In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Economics

Gasp! Kids’ toys are… gendered?

We frequently take on cases of blatantly sexist advertising around here. This stuff tends to show up online from all over the world — well, from everywhere except perhaps Sweden, because in Sweden they have the Trade Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising (ERK). The ERK recently accused Irish airline Ryanair of sexism after they rolled out an ad-campaign featuring a Britney-Spears-style schoolgirl. A campaign which didn’t cause anyone to bat an eyelash in Ireland or the UK because what, girl-flesh being used to sell something, whoa stop the presses yawn.

Of course, they’re right that relying on traditional “sex sells” tactics is sexist, since it almost always involves putting women who meet conventional beauty standards on display to attract the male gaze. It’s just that most of us are so thoroughly inured to this tactic that our mouths would seize up from saying “sexist” too much if we tried to point out problems in advertising. It’s refreshing, but kind of surprising as well.

The ERK’s latest target is Lego, the beloved Danish company that makes billions of little interlocking plastic bricks (and my former employers, I should mention). Lego has always liked to think of itself as a fairly enlightened and progressive company, but now the ERK has accused them of sexism as well — could this cause a flare-up in the age-old Svensk-Dansk rivalry? Riots on the Oresund Bridge? Probably not. I just find inter-Scandinavian enmity amusing.

Sweden’s Trade Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising (ERK), has lambasted Lego for a recent catalogue that features the photos of the kids in their colour-coded rooms.

The girl’s picture is captioned “Everything a princess could wish for…” and features a pony, a princess and a castle. On another page, a boy is pictured playing with a fire station, fire trucks, a police station, and an airplane with the caption “Tons of blocks for slightly older boys.”

ERK has expressed concern that this type of portrayal promotes a stereotype that is degrading to boys and girls.

However, Lego has defended the catalogue, pointing out that other photos in the catalogue show boys and girls playing together.

I am shocked…. SHOCKED! — that any toy company in this day and age would depict a little girl as a princess playing with a pony in the midst of a whole lot of pink, and a boy playing with trucks and airplanes. It’s as if they think society has some kind of gender-stereotyped idea that boys and girls play with different toys! No, seriously: I’m fairly sure this comes as a surprise to nobody, not even ERK. The Swedes are correct that it’s a classic case of gender stereotyping in action, but the issue of how “boys’ play” is segregated from “girls’ play” runs a lot deeper than the thoroughly predictable mise-en-scène of this winter’s Lego catalog.

Let me tell you a little story about toy design. Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Denmark…

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“Dirty Driving”

HBO usually has a variety of great documentaries every month, and this month the one that caught my eye just happened to take place in Anderson, Indiana, a very blue collar area within an hour of my home. Anderson, like many manufacturing towns in the Midwest, is steadily heading towards the likes of Flint, Michigan: struggling, dying, devastated. But like many Midwestern areas, if you ask Anderson’s residents, they’re struggling but on the up-and-up, aiming to be positive despite the loss of jobs, staying afloat by focusing on family and other interests.

“Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana” is about the struggling Midwestern middle class and the hobbies that take the place of work and career when industry dies, in this case the individual innovation that is a forefront in Indiana’s racing culture. When the auto manufacturing plants that pumped small towns full of money up and left, they also left behind the driving culture that so infects the workers that once populated their lines. In “Dirty Driving,” laid-off workers and their car-fanatic families remove all their ambitions from job and career and put all their knowledge and passion for the industry into their junk cars to race at the Anderson Speedway, talking shit and fighting over their victories and losses as the cameras roll.

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Civics Fail?

A new report has come out showing that average American citizens scored a failing grade of 49% on a test about American history, civics and economics, and elected officials did even worse at 44%.

At first this did disturb me, based on many of the questions that the article highlights, until I looked at the test.  I took it, and scored a 75.76%.  That is, of course, significantly better than the average reported in the article.  But looking at the questions, a lot of the time I just had to ask myself “who the hell cares?”

I mean, we’re supposed to be upset that our elected officials don’t know the answers to these questions — and I personally am of the frame of mind that we should seek people to run our government who know more than most of us do — but in the end, who really cares what the Puritans believed, or what the main issue debated by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas was regarding slavery when all were important questions, or what statement Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas would all agree with?  I don’t, even if I do think they’re points of interest, nor do I particularly care whether most other people know these things.

The additional good news is that most public officials are going to be at low levels — city counsels and such.  Though these people certainly have to be smart and know a lot of things to do a competent job, I don’t think that many aspects of national history are hugely relevant to those positions.

On the other hand, I think that there are real implications to people not knowing whether it’s Congress or the president who has the power to declare war.  I’m also worried when people don’t know what the Electoral College is, let alone the basic aspects of how it works.  I think there are further implications regarding the effectiveness of our school system when so many people can’t name two of the U.S.’s World War II enemies in a multiple choice question.  And while some of the economics questions are ideologically driven, I do think that people ought to know what a profit is.

So, what do you think?  First of all, how did you do on the test? And secondly, how much do you think it matters?

An Honest McCain Campaign Slogan: Unequal Pay for Equal Work

James Surowiecki takes on equal pay in the New Yorker — and the article is well worth a read. He recounts the Ledbetter case, wherein Lily Ledbetter worked for Goodyear Tire for years, and in the mid-nineties received an anonymous note telling her that all the men at Goodyear were being paid more than she was, for doing the same work. The case went up to the Supreme Court, and the Court held that the statute of limitations on pay discrimination runs upon receipt of the first paycheck — meaning that you’d better figure out you’re being paid unequally within 180 days of being paid the first time, or you’re out of luck. But the Court did leave the door open for Congress to change the statute of limitations to make the window to sue more reasonable. Congress tried to do just that.

Republicans fillibustered until the bill was dead. John McCain also opposed the bill. In the last debate, McCain argued that the bill would have been a trial lawyer’s dream, because it would mean that they get to file more lawsuits. Well, yeah — that’s kind of the point. If people are being discriminated against, they deserve a fair amount of time to figure that out and take action. 180 days doesn’t cut it. What McCain and other Republicans did was intentionally set up roadblocks to curing pay discrimination.

In essence, they made it clear that they support unequal pay for equal work.

Does the Ledbetter bill matter? It’s true that active discrimination is rarer these days than it once was. But, contrary to what much economic work would predict, racial and sex discrimination is still a powerful force in the job market. Decades ago, the economist Gary Becker showed that “taste-based” discrimination (pure prejudice) could not survive in a truly competitive talent market, because unprejudiced companies would outperform prejudiced ones by hiring smart women and minorities. Yet the introduction of blind auditions at major symphony orchestras, starting in the seventies, has increased by fifty per cent the likelihood of female performers’ advancing—a clear sign that, for decades, orchestras had made bad talent decisions because of their prejudice without being punished. More striking, recent work by Kerwin Charles and Jonathan Guryan, of the University of Chicago, shows that, under certain reasonable conditions, market competition will not necessarily eradicate discrimination. That may be why, they suggest, the gap between black and white wages is widest in the most prejudiced parts of the U.S.—precisely what you’d expect if businessmen could discriminate and get away with it.

Of course, just because the market can’t prevent discrimination doesn’t mean the government should. And so there is a principled argument against the Ledbetter bill: namely, that Lilly Ledbetter was an adult; that if she didn’t think she was being paid fairly she was free to ask for more money or to leave; and that government interference with the idea of what constitutes fair pay is likely to cause more problems than it’s worth. Unlike the current opposition to the bill, this is an honest position to take. But it’s also, for good reasons, a profoundly unpopular one, which is why few Republicans have voiced it. Instead, opponents of the bill have acted like McCain, proclaiming their support for fair pay while doing their best to insure that workers have a hard time getting it. Maybe it’s time for them to give Americans some straight talk and unveil a new slogan: “Unequal pay for equal work.” It may not be catchy, but at least it’s honest.

Another thing to keep in mind when you go to the polls in two weeks.

House Approves the Bail-Out

Let’s hope this works.

I’m really conflicted on the bail-out scheme — asking taxpayers to patch up Wall Street’s greed is not a fair deal. The lack of oversight, and in particular the lack of regulations and controls that would prevent this from happening again, is a big problem. It means that we threw Wall Street a life raft, but we’re not doing anything to stop them from sinking it. It also strikes me as the worst aspects of socialism coupled with the worst aspects of capitalism — nationalization of private industry (along with all of its attendant inefficiencies), with taxpayers footing the bill to keep the private sector afloat.

But the plan that passed is far better than the original, and since I’m not coming up with better ideas, I’m trying not to be too critical. Of course, it’s worth noting that there are other ideas out there, and I — perhaps shockingly — agree with Larry Summers that a multi-pronged approach is the way to go. Brookings also has some interesting thoughts.

This plan is not a win for anyone, but something had to be done, and it had to be done quickly. I know there are those out there who think the government should have just let Wall Street clean up its own mess, and that’s a position that I’m theoretically sympathetic too — but not in the real world. The fact is that if Wall Street totally tanks, we’re screwed. Really, really screwed. And yes, I realize that Middle America has been getting screwed for a long time, but I’m talking more screwed. I’m talking screwed Great-Depression-style. There are levels of screwage, and the whole country is going to be taken to a whole new one if nothing is done.

But I sure don’t envy Congresspeople right now. These are uncharted waters, and this plan could be wildly successful or a massive failure; chances are it’ll be somewhere in between. But to have to make the call on something this important… I wouldn’t want to be in those shoes (which is why I’m extremely skeptical of anyone who thinks that this plan is 100% a great idea, or 100% a terrible one).

All we can do now is cross our fingers (and personally, I’m hoping that when Congress has more time to process and discuss — and when they’re not in crisis mode — they’ll patch up some of the holes in the plan, starting with regulations and oversight). And we can do our homework, because if you’re like me, you don’t know nearly as much about this stuff as you should. The Money Meltdown is a really good starting point to learn about what exactly is going on.