Our Lords and Masters.

[la_marquise]

So, our Education minister is a safe pair of hands, is he? He's committed to equality?
Yes and no. He's sure it would be a good thing for men of all classes to have equal opportunities. But apparently those evil feminists have wrecked all the chances of that.
Full article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8420098/David-Willets-feminism-has-held-back-working-men.html

It'll be appeals for women to give up work next, so that there are enough jobs for the boys. No matter that ConDem cuts hit women harder than men. It's still our fault for being in the way.

Comments

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

...

As an evil feminist, albeit one from the nation next door, I would like to suggest that the honourable Minister shut it. And resign.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Absolutely.

[chilperic.livejournal.com]

It is interesting that most of the comments on the Torygraph article (including my own!) are very critical of "No Brains" Willetts.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Which is heartening, at least. But that he thinks that and has power... Argh.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Entirely unsurprising, surely? Same dynamic that brings all the right-wing hatemongers to the Guardian.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Oh, so that's what he wants AHRC funding to be spent on, showing how the women should be sent back to the kitchen?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Increased unemployment, virtual destruction of private sector pension schemes, gutting of trade unions and orders of magnitude salary/bonus increases for the highest paid have, of course, had no impact on equality.

Typical PPE graduate. Understands sod all about Politics, Philosophy or Economics.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

Hang in there. He'll go too far and there'll be one helluva backlash.

[anef.livejournal.com]

I'm gobsmacked that anyone would actually say this - whether or not they thought it was true. And I don't believe it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

They do seem to have put all the idiots in the Education dept.

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

I keep hoping it's an April's Fool joke, but I don't think it's one...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I don't think he has a sense of humour, sadly.

[xenaclone.livejournal.com]

I think he should have to spend 6 months chained to the kitchen sink, wearing a frilly apron and stilletoes.

[jandersoncoats.livejournal.com]

While three kids under five simultaneously spill oatmeal, crank the stove knobs and kick a football through the living-room window.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

:-)

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

"Feminism trumped egalitarianism"

That word does not mean what you think it means.

*headdesk*

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

To misquote Orwell, some humans are more equal than others if you happen to be Willetts.

Perhaps he would like to emigrate to Saudi Arabia ?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

DO you think we can get him to take the rest of his party with him?

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

If there aren't enough jobs to go around, then how the *$%@ did that idiot got one?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

The 'Old Boy Network: helping middle class men since, well, forever...

[jandersoncoats.livejournal.com]

And I thought the politicians here were clowns.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

No, we have 'em too. Google Nick Griffin sometime.

[jandersoncoats.livejournal.com]

Yeesh. This guy's a piece of - work, isn't he?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

He's hateful, as is the so-called party he leads.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I truly hope it's an April Fool's joke, but if not... since the education of middle class women prevented the social mobility of working class men, what does Mr W have to say about the education of working class women?

Besides, in the years mentioned when Mr W points out that many homes had two adults working full time, he fails to point out that it was mostly because with house prices, interest rates and cost of living rocketing you could no longer keep a family on one person's wage.

Sheesh! I'd have loved to have stayed at home and been a kept woman, but we'd never have been able to afford the mortgage if I had.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

He has no notion of the real world, does he?

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

That's the problem with most politicians. Even the ones that _say_ they're from a working class background have never tried to bring up a family on a minimum wage or live on benefits. People who are scrambling to eke a living, whether they are intelligent and politically minded or not, generally don't have time or energy or resources to put themselves up for election - even to their local parish council. You have to have a certain amount of financial buffer between yourself and the outside world before you can do that.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, yes. I many ways we are still mired in feudalism, with wealth leading to power.

[branna.livejournal.com]

Arrrrrgh. I am beyond coherence.

[stina-leicht.livejournal.com]

question: can you recall his narrow-minded, neanderthal *ss? being from the other side of the pond and all, i don't know. of course, i didn't know *we* could do such a thing until wisconsin started kicking ultra-conservative backside. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

No: we get our chance to kick him out at the general election, and only then.

[aberwyn.livejournal.com]

"Feminism trumps egalitarianism." These are in his mind two different things.

Women don't get to be equal, huh? I'm sure there are plenty of guys in the US who would agree with this, assuming they can read well enough to understand the big words.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Same here, sadly.

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

will take a risk here - deep breath! - and say that in strictly factual terms, he's sort of right.

In that the KEY beneficiaries of the widening of access to universities in that period were the daughters the middle classes. And that they benefited far more than working class children.

Middle class girls, like their brothers, had the benefit of a family and community culture which viewed attending university as a 'normal', plus the benefit of attending better schools. And when university became 'free', the financial disincentive for sexist middle class parents to send their girls to uni disappeared.

The key missing link in his argument, is that working class children of BOTH sexes failed to benefit - or at least failed to benefit equally. Feminism failed to markedly improve the life chances of working class girls in this respect. (Though this is starting to change, as I can testify from my own family experience.)

His headline should be 'Class trumps egalitarianism'.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Indeed, though it varied by region, in fact. Working class South Wales, for instance, at least down into the 70s, put a very high premium on education and families actively encouraged their children into HE, especially the boys. Thatcher ruined that, when she destroyed employment for the region. My mother's family had a long tradition of sending sons and some daughters to grammar school and on to college (university, in at least one case in the 1920s). But that was a politically engaged, unionised culture. My father's family -- all agricultural workers or factory temps -- in right wing, dispersed and land-lord controlled Herefordshire could see little point in education above the age of 13.
I am the daughter of two working class parents who both benefited from the education reforms of the 1940s to become teachers, and I am the first girl on one side and the second on the other to get a university education. But I guess I don't deserve it in Mr Willetts' eyes, as I should have just gone and had babies. The fact I spent 20 years teaching other people's children (from across all classes apart from the Upper) apparently doesn't count.

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

you're quite right about variation by region - your experience sounds quite like M's. who was always bemused by the different aspirations of his - equally working class - Welsh v East End relatives.

I'm glad to see some shift in attitudes recently though. Though both of us are 'first generation' to experience A levels/university in our families, we're not the last. M's Dagenham raised niece is now at Aberdeen, and there's been no hostility to her aspirations.

And (re Mr W) - in purely utilitarian terms (ie earnings) - read article (I think on BBC - will try to find it) which showed girls NEED university education more than boys. In particular, working class girls gain a much stronger benefit from a degree than any other group. The differential for men without/with degrees, is much less wide than the differential for women.

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

Couldn’t find that article – but similar issue explored here:

http://www.delni.gov.uk/graduate_earnings__main_report.pdf

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/oswald/degreesmay2003.pdf

According to Oswald “Women get about 24% extra income later in life by going to university compared to simply doing 2 A levels at high school and then going into the workforce. Men get about 16% more.”

Which is complicated, however, by women (like myself) often choosing humanities related degrees, which according to Oswald is “slightly worse than leaving school directly into a job” in economic terms.

Oswald is (I hope!) being deliberately provocative, in stating the case in such baldly utilitarian terms to that particular audience(!) But the stats are still a powerful case for the importance of HE in women’s lives.

He doesn’t talk about class. The DELNI report (produced in anticipation of ‘top up fees’ debate) does, and is more detailed and nuanced – finding for example that “Socio-economic class is a statistically insignificant explanatory variable in determining male graduate earnings. Thus, there is some evidence, at least for females, that those from higher social class backgrounds progress into relatively higher paying jobs after graduation, even if the variation is quite small.” Which might suggest that female graduates from the upper middle class gain the biggest economic benefit from their degrees – until you read the small print (pp37-8 + 41) and NB the ‘quite small’ variation.

[One interesting little conclusion btw (p.73) “we establish no causal relationship between preuniversity qualifications and earnings variability”.]

And anyway - leaving the utilitarian, economic value aside – the real value of three years of learning and analysis could, to use a 70s cliché, be described as ‘consciousness raising’ – a more accurate, complicated sense of the world and one’s place in it. The process of reading and working towards my ‘uneconomic’ humanities degrees was priceless to me for that alone. And of particular ‘value’ to any individual from a suppressed group in society – regardless of whether socio-economics or attitudes to gender.

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

No, he isn't right because he's tacitly assuming that the number of good jobs in the UK is a fixed constant and that the more jobs women get, the fewer there are for men.

However,inefficiency such as prejudice restricts a nation's GDP and makes it less competitive. This means fewer and worse jobs for everyone, bitter and fiercer competition for the scraps that remain, more intense prejudice , greater loss to GDP, fewer jobs ,more prejudice ... oh hello 2011.