Are/should male norms be the benchmark for female 'equality'? Should 'femininity' be prized too?

Yes, that's what I'm saying. When a job is perceived to be a female choice it's badly paid. But a man choosing it lends it gravitas or something. If men begin to choose that job in significant numbers it becomes better paid. Partly because men just won't work for lower wages, men demand more and get more. women can try to demand more and are often told ''you're worth what somebody is prepared to pay you'' (I was once told that, in an industry where the men at the next desks were definitely paid more).

So don't suppress your femininity and maximise your masculinity to win a race you don't want to be in. Let your feminine side speak, and then use the strengths traditionally perceived to be masculine to help you be successful.

This is what I understand anyway having read James Hollis, Maureen Murdock and Sharon Blackie.

I was a bit confused about this very question for a while OP. Not claiming to have it all figured out but hopefully I will create a life for myself that is one I actually want.

Or is it paid well because men were coming into it? I know in a company that I worked for, when a man started a family he was taken more seriously and would most likely get a pay rise (well, he had those extra expenses to meet). Women were treated somewhat differently.

So basically, it is the fact that women are naturally inclined towards a skill that then makes that skill be less valued.

So we do need to fight our corner whilst still valuing our femininity because if we don't, who will. I disagree that valuing femininity is just a way to make women embrace low paid work. why is the work low paid is the infuriating injustice.

HR is another example of something that used to be predominantly female until they introduced the need for qualifications and then it was paid well and then men came in to it.

Dorislessingscat wasn't there a similar situation before your example, they male typists and clerks were paid more than women?

Missymoo unless I missed it, you referenced one form of mating/reproductive choice. There are many different models between species. The model you describe is more appropriate to herd animals with a single male in charge. In species with low sexual dimorphism that produce few offspring (like humans), mate pairing, with both parents investing substantial time in caring and providing for the offspring, supports passing on of genes. So evolutionarily, we should expect to see men sticking around and providing for their children.

‘OP, I agree with your sentiment that femininity and domesticity need to be valued more, but we do need women in places of political and economic power. We can't leave it to the men because then you get situations like Harvey Weinstein.‘

Yes. Exactly. Imagine if all the doctors were men.

Yes that is the problem. Anything perceived to be feminine is less valued. A driver is paid more than a carer. So unskilled workers who gravitate towards what tends to suit them are are going to be rewarded to penalised for being stereotypical of their sex.

A more recent example. When MIT launched computer science courses in the 70s and 80s the graduates were predominantly women as CS was a low status degree in comparison to engineering and business. It was only when jobs such as programming and systems analysts became so well paid and prestigious did men start to flock to the course. Now women are a minority.

OP, I agree with your sentiment that femininity and domesticity need to be valued more, but we do need women in places of political and economic power. We can't leave it to the men because then you get situations like Harvey Weinstein.

‘ As PPs have pointed out, it was only after the industrial revolution, and spread of automated machinery, that women were suddenly able to perform many of the jobs that previously it had only been possible for men to do, because they required greater physical strength. ‘

I'd say it was the other way round. Take non-mechanized agriculture (working in the field) for example. This was in many cultures the work of women. Women planted, tended and harvested whilst carrying their young on their backs. Then mechanization happened and it was no longer compatible with childcare - too dangerous for children to be around heavy machinery and the work was handed over to men.

Women were far more involved in the production of goods prior to industrialization. A bakery for example would consist of a baker, his wife, apprentices and children who all worked in the business.

The industrial revolution lead to a separation of the home and work which changed women's lives forever. Men became the breadwinners and women the home-keepers.

It's just people look back on history and infer. They tend to believe that things were as they were now.

SylviaPoe

Like what?

I would be interested in this too, my impression was prior to industrialisation labour was divided fairly in the home between everybody, children included. It's not my area though and I may have it wrong.

Obviously I am talking about what is now the working class.

Chester-
I think Camille paglia is great, she speaks so much sense!
I think saying that the aspects of masculinity like aggression are because of social conditioning is only a half picture if we ignore/refute the biological basis of human behaviours.
As the article I posted shows, it's common across the animal kingdom for parental caring bias to fall on females- it ensured survival of the species, it was vitally important.
We don't have to accept biology as fate, I merely suggest it should be acknowledged.

‘ As PPs have pointed out, it was only after the industrial revolution, and spread of automated machinery, that women were suddenly able to perform many of the jobs that previously it had only been possible for men to do, because they required greater physical strength. ‘

Like what?

on brain function for example, that show women's brains more 'switched on' by people, and men's brains more switched on by things. I believe it's also true that women are innately more empathetic than men.

But the human brain spends 9 months developing in the womb and 25 years developing in society. It’s impossible to say that “female” traits are innate when women grow up with a weight of societal conditioning and expectations on them.

They look around at “successful” women and copy them to best ensure their own success.

Caring roles should be paid for by the state, not the family unit.

They are paid for currently by the state, but we need to do more to secure pensions and housing for those carers, and not become more like the USA.

But men know that society won’t judge them as harshly as women. Boys getting into a fight on a night out is “boys will be boys”, “I hope you have as good as you got” etc. They’ve seen the men in their society do the same while they were growing up. It’s a rite of passage.

Women getting drunk and lairy? Tabloid headlines screaming about the breakdown of society’s moral fabric.

No wonder you see higher levels of violence amongst men.

You’re over reaching missy. Everything that can think sometimes needs to call upon aggression. We don’t need to make up evolutionary reasons. The facts remain the same now. Men cannot reproduce unless they convince someone else to be pregnant with their kid for nine months. It is a very different psychological starting point with a high chance of not suceeding.

@SylviaPoe yes you are probably right.

Doris-
I do think it's more than conditioning. In our evolutionary past men did have to be aggressive, it had a roll to play. For example fending off other males.
If anything society conditions men out of there aggressions into civility. They drink beer and you sometimes see the primitive behaviour come back- aggressive to other males, harassing females. It's very apparent on a night out. Some men act like idiots.
They aren't conditioned to behave this way, their inebriation allows the primitively side to the forefront.

They’re really, really not as much victims.

women have free choice to specialise in careers like nursing, it requires training and skill- they aren't pushed into it they find caring rewarding.
In the police child protection, sexual offences departments have more female officers- they choose this role, not pushed into it.

You can’t be what you can’t see. And the fact that nursing is such an undervalued and underpaid role is directly related to the fact that it’s female dominated. And the reason why men are not attracted to it in the same way. Men do and can find caring rewarding, they are just conditioned to think that because they are men they are better at other things.

Men are as much victims of toxic masculinity as women. Men who aren’t aggressive or physical or sexually promiscuous are called wimps or faggots. Men who have an equal, faithful relationship with their spouse are called pussywhipped. Men who want caring roles are viewed with suspicion (must be a paedo if he wants to be a nursery nurse). Men who put their careers on hold to spend time with their young children lack ambition. Men who cry or express emotion over anything other than their team crashing out of the cup are frankly just weird.

Why is it funny? People are calculating in getting their desires met.

It’s in almost every society, not the one they happened to be raised in.