Is there an equivalent to emasculate for women? As I am getting to know the default male, I am finding him everywhere. Why is it that there is a word to describe the removal of maleness from a man, but the closest word in structural terms, effeminate, mostly also is used with reference to men? I am a middle- aged woman who grew up in the era of third wave feminism and I find it bewildering. Apparently, I am not alone.
In her book “Why we can’t sleep,” released earlier this year, Ada Calhoun exposes the changing experience of women in recent decades, using the lens of Generation X (birth years 1964 to 1980 according to the Pew Research Center), the cohort of women now in middle age, raised to believe in themselves as women. Daughters of women who were the only, or the first females at the proverbial table, this is the generation that grew up with the mainstream assumption that women “can have it all”. The trail had already been blazed, so to speak, by the Boomer generation; sexism had been confronted at the macro level across many fronts, marking significant milestones on the path to equal rights for women and men. Doors had been opened. As a result, as one generation flowed into the next, the notion of opportunity (women “can have it all”) seems to have turned to expectation (women “should have it all”). Unfortunately, Calhoun’s documentation of the experience of Gen X women indicates that the former is not true, rendering the latter an incomprehensible pressure.
So, getting through the door isn’t the happy ending of the story. It doesn’t mean a woman “can have it all” or that we have achieved gender equality. “Yes, women went into the workforce,” writes Calhoun, “But without any significant change to gender roles at home, to paid-leave laws, to anything that would make the shift feasible.” It is a story of gaps and gains and more gaps. The Pew Research Center reports a sharp increase in the share of mothers in the workforce (from 47% in 1975 to 73% in 2000), but also that mothers are now spending more time on childcare than in the past (25 hours per week in 2016, compared to 9 hours in 1965). According to a 2016 Harvard study, despite increasing levels of education and presence in the workforce, only 25% of Gen X women (born in 1980) can expect to earn more in their working lives than their fathers did, compared to 45% for women born in 1940.
In a 2019 lecture, Galia Golan, peace activist and Darwin Emeritus Professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, remarked that despite the efforts and achievements of feminists (herself included), “There are two levels of status, of expectation, of opportunity,” she said, “and this is pretty much still with us.” We still live in patriarchal societies. Maybe to an international and educated audience that sounds extreme (though that was her audience), but in societies everywhere structures, norms and expectations were created by men, according to their needs, their interests, their inclinations. This occurred not necessarily out of disdain or contempt, Golan commented, and was not even necessarily intended to preserve men’s power. “In many cases, these things aren’t even seen or grasped as male-shaped. For centuries they have been internalized, even by women, as natural.” Sound familiar?
It turns out that there, on the other side of the door, lurks the default male. A study published recently in the Harvard Business Review (March-April 2020) took a close look at what is really holding women back in the workplace. In their investigation of beliefs and practices at a global consulting firm, the authors found the problem was not the work/family challenge per se (though that was the perception of both women and men participating in the study), but rather “a general culture of overwork in which women were encouraged to take career-derailing accommodations to meet the demands of work and family.”
One response to this kind of situation is to “lean in”, a mantra that summons the motivation and effort of the individual woman to conquer difficult circumstances and reach the desired goal. This kind of response fails to acknowledge the presence of the default male behind the door; in fact, research shows that when people are encouraged to believe that women by their own efforts can solve the problem, they are also “more likely to believe that women are responsible for the problem – both for causing it, and for fixing it” (Harvard Business Review, July 2018). At best this is a distraction from the real causes, and at worst a source of generational guilt.
The problem is not the women, or the men, it is the male-shaped culture. It is based on the male experience, and the assumption that behind every employee is a good traditional wife. This is not a new realization – Judy Brady’s iconic 1971 essay “I want a wife” is straight to the point – but it has not led immediately to a confrontation of the default male. Instead, it has more often meant seeking support (usually by throwing money at the problem) to allow women to participate more fully in organizations generally designed by men, and there is a danger that these attitudes are seeping into the next generation. One Millennial interviewer involved in a 2014 study of work-life balance in nearly 4,000 executives concluded, “Given that leadership positions in corporations around the world are still dominated by men, I fear that it will take many organizations much longer than it should to make accommodations for women to…effectively manage their careers and personal lives.”
Research like the 2020 Harvard Business Review study show that responses such as “leaning in” and making accommodations are not sustainable. Patching things over might have worked for a while, but as the report concludes, “only by recognizing and addressing the problem as one that affects all employees will we have a chance at achieving workplace equality.”
Changing social structures, norms and expectations is not a question of wallpapering over cracks. Confronting the default male is not about emasculating or feminizing – this is a complete re-model of the room women and men now stand in together.
About the Author:
Tiffani Betts Razavi (DPhil. Oxon) is a Visiting Research Professor at the University of Maryland Bahá’í Chair for World Peace and a senior staff writer for The International Educator. Her research and writing explore people and their environments, the changing nature of work and education, and the conversations that connect observation and insight with practice.
Interesting post! I was confused by the phrase “default male” and would have found “default male-ness” closer to what I think you mean.
I have been pondering one particular aspect of our lives called ‘”the meeting” and the differential role of women and men in meetings. For example recent credible literature shows that as the percentage of women in the corporate Board room increases, the thriving of the company measued by one imperfect metric – “the bottom line” (profit) – goes up. Why should this be? I don’t think it is because, in a strict IQ sense that women are superior to men, but it’s hard to tell since a successful woman in business may be self-selected by having an IQ higher than her male peers to have maneuvered that far in a rigged system. Let’s say that women and men have equivalent IQ in the boring IQ sense. Then why is there a boost from having women on the Board. Well, obviously, something ELSE is going on.
So let’s think maybe the difference is “diversity”, that women think differently than men. For one thing they may be intrinsically more oriented to long-term, relationship-building, empathic issues. Anecdotally they are far more willing than men to say “we’re lost!” and ask directions.
But to the question of implicit structural male-defined things, I’d say classic business meetings are huge and breaking that mold is why adding women helps — or at least women who have not given up their feminine spirit in achieving status.
I suggest that women, from observtion by this male, tend to think more in groups, being willing to not take a strong stand till they hear what others have to say. Men, again from personal observation, tend to want to have a whole complete idea in hand before aggressively pushing for it to “win the meeting.”
By that thinking, it may not make sense to have “one”woman at a metting. You don’t get the benefit of how-women-think until you have, say, three of them who can interact and cross-support each other.
And in Baha’i terms, women seem to me much more akin to the role we should all have in Baha’i Consultation.
Story – when I was working on my MPH at Hopkins in 2006 smart phones were just coming out. I tried to set up a video meeting via one and discovered that the (mostly male) PhD holdig faculty at Johns Hopkins had no idea how to use such a thing. But i also noticed that youth around me seemed quite comfortable with it. In my stereotypical language — “Giggling gaggles of girls trumped PhD males at mastering this tool”.
That struck me as a profound observation, worth digging into. I think it was a valid, true observation. it has something to do with face, with being able to let go, with being able to work in a group and think in a group, with being comforable being awkward and even “silly’ safetly.
At the far other end of the spectrum I’ve worked in a hospital trying to train both (female)nurses and (male) MD’s how to use a new health records system. The females had problems convinced they could not learn such a thing, and possibly they were right because we tried to teach them one-at-a-time instead of in teams.
The MD;s on the other hand were almost impossible to teach. They absolutely refused to participate in group training where, frankly, their Godhood might be challenged by looking awkward or stupid at some device there was no reason they should be expected to know. Their egos came into the room ahead of them, and some needed wheelbarrows to move them. For them, training by singletons was the only way, groups were out.
So backk to ‘default maleness”– if meetings were designed by women, and this could be checked, i bet they would start with a lot more of what males would call “gossip” or discussion of social relationships and feelings, establishing a ‘safe’ place to talk and expose ignorance and uncertainty.
Certainly Amy Edmondon’s work at Harvard on the key role of “psychological safety” in high-reliability teams comes into play here.
The other thing Ilearned at Hopkins of relevance is that, infact, if you are doing in-service training of some cultural shift , such as ways to deal with racism or sexism or enthocentrism, that you really needed to train people AS ENTIRE TEAMS, as airlines do pilot crews.
If you train them one at a time,as soon as they get home they revert, so you can never get new ideas to stick.
note – in our course on such matters at Hopkins it was noted that something like 75% of all commercial airline “accidents” occur on the very first day that those professionals have to work together as a team, as a cockpit crew. They are all as singlets excellent pilots, but the team-ness has not yet established itself, so the TEAM makes mistakes.
And the other lesson was that it is TEAMS which can be trained to arbitrary levels of perfection, but you cannot expect INDIVIDUALS to ever be perfect. Our American education system completely teaches us that individuals must be perfect or they are junk, bad workmen, discardable, cancellable. I think the default male buys into this and is terrified to not look PERFECT in meetings. i don’t think women buy into this so much.
Anyway i’m male and probably man-splaining without realizing it so I’ll stop now, but I”d love feedback.