When I read quant papers on labour markets or intimate partner violence, I’m sometimes puzzled. Very few scholars are talking about the elephant in the room: Status. A quintessential feature of patriarchy is that men are revered as high status. They are knowledgeable authorities, speaking words of wisdom and deserving of deference. Women, meanwhile, are low status. Even though women always made important contributions to household survival and social reproduction, their work was devalued.
I love how you present things very simply, in the form of stylized facts that are so stark, simple and coherent that they can't really be argued with. Thanks for this piece!!
Useful article and some very interesting examples. We have found similar stories in work we have done in Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Indonesia and PNG (that last one is a special case, and not in a good way). It’s interesting that in the Philippines, where gender equality has made good progress, male-centric gender norms still predominate. The status there is a bit different from your examples : men are very happy to see women in high status positions, as long as their social/cultural status remains subordinate to men. (I’m over-simplifying, of course).
When working with rural communities we often do time-studies, whereby men and women keep a timesheet for a few days. We then get together and share the results. In West Papua, we found out that women are full time busy between about 5am to 11pm (often more than this, as “getting up in night to feed baby, douse fire, shoo away dog etc.” are all apparently activities barely worth mentioning!). Meanwhile, men struggled to account for more than about 6 hours of their day. Unlike your example, men regarded “sitting about” (nongkrong) as a meritorious activity, because that’s where “important stuff” gets discussed. What stuff? Well, er, football, outboard motors and hunting.
What was interesting was that the men in no way denigrated the work of the women in household reproduction. On the contrary, they absolutely admitted that the women are doing the more important work, and a lot more of it than men. But their view was: that’s the way it should be! Women do work that is regarded as highly important, yet (as you explain well) lower status than sitting around smoking and reviewing the starting line up for FC Persipura’s next match.
Although the workshop session of revealing the time sheets was superficially good humoured, and the men were a bit shamefaced (and they admitted to learning more about the secret world of women), there was an edge to it: the women were seething.
Thanks for the link (I don’t have institutional access, but the abstract is informative). My wife is a GEDSI adviser for DFAT (she led DAFT’s women’s empowerment program in Indonesia), so has been trying to bring these sorts of insights into DFAT programming. By the way, did you look at Sihanoukville at all? Some rather troubling stuff happening there, but some donors seem a bit bedazzled by the private-sector led ‘smart city’ veneer.
As for publishing our findings, that’s what we intended to do on our new blog. We chose Ghost instead of Substack. We’ve been gathering interesting stuff for about 20 years, and because donors don’t cover our costs to write about it, we generally don’t. That’s now going to change, and we are going to work with our local partners so they can publish too.
I love reading your posts. They always keep me thinking - Why have this gender and status differences been in play for so long? They seem SO utterly unfair and they don't generate happiness for either men or women. But if we agree that both women and men are equally intelligent beings, there must be a reason for the system's survival. What benefit did women use to get out of this?
I see it from the pov that when these believes have proven outdated or innecessary, women (and men) have quickly fought and adapted their believes against them. For instance, in the West, the evolution of feminism, voting rights, change of laws and social mores, equality as the social goal, etc. This has been in the works in the last 200 years - very fast when compared to the millennia of accepted, ongoing discrimination.
I wonder if the system of status and gender discrimination was ultimately beneficial for both men and women, for society as a whole - however unfair and absurd it may seem. And when social, economic, production neesd change, societies must adapt (such as in the West) or die (arguably, what is happening in South Korea).
Interesting points. I also wonder what evolutionary advantage there must be to this pervasive system of male domination. As for the benefit to women, we exchange freedom for protection, basically, is my take. Nature is cruel and unfair, and women are much weaker physically. The tricky thing is that we are just as smart, mentally strong and capable as men, but have to pretend we're not in order to please and placate our protectors. Women have to be smart and capable to protect and provide for children when men are off hunting or fighting, and when they don't come back which was often. The children of strong and smart women have much better odds. Unfortunately the knowledge of our servitude is the price we pay for our our intelligence, and there's nothing fair about it. Eve's bite of the apple. Technology, birth control and guns level the playing field, but our instincts are still primal. We can civilize our natures, but we deny them at our peril.
Agreed that "we exchange freedom for protection" particularly in the first year after childbirth when a woman is especially vulnerable and extremely busy and thus unable to provide for all of her material needs on her own. As you say "We can civilize our natures, but we deny them at our peril." Following on that point... I think it's important to consider that the relationship between divorce and the woman making more is likely not just driven by the desires of the male partner. Women also tend to prefer men who are higher status than they are, and when a woman has increased her status while in the relationship she may ask herself if she can do better. Obviously this is not the case in the examples Alice gives where women are being intimidated through the use of violence into remaining in low status roles, in those cases it really is about the need for the man to feel higher status. But high status, wealthy western women, who should rationally care the least about the status and wealth of their partner since they already have enough, tend to want even higher status and even wealthier men.
"A quintessential feature of patriarchy is that men are revered as high status. They are knowledgeable authorities, speaking words of wisdom and deserving of deference."
Interesting definition. I don't know about non-Western countries, but for the Western world this is simply false.
Regarding the "words of wisdom" aspect, there is a commonly-repeated lie that people stereotype men as smarter than women, but actually asking people reveals it's the opposite – in surveys, Americans are more likely to say women are more intelligent, and this has been the case *since the 1970s* (see Eagly's meta-analysis: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-amp0000494.pdf). Most readers of this blog have lived all their lives in a world were women are considered more intelligent. Accordingly, it's a common trope in cultural items to portray women as wiser (TVtropes have an endless list of examples).
The people considered "the most knowledgeable authorities" are often men, but that's a tiny number of men in the tiny bubble of the high-cultural-capital class. It's like saying, "most lottery winners are lower-class, therefore lower-class people are rich". This erases most of the men our society. The most male-dominated jobs are extremely *low* status – truck drivers, plumbers, construction workers, coal miners. The gender balance of these jobs is much more male-skewed than any comfortable high-status upper class job like software engineer, lawyer or doctor. Needless to say, these heavily male-dominated jobs also have an over-representation of lower-class people and ethnic minorities, which goes to say how low-status they must be.
I'm afraid the belief that men occupy higher-status positions is the product of living in a dominant-class bubble were everybody is a researcher, CEO or lawyer. In other words, this is a Barbie-world belief. The illustration above from M. H. Akbari is ironically relevant: sewage disposal workers are ~96% male, have no prestige, have a 7-years shorter life expectancy than average, and they are literally hidden under the ground. You just flush the toilet and go back to tweeting about how women's work is devaluated, and completely forget that, under your feet, a working sewage system takes care of your shit, and this system is almost entirely operated by men. These men don't enjoy high status, reverence or deference. They certainly don't get to introduce themselves as "Dr" (remember, 56% of the people who are given this nobility title are women).
In fact, most men are *so low status* that they are simply invisible to feminist intellectuals, who only see Presidents and Nobel laureates. This can create the illusion that the Western world could be called a patriarchy, while it clearly doesn't fit the definition above. Maybe Zambia is, but not the Western world.
Even among coal miners, sewage disposal workers, and construction workers, you’d still see a replicable dynamic between the low status men and low status women. Ex: the Jenson v. Eveleth Mines case. The gender hierarchy always remains along class lines. I think that was the point of her including the “tea squad” dynamic among East Asian business people. It seems like Westerners have an anxiety about resembling other cultures when it comes to this universal reality. It’s interesting to notice from time to time.
I thought this was very clear, very convincing and also insightful, as in having the potential to inspire future action (let's face it, a lot of stuff doesn't!).
It would be very interesting to explore specific mechanisms which raised female status in more egalitarian societies, and particularly if there are identifiable factors other than wealth/ income.
I love how you present things very simply, in the form of stylized facts that are so stark, simple and coherent that they can't really be argued with. Thanks for this piece!!
Thank you Beatrice. That's really kind and means a lot to me.
Useful article and some very interesting examples. We have found similar stories in work we have done in Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Indonesia and PNG (that last one is a special case, and not in a good way). It’s interesting that in the Philippines, where gender equality has made good progress, male-centric gender norms still predominate. The status there is a bit different from your examples : men are very happy to see women in high status positions, as long as their social/cultural status remains subordinate to men. (I’m over-simplifying, of course).
When working with rural communities we often do time-studies, whereby men and women keep a timesheet for a few days. We then get together and share the results. In West Papua, we found out that women are full time busy between about 5am to 11pm (often more than this, as “getting up in night to feed baby, douse fire, shoo away dog etc.” are all apparently activities barely worth mentioning!). Meanwhile, men struggled to account for more than about 6 hours of their day. Unlike your example, men regarded “sitting about” (nongkrong) as a meritorious activity, because that’s where “important stuff” gets discussed. What stuff? Well, er, football, outboard motors and hunting.
What was interesting was that the men in no way denigrated the work of the women in household reproduction. On the contrary, they absolutely admitted that the women are doing the more important work, and a lot more of it than men. But their view was: that’s the way it should be! Women do work that is regarded as highly important, yet (as you explain well) lower status than sitting around smoking and reviewing the starting line up for FC Persipura’s next match.
Although the workshop session of revealing the time sheets was superficially good humoured, and the men were a bit shamefaced (and they admitted to learning more about the secret world of women), there was an edge to it: the women were seething.
Can you share a link to a research report, please Dominic?
Yes, I did 3 months fieldwork in Cambodia, and wrote a paper about men gathering at the cafe, discussing important stuff: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891243219865510
Thanks for the link (I don’t have institutional access, but the abstract is informative). My wife is a GEDSI adviser for DFAT (she led DAFT’s women’s empowerment program in Indonesia), so has been trying to bring these sorts of insights into DFAT programming. By the way, did you look at Sihanoukville at all? Some rather troubling stuff happening there, but some donors seem a bit bedazzled by the private-sector led ‘smart city’ veneer.
As for publishing our findings, that’s what we intended to do on our new blog. We chose Ghost instead of Substack. We’ve been gathering interesting stuff for about 20 years, and because donors don’t cover our costs to write about it, we generally don’t. That’s now going to change, and we are going to work with our local partners so they can publish too.
I love reading your posts. They always keep me thinking - Why have this gender and status differences been in play for so long? They seem SO utterly unfair and they don't generate happiness for either men or women. But if we agree that both women and men are equally intelligent beings, there must be a reason for the system's survival. What benefit did women use to get out of this?
I see it from the pov that when these believes have proven outdated or innecessary, women (and men) have quickly fought and adapted their believes against them. For instance, in the West, the evolution of feminism, voting rights, change of laws and social mores, equality as the social goal, etc. This has been in the works in the last 200 years - very fast when compared to the millennia of accepted, ongoing discrimination.
I wonder if the system of status and gender discrimination was ultimately beneficial for both men and women, for society as a whole - however unfair and absurd it may seem. And when social, economic, production neesd change, societies must adapt (such as in the West) or die (arguably, what is happening in South Korea).
What do you think?
Thank you!!
Interesting points. I also wonder what evolutionary advantage there must be to this pervasive system of male domination. As for the benefit to women, we exchange freedom for protection, basically, is my take. Nature is cruel and unfair, and women are much weaker physically. The tricky thing is that we are just as smart, mentally strong and capable as men, but have to pretend we're not in order to please and placate our protectors. Women have to be smart and capable to protect and provide for children when men are off hunting or fighting, and when they don't come back which was often. The children of strong and smart women have much better odds. Unfortunately the knowledge of our servitude is the price we pay for our our intelligence, and there's nothing fair about it. Eve's bite of the apple. Technology, birth control and guns level the playing field, but our instincts are still primal. We can civilize our natures, but we deny them at our peril.
Agreed that "we exchange freedom for protection" particularly in the first year after childbirth when a woman is especially vulnerable and extremely busy and thus unable to provide for all of her material needs on her own. As you say "We can civilize our natures, but we deny them at our peril." Following on that point... I think it's important to consider that the relationship between divorce and the woman making more is likely not just driven by the desires of the male partner. Women also tend to prefer men who are higher status than they are, and when a woman has increased her status while in the relationship she may ask herself if she can do better. Obviously this is not the case in the examples Alice gives where women are being intimidated through the use of violence into remaining in low status roles, in those cases it really is about the need for the man to feel higher status. But high status, wealthy western women, who should rationally care the least about the status and wealth of their partner since they already have enough, tend to want even higher status and even wealthier men.
It's amazing what humans will do for status!
Good points, which I didn't see before commenting below!
I would be interested in whether those advances were due to factors that we can isolate from just wealth/ income.
"A quintessential feature of patriarchy is that men are revered as high status. They are knowledgeable authorities, speaking words of wisdom and deserving of deference."
Interesting definition. I don't know about non-Western countries, but for the Western world this is simply false.
Regarding the "words of wisdom" aspect, there is a commonly-repeated lie that people stereotype men as smarter than women, but actually asking people reveals it's the opposite – in surveys, Americans are more likely to say women are more intelligent, and this has been the case *since the 1970s* (see Eagly's meta-analysis: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-amp0000494.pdf). Most readers of this blog have lived all their lives in a world were women are considered more intelligent. Accordingly, it's a common trope in cultural items to portray women as wiser (TVtropes have an endless list of examples).
The people considered "the most knowledgeable authorities" are often men, but that's a tiny number of men in the tiny bubble of the high-cultural-capital class. It's like saying, "most lottery winners are lower-class, therefore lower-class people are rich". This erases most of the men our society. The most male-dominated jobs are extremely *low* status – truck drivers, plumbers, construction workers, coal miners. The gender balance of these jobs is much more male-skewed than any comfortable high-status upper class job like software engineer, lawyer or doctor. Needless to say, these heavily male-dominated jobs also have an over-representation of lower-class people and ethnic minorities, which goes to say how low-status they must be.
I'm afraid the belief that men occupy higher-status positions is the product of living in a dominant-class bubble were everybody is a researcher, CEO or lawyer. In other words, this is a Barbie-world belief. The illustration above from M. H. Akbari is ironically relevant: sewage disposal workers are ~96% male, have no prestige, have a 7-years shorter life expectancy than average, and they are literally hidden under the ground. You just flush the toilet and go back to tweeting about how women's work is devaluated, and completely forget that, under your feet, a working sewage system takes care of your shit, and this system is almost entirely operated by men. These men don't enjoy high status, reverence or deference. They certainly don't get to introduce themselves as "Dr" (remember, 56% of the people who are given this nobility title are women).
In fact, most men are *so low status* that they are simply invisible to feminist intellectuals, who only see Presidents and Nobel laureates. This can create the illusion that the Western world could be called a patriarchy, while it clearly doesn't fit the definition above. Maybe Zambia is, but not the Western world.
Even among coal miners, sewage disposal workers, and construction workers, you’d still see a replicable dynamic between the low status men and low status women. Ex: the Jenson v. Eveleth Mines case. The gender hierarchy always remains along class lines. I think that was the point of her including the “tea squad” dynamic among East Asian business people. It seems like Westerners have an anxiety about resembling other cultures when it comes to this universal reality. It’s interesting to notice from time to time.
I have found that whenever someone leads with “we need to talk” what follows is a one way communication. I think I’ll pass.
I thought this was very clear, very convincing and also insightful, as in having the potential to inspire future action (let's face it, a lot of stuff doesn't!).
It would be very interesting to explore specific mechanisms which raised female status in more egalitarian societies, and particularly if there are identifiable factors other than wealth/ income.