boring because I say it's boring.

How about stay at home dads who do it because they love spending the time with their children and doing the housework? How about the women who love doing the second shift because that gives their lives meaning? There are people out there who measure the worth of their livesd by factors other than money.

When you hire someone to look after your children, what do you look for? What factors go into your decision to hire a particular individual? Do you advertise and interview, or do you write a message and leave your number on a bus stop? What do you write as the job description to wannabe minders of your children?

Xenia we agree that childcare is NOT valued at the moment but we are arguing that it SHOULD be because of the enormous importance of children and the future generation to the nation.

So are you essentially saying that you do not value childcare at all? That kids would be pretty much OK if plonked in front of a telly all day on their own, or left to play our in the streets all the time with no guidance, few meals/clean clothes etc etc?

Xenia, LM has started a new business and presumably still gets royalty cheques, plus column writings etc. The loss of the MP's pay cheque may not be significant as she can maintain her other lines of income from anywhere in the world.

Her DH may not readily walk into a high paid role in London. Seems like a logical capitalist decision was reached as to which should move.

Riiiiight.

No, I'm sorry, wrong. Very dull work can be very highly paid. I don't know what 'low grade' means, unless it means 'low paid'. Very interesting work can be very poorly paid, for the exceedingly obvious reason that if it's great fun, you can sometimes get away with paying people to do it for the love of the job.

I repeat: who should do it, if neither women nor men?

If childcare were anything other than low grade and dull it would be very highly paid and men would be pushing to do it. It is patently obviously it is not and women always over all time periods have found others to help with loads of it from Roman women using slaves to Victorian women with servants to most women and men who earn £100k+ today.

Summerflower why can't your huisband move to b e with you? Mine did. Men move for women's careers all the time.

Louise Mensch's new husband could have moved to London and collected his new step children from school in the constituency every day, been an equal partner in a fair marriage but no it's sexism all the way particularly when he is very very much richer and old enough to be your father.

Why if you both work full time would a woman take on the whole of the "second shift"? I don't understand that.

Yes, I agree rosa, and never thought of it like that.

I also think that although brain surgery is one of those wonderful jobs that we all think of as being very moral and impressive, plenty of highly-paid jobs are rather more dubious, aren't they?

Interesting way of looking at it rosa, thanks.

The church would have to change hugely for us to do so, if it were possible.

To say that childcare should be poorly paid because it is boring and anyone can do it, unlike brain surgery, is missing the point about the work itself. Brain surgery is very important to people who have something wrong with their brain. To that end, it's quite an important job. Luckily, it's only a minority of the population who have something wrong with their brain. Childcare is very important to children. 100% of the population will experience childhood. That makes good childcare an essential requirement for society, much more important than brain surgery. I'm not sure I agree with the statement that "anyone can do it." However, if that is true, or at least if it is true that more people can do childcare than can do brain surgery then that is jolly lucky for us as we need rather a lot of it. Having established the importance of childcare, we should value it more, which in our society means financial reward.

If we sacked all the brain surgeons tomorrow, there would be some sad results but society would be essentially OK. If we sacked all the people providing childcare tomorrow, then capitalism would be in quite a bit of trouble.

Will we ever be free of patriarchy while we have an established church? It doesn't matter how many more women now have positions in the church it can't ever be anything other than a male dominated organisation that holds huge power in the running of this country.

That is terrifying, math.

If all you have experience of is British capitalism then you actually know squat about capitalism.