On 4/4/06 11:44 AM, "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I'm just not sure I know what a
> "male" value is. But if your constuct is right,
> the women you like working with are also products of "male" values.

Well, my own difficulty with the word is in its inverted commas. I was
trying to avoid the word "patriarchal". The problem is that patriarchal is
in fact the correct word, no matter the cheese cloth and moon wisdom
associations.  I was talking about work places, and in particular those with
conventional corporate structures. They do indeed embody patriarchal values.
Women very often have got around these issues by starting their own
companies and working in different ways (the Body Shop is probably the
iconic example). I'd be surprised if you could find any woman who has worked
in these places who has not found these kinds of gender issues at play.

Very often, clichés are clichés because underneath all those barnacles they
express a truth. Taking its due from St Paul (man always rules over the
woman, as the head of the household, just as God rules over the man, and the
world given to man to exploit for his own purposes), patriarchal values are
broadly those that value what is held to be masculine over what is held to
be feminine, and it seems a pretty fair observation that those
Judaeo-Christian values carry over into secular corporatism via things like
the Protestant work ethic. A woman who embodies so-called masculine values
might do ok such a context, a man who embodies feminine values will probably
do very badly. The Apprentice is pretty eye-opening viewing on all those
values.

I don't think you have to invent a putative matriarchal dawn of civilisation
to make comparisons, or to perceive that there are alternative ways of
getting on.  Women have always very practically made their own alternatives,
like the sewing groups of mediaeval times with their incredibly filthy
songs, or even the ways in which the women with whom I work relate. My
US/UK publishers are an employee-owned independent publisher, not many of
those left these days, and they have a lot more autonomy than most
publishing employees do these days. But my Australian publisher is a
corporate multinational where the top jobs are all held by men, and the
lower structures are overwhelmingly staffed by woman. I worked there once as
a lowly copywriter on (of all things) a guide to recreational fishing in
Australia, and it was a rather interesting experience.  Women in subordinate
positions in such structures will often band together to make their lives
and work more possible, though the effect is in the end to make the men at
the top look good. There was a time in the 70s when it seemed that these
very structures might change, but aside from a few cosmetic shifts I don't
think that has happened; and everything I see these days seems to indicate
that it's all heading backwards to the late 19C, with the truly vile
exploitation happening in the so-called Third World.

All best

A



Alison Croggon

Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com