5 Minute Read:
If you get too many men alone and leave us alone for a while, we kind of become morons. —Andrew Yang, Businessman and 2020 Presidential Candidate
That’s a glib statement, with or without context. Yang can get away with saying it, but I can’t without sounding like a misandrist—which I’m not. My agreement with the sentiment is limited to this: there’s nothing at all wrong with the male perspective in the broad national discourse, but it needs to be tempered by other perspectives. That’s a fancy way of saying the U.S. could do with a bit* more diversity in the halls of power, and I know I’ve probably said so before on this blog.
Anyway, what Yang is saying is that too many guys in power for too long eventually leads to… well, what we have here in the U.S. I’ll drop the term; inequality. And I’ll say it out loud; because the (mostly) men in charge have become moronic by world standards, and are holding us back from being a truly great nation.
[W]e can […] start recognizing the work that women in particular do in our families and communities every day.
—Andrew Yang
You can check out the video of this interview here, and/or read the transcript. Yang was explaining the advantage of his UBI (Universal Basic Income) and arguing for including the work that mostly women do at home —caregiving, child-rearing, home maintenance, family finance, etc.—into the GDP. Kids who would flourish with parents whose labor is valued are the next generation of small business owners, teachers, farmers, drivers, retailers, medical professionals, and on and on—basically the backbone of America.
A Couple Questions
Am I paranoid if I entertain a loose theory that the last fifty years of wage stagnation is petty revenge for women entering and staying in the workforce? Shouldn’t women technically get paid more not less than men in the same positions since we mostly do more of the domestic busywork?
Of the hetero couples you know, how many of them really share the chores and domestic tasks equally, assuming they’re being candid about it? I know it can be lopsided in gay couples too, but that’s a different conversation. I’m talking about straights as a way of highlighting those pesky traditional gender roles on this issue. If things are starting to even out and a lot of your straight friends share the chores, then our work here is done. *claps hands together in an up and down sweep But as long as there is still a disproportionate amount of gals coming home from work and starting second shift on dishes, laundry, and vacuuming, etc., we need to acknowledge the value of that labor, because somebody has to do it or it doesn’t get done. Somebody is doing it. Every. Day.
Is Yang’s UBI the answer? Maybe. It could help. Should we pay attention to what we’re teaching our little boys? Oh yes. Do we need to talk to our kids about the media messages they’re exposed to? Oh hell yes. It seems there are a lot of ways we can recognize the value of women’s contributions to society, and the first thing to do is to discover how badly under-recognized the background labor has been, and still is. Somebody is doing this work and doing a fine job of it. Every. Day.
*quite a bit more, and now