(no subject)
Jun. 1st, 2013 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/01/parents-guide-girls-ambitions-women
Government to tell parents how to make their children "aspirational" and "ambitious for themselves".
Because clearly the solution to structural inequalities is to tell individuals they need to try harder.
I guess this may not be obvious to people who have achieved the sort of power that can make this stuff happen, but: sometimes, wanting is not getting.
Telling girls to want more... have we not been asking? Have we not been trying? I rather thought we were.
But no, not according to this bollocks. Apparently we hold ourselves back.
This is not feminism. This is the same old same old in high heels.
Lack of ambition cannot explain the lack of parity in gender distribution for acting roles. You can't say there aren't enough actresses trying. And for writing, I know so many female writers, and compared to that relatively few who get published for money, or get in on specific existing structures like writing for Doctor Who. Is that supposed to be because we're not dreaming big enough?
Maybe they only mean board rooms, that being all the article mentions.
I don't actually aspire to get to the top of existing structures. I don't want to play capitalist top trumps. Even if I had the capacity, it's a waste of time and a misapplication of effort.
My feminism, fractured and argumentative though it is even in my own head, has different priorities and requires changes on a rather deeper level than adding some gender difference at the top of the heap. That would be nice too, but a fundamental re-evaluation of the worth of activities usually gendered feminine, like care work and feeding people and all that actually necessary stuff, plus an emphasis on co-operation rather than competition, seems to me to be the only way to survive, much less thrive.
Telling women to be more ambitious, to try harder to climb existing hierarchical structures, that's not much help unless the women getting up there can start dismantling the whole fail pile.
*waves a flag a bit*
I know, I know, armchair stuff, I'm little to no practical use and my ideas are better on what the problem is than what the solutions are.
But telling women they are in fact still the problem... liars.
Government to tell parents how to make their children "aspirational" and "ambitious for themselves".
Because clearly the solution to structural inequalities is to tell individuals they need to try harder.
I guess this may not be obvious to people who have achieved the sort of power that can make this stuff happen, but: sometimes, wanting is not getting.
Telling girls to want more... have we not been asking? Have we not been trying? I rather thought we were.
But no, not according to this bollocks. Apparently we hold ourselves back.
This is not feminism. This is the same old same old in high heels.
Lack of ambition cannot explain the lack of parity in gender distribution for acting roles. You can't say there aren't enough actresses trying. And for writing, I know so many female writers, and compared to that relatively few who get published for money, or get in on specific existing structures like writing for Doctor Who. Is that supposed to be because we're not dreaming big enough?
Maybe they only mean board rooms, that being all the article mentions.
I don't actually aspire to get to the top of existing structures. I don't want to play capitalist top trumps. Even if I had the capacity, it's a waste of time and a misapplication of effort.
My feminism, fractured and argumentative though it is even in my own head, has different priorities and requires changes on a rather deeper level than adding some gender difference at the top of the heap. That would be nice too, but a fundamental re-evaluation of the worth of activities usually gendered feminine, like care work and feeding people and all that actually necessary stuff, plus an emphasis on co-operation rather than competition, seems to me to be the only way to survive, much less thrive.
Telling women to be more ambitious, to try harder to climb existing hierarchical structures, that's not much help unless the women getting up there can start dismantling the whole fail pile.
*waves a flag a bit*
I know, I know, armchair stuff, I'm little to no practical use and my ideas are better on what the problem is than what the solutions are.
But telling women they are in fact still the problem... liars.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-06-02 10:11 am (UTC)It's all well and good for girls from other places to go to uni, but there are no jobs in their village that require an education. The urge to leave and do something amazing is just NOT THERE. You ask what they want to do when they grow up and they just shrug, because they don't care. They'll find something to get by, so why should they bother thinking about it?
They see their mums and aunties getting on ok and assume that is what a "happy" life is, so why bother doing anything else.
I get what you are saying about being hard to get into boardrooms, writing etc. But it's not so hard to get into an A-Level course, and they aren't even doing that.