Gender bias: Spiritual or Economic cause?

[emilynghiem]

This discussion doesn't answer all the questions you posed, but I think it's a good jumping-off point.

Yes, that helps, thanks! Reminds me of something else I read, that more women in government tend to occupy "appointed" positions instead of "elected." Again, is there something in our social or spiritual conditioning that would make women gravitate toward cooperative instead of competitive roles? If the study shows that more men than women enjoy chess/poker/etc. as a competitive pastime, maybe this is related.

As for "verbal reasoning" skills, I'm sorry, but I'm at a loss with whitehall's comment and the issue brought up with how I referred to bias. Any insights on that?

 

[LumpyPostage]

Men are not in charge. They only think they are.

 

[Iridescence]

Men are not in charge. They only think they are.

Some of them WE really want to be!

 

[Iridescence]

What strikes me most as a woman, a wife, a mother, and whatever else I need to be for this moment in time, accordingly... is that the necessary observance of difference is NOT bias but in fact both wise and foolish. It can be what makes a system, it can also be what breaks it. ASS-U-ME /ing things can be detrimental, yet it can also lead to a lower level of spiritual doors being opened in which had been previously unattainable. Whether we like it or not, there are comfort levels that obviously have to be erupted. No, it isn't about what I want. It is more about what the 'me and mine' are equipped to do that should determine what it is 'we' DO do. This does NOT have to be necessarily painful... there are methods and this IS America.

 

[emilynghiem]

Men are not in charge. They only think they are.

Ah, the Taming of the Shrew approach? Hmmmm

I think there are two different levels going on.

When you look at the social/economic/political influences,
yes, there is this thing for valuing men who appear to be strong
and in charge, silent and strong, but it is often criticized for leaders
to change their minds once they have made a public statement.
It seems men are expected to be angry, so this is okay for men,
but it is not socially okay for men to cry or be emotionally in public.
And the opposite for women, it's okay for women to be emotionally
and teary because that's what is expected, but if a women is
angry there is a negative word if she speaks out in anger.

On the spiritual level, no one is any more or less in charge than anyone else.
We are equally responsible for what we do, but as for what goes on in the world,
we don't control all that. Even where the people are the government, we submit
to the laws and to the authority that governs the democratic process.

So this is how I understand the Christian concept of the people all submitting
equally to be governed under the same Law. In Christianity the Law or Lord
is represented by Christ Jesus as the husband or bridegroom,
while the Bride is the people or the church body governed and protected
under this one Law that covers all of us equally.

I see both the collective spiritual level and also
the local personal level; I believe there is a connection between the two levels,
where people either take their personal biases and project that onto relations
and how they see and interact with institutions in society, or they take how they
see society and history, and then that affects how they treat people in their lives.

Again, I thought it was spiritually driven first, then people take local personal
biases and project that onto society; but after reading all the research that other
people have published, it seems people are taking their social cues and conditioning
from society and projecting that onto their personal relationships. I still think the
spiritual drive is behind both the nature and nurture, both the local and global
manifestations. So things we may debate as "cause and effect" may actually
be co-influences or co-causal / correlated and just not one causing the other.

Thanks for your comment, and I will try to follow your other msgs
and threads also. Thank you!

 

[emilynghiem]

What strikes me most as a woman, a wife, a mother, and whatever else I need to be for this moment in time, accordingly... is that the necessary observance of difference is NOT bias but in fact both wise and foolish. It can be what makes a system, it can also be what breaks it. ASS-U-ME /ing things can be detrimental, yet it can also lead to a lower level of spiritual doors being opened in which had been previously unattainable. Whether we like it or not, there are comfort levels that obviously have to be erupted. No, it isn't about what I want. It is more about what the 'me and mine' are equipped to do that should determine what it is 'we' DO do. This does NOT have to be necessarily painful... there are methods and this IS America.

I think people start to question things, from the inside out (comparing why is this trend happening or that one fair or unfair, etc.) because we want to choose things because we agree to them, by informed consent,
not because it was forced on us by someone else's convenience or control.

Even if something is a good idea, it has to be THEIR idea before they agree to it.

When we work out all the reasons and options, I think we will arrive at the same conclusions, but we will get there by understanding, logic and free choice,
not because someone decided "that's just the way it is" or "take it on faith."

Early in our development, when we need to follow authority for safety sake, then blind faith is better than blind disobedience, until we are ready to understand the reasons.

But as we mature, both as individuals and also humanity as a whole spiritually,
then we move from blind faith and following by convention/respect for authority,
to informed consent, educated choices by democratic process where we have a say.

And yes, in many cases we may come full circle and just go back
to how it was traditionally, not because we are told to by authority, but because
it works better and we elect that to avoid problems that we now see by experience.

I think the changes in politics right now are due to a lot of that process, of "backlash" against the way things have always been, and then a realization of the good reasons behind doing things that way as it was in the first place. The difference, again, is that we choose it freely. These stages are necessary and natural to reach maturity, but it can be disruptive if people don't recognize the greater process going on, and keep it in proper perspective. In the meantime, when people are questioning the "motive" behind these trends and traditions, all the different issues and factors come out to be examined.

So yes, it may cost us more to learn some lessons the hard way,
but the wisdom we gain is priceless that we can pass to future generations.

What you said about America, I do believe we as Americans have unprecedented access to resources, freedom and education/communication to organize and do more ourselves, in order to reform our collective institutions in society, church and state by example.

I think that takes a balance, a synergy of both our male and female roles/energy, both physically and spiritually, to reach our maximum potential as a human race. So again, a lot of this questioning, debating even rebelling, is part of developing greater understanding and appreciation of our limits and differences, and how these work together for good.

Thanks for all you are doing, as a mother, woman, wife and partner in human progress!

If we all willing to push a little more outside our "comfort zone" that is where we encourage other people to meet halfway, and to stretch to make things work. There's a lot more we can do, and it is exciting to see people learning how to unlock that potential.
Lots of our resources, both mental and physical, are tied up in division and conflict,
so as we overcome these barriers, the more we can work together the efforts multiply.
By aligning our wiring or poles, we can connect more circuits for more energy to flow.
By trial and error alone, we will eventually piece our parts of the solutions together.

Take care and thanks for sharing here!

 

[Cecilie1200]

What do you believe caused the current gender bias we see today
in terms of male dominance in patriarchal society:

A. spiritual causes or teachings
B. economic - due to men valued more as hunters of meat
(over women and workers gathering or harvesting the fields)
C. agricultural revolution (where people started to store
and guard more shares, and thus defend their wealth)
D. physiological - men are bigger/stronger than women
E. disagree, do not believe in a predominant gender imbalance or bias

Would it be too much to ask for you to specify WHAT "gender bias" you're talking about, rather than just assuming that everyone perceives the world exactly as you do, and thinks exactly as you do, and thus will know exactly what you're referring to?

 

[Cecilie1200]

Gender bias....point out some direct examples.

Examples I have collected from many other people (if these are not perfect or you don't believe these count as valid bias, please substitute other examples instead)

* religious and legal institutions
churches that allow men priests but not women
shariah laws that do not treat women with equal rights or defense as men
even constitutional laws had to be amended to give women equal right to vote
(it has been noted that Blacks obtained suffrage before women did)
widows being burned on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands
laws where men can have more than one wife but not vice versa?

::sigh:: Most churches don't even HAVE priests, so why don't you just come right out and name the Catholic Church if you want to criticize them?

We don't live in a society that has Sharia law.

Your OP appears to be talking about gender bias in the present tense, but here you are talking about something that happened almost a hundred years ago. Which is it?

Who the hell burns widows on funeral pyres in the US? Or much of anywhere, anymore?

Polygyny, in the few places it has been practiced (and this isn't really one of them), had nothing to do with ANY "gender bias", unless you want to count nature's. Societies generally adopt polygyny because of a shortage of available men, and the necessity of each man producing as many offspring as he can in order to keep population numbers up. It's a biology thing.

* economic and political
the work that women do in the home to raise kids and run households
is not counted in the GNP
more women serve their full prison sentences than men
because there is more room for women in prisons while men's are overcrowded
more female babies being aborted in China
and also women and brides trafficked with various dowry laws

Why would work that doesn't produce any monetary income or monetarily valuable commodity be counted in the GNP? And where did you get the idea that women do all the child-rearing and housework, anyway?

You answered your own question about women's prison sentences, assuming you're even correct about this.

Not sure why we're concerned about China, but that's due to the way rural Asian society is arranged.

Not sure why we're talking about dowries, either, since that's not really relevant in these parts or this time. Historically, though, inheritance laws were arranged as they were (passing through the oldest living male) in order to keep large estates together for the security of the people beholden to that estate.

others I don't all agree with but these issues affect other people apparently:
* complaints of women paid less than men for the same jobs on average
(I've seen stats and complaints cited both ways, for and against)
* women running for office are judged differently than men
because of emphasis on appearance and different expectations of behavior
(again this is disputed)

Differing wages are bullshit political propaganda, intended to drive wedges between different groups to generate conflict. When you control for external factors like individual career choices (taking a year or two off to have children, for example), the so-called "wage gap" disappears.

Why wouldn't women be viewed differently than men? They ARE different. Although for the most part, I don't see this being all that much of an issue any more, except in isolated pockets.

* statistically, female students are treated differently in schools when mixed with male students, attributed to expectations or conditions on boys/males to be different from
girls (the example given to me is that teachers are conditioned to respond to boys speaking out of turn but punishing girls for speaking out without raising their hands,
and also boys/males more encouraged in math and science while female students drop out after a good lead in these fields around a certain age, attributed to socialization)

I hate to break it to you, but I don't think men and women are "socialized" into different fields nearly as much as you might imagine. They really do tend to be wired differently, and have different interests and aptitudes. It's not "gender bias" to be aware that the genders are different from each other.

These are some general examples, I'm sure there are many others
people could cite that you and I may or may not agree with.

The issues I run into on a regular basis
* when speaking with certain guys, even my own boyfriend, he will belittle or discredit my opinion. I don't know if some men are conditioned to do this, from their fathers treating their mothers this way. I have some friends who distrust men, but even then out of fear they will let that person dominate. Whatever you call that, I run into it with certain people who out of either spiritual teaching or personal conditioning let men speak and validate that before they will listen to women. don't know if that is just a personal bias or what.
women do it too, will let men dominate and take the lead. similar to the classroom bias.

Maybe this all has less to do with gender, and more to do with some people just being asses.

 

[Cecilie1200]

I suspect that such laws did not result so much from men's desire for control as they did from the desire to trace people's ancestry (and to prevent inbreeding).

Still, people carry the tradition of adopting the family name of the father.
where the wife leaves her family and joins her husbands family. Is this the norm?

I also thought that since the scribes in the churches were the main
source of literate people who wrote and kept records and contracts,
while the masses were largely illiterate, but the church leadership
was male, that is where laws are going to be biased toward
a male audience since those are the property owners
and the laws are written by men for men. Someone explained it to me
that way, and that is why church laws are biased in the male voice as well.

::sigh:: Laws were not "written for men". The tradition of adopting the male's name is related to the inheritance laws I mentioned before. Once upon a time, people in Western culture didn't have surnames. The nobility had their titles and the name of the region to which that title belonged. Their children were known as "son of/daughter of" whatever that regional title was, and the wife, who became part of that household upon marriage adopted the name of the noble household she joined. Essentially, it identified what region and household you came from. Commoners, who rarely left the local region they lived in, were known by their professions. Wives all had the same profession (wife and mother), so they were differentiated by their husband's profession. On those occasions when a woman had a profession, she was identified by that.

People still largely follow the same naming processes today because it's a very long tradition, and a familiar set of rules everyone understands, and it tends to be less confusing than having everyone in the household bearing a different last name. Noticeably, though, as the tradition became less necessary in recent years, it also became less prevalent, which is why we now have women maintaining their own names, or couples switching to a hyphenated version of their two surnames, or other configurations.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Perhaps the answer is simply that there are Eternal differences between men and women. Maybe we should celebrate our differences instead of always trying to be the same. I think it's those differences that grounds us together and helps us raise children.

I agree wholeheartedly. Instead of trying to ensure that everyone is exactly the same maybe we should embrace and celebrate the grand differences between Men and women. The world requires balance to continue to run properly. We have seriously thrown that balance out of whack in the last century. House-husbands, female firefighters and CEO's, etc.... and yet we wonder why our society is crumbling around us.

Funny, I don't have a problem with any of those, though I can't imagine a true "house-husband" who isn't just some lazy dude trying to live off his woman.

Whats wrong with female firefighters and CEOs. Simply because men and women are different doesn't means that roles can't and don't overlap at all.

My husband has been a house-husband a couple of times in our marriage, when I was offered a really great job opportunity. For example, I used to work for the US Postal Service. Great pay, fantastic benefits, much better in both respects than my husband's job at that time offered. Since we both strongly believe that our children should be raised by a parent rather than a babysitter, he took over the house and childrearing responsibilities while I earned the income. He did the same things that I do now.

 

[emilynghiem]

Hi Cecilie: Thanks for your postings. Since you and Ed and others had similar trouble or objections answering the question the way it was worded, I posted a reworded poll under Race/Racism where you can address whatever bias you believe is predominant.

You are still welcome to post here, and just say you don't believe there is a bias and list your objections as you did. That is still participating and contributing to the topic, so thank you. Please feel free to post on one or both threads.

Your comments are perfectly on point, and I see no problem with totally objecting to a bias or flaw you see in how the question was worded.

I will try to reply to your points, as these are the very issues that I expected and intended to be discussed. This is perfect, thank you, Cecilie. See if you can find the other thread!

What do you believe caused the current gender bias we see today
in terms of male dominance in patriarchal society:

A. spiritual causes or teachings
B. economic - due to men valued more as hunters of meat
(over women and workers gathering or harvesting the fields)
C. agricultural revolution (where people started to store
and guard more shares, and thus defend their wealth)
D. physiological - men are bigger/stronger than women
E. disagree, do not believe in a predominant gender imbalance or bias

Would it be too much to ask for you to specify WHAT "gender bias" you're talking about, rather than just assuming that everyone perceives the world exactly as you do, and thinks exactly as you do, and thus will know exactly what you're referring to?

 

[emilynghiem]

::sigh:: Most churches don't even HAVE priests, so why don't you just come right out and name the Catholic Church if you want to criticize them?

We don't live in a society that has Sharia law.

Your OP appears to be talking about gender bias in the present tense, but here you are talking about something that happened almost a hundred years ago. Which is it?

Who the hell burns widows on funeral pyres in the US? Or much of anywhere, anymore?

Polygyny, in the few places it has been practiced (and this isn't really one of them), had nothing to do with ANY "gender bias", unless you want to count nature's. Societies generally adopt polygyny because of a shortage of available men, and the necessity of each man producing as many offspring as he can in order to keep population numbers up. It's a biology thing.

I will start here

1. You have the opposite view of people like my friend David: the minute he saw me listing out the religious tribes, he pointed out they were all centered around MEN leaders
Buddha, Mohammad, Jesus, the Founding Fathers

So if you are going to discount any religious traditions that are "outdated" that would cut out the matriarchal/goddess tribes that otherwise balance out the picture.

I see no problem counting traditions that are "outside this country" or "outside the present" but to look at all humanity over time to see the trends.

Overall, it balances out, but if you look at where we are today, I see more oppression of women by men, for whatever reason. I believe people are ideally equal "spiritually"
but not everyone is living by or realizing that spiritual ideal, and that is why such oppression is still expressed in our society.

C, if you want to separate out the spiritual status (where people are equal no matter what conditions we live under) from the social/economic/political status wouldn't you still recognize more violence/abuse/oppression of "women by men" than men by women?

2. And yes if you believe the polygamy thing is purely "nature" or "biology" that is answering the question! You believe any bias would come from physical design vs. something coming from psychological choices or conditioning in our thinking.

That is a valid answer, to what I am asking your opinion about.

And if this answer also applies to how you see violence/abuse of women as just due to men being physically stronger or having "more testosterone" which correlates with more aggression, that means physiological causes.

However, if you believe people are "just being asses" that might point to psychological causes, which you don't apply any bias to.
If you believe people can equally be asses. If so, do you believe it is just women express being asses differently from how men do,
and that STILL explains the higher rates of physical abuse/violence against women by men? While perhaps the oppression on men
by women is more invisible like pscyhological abuse?

3. C do you REALLY believe as many men as women play "equal roles" in childbirth/childraising across the planet?
Do you really believe there is no bias manifested there? and it has no effect on society besides just physical differences??

I admire you tremendously if you are that liberated and bias free, but I'm talking about everything else going on in society, over time.
Do you think everyone else is as unbiased as you are?
If you agree people aren't, and they are projecting unequally, are you saying it is biologically based only?

Or is there some internal/psychological/spiritual cause to why people are "being asses"

Even if you don't see oppressive/aggressive behavior as gender biased,
can you still explain if you feel the "being asses" is coming from internal/spiritual causes
or external/social causes? You can answer on the other thread if this is better! Thanks, C

 

[Truthmatters]

Im of the feeling it came with pregnancy and childrearing.

Women are physically compromised during pregnancy and then in early child rearing they need to suckle the young.

Man being a pack animal the pack helps to make up for this compromised physical need.

Then as society developed this was turned into a reason to rationalize women out of power.

For those personality types who are wired to seek power at any cost there is advantage in stripping power from as many people as possible to reach the top.

When you sideline HALF the population right off the bat then your climb to power is that much easier.

It started as a mutualy benificial trade of services and was played into a power srtruggle

 

[emilynghiem]

One-child policy a surprising boon for China girls - Yahoo! News

First time I read anything positive about how the one child policy
ends up helping certain girls under certain conditions. At least there
are some benefits to offset the horror stories I've heard of women
forced to watch their infants killed at birth for being girls!

 

[Sky Dancer]

Female circumcision. Spiritual or gender bias? Gender bias.

 

[amrchaos]

I say it is due to women having orgasms and wanting to make their own money to buy Gigolos and pet "men".

If women could not climax, they would never see men as overbearing and so forth. But some fool out there had to go and fully please his wife--thus ruining life for the rest of us.

 

[Lokiate]

What do you believe caused the current gender bias we see today

Define gender bias, because I don't see where women aren't equal to men in rights, and opportunity.