Technology and the Position of Women by John McCarthy

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/future/women.html

by carls • 13 years ago

49 19 13 years ago

www-formal.stanford.edu

lkrubner2• 13 years ago

I don't see a date on this essay, but I am assuming it was written in the 1960s? It has many assumptions that sound 60sish.

This is true:

"A longer fertile life for women would permit two or more children to occupy a smaller fraction of a woman's life."

However, the emphasis in some of the other sentences needs to be qualified. For instance:

"The first independent achievements of women were by upper class women in hierarchical societies."

You can say exactly the same thing of men. Of ancient societies, we mostly have the writings of men from the upper class.

And about this:

"The changes permitted women to stay home and raise children, while men foraged."

This falls into the fallacy that women didn't work or forage for food. As a counter-point, there is the Grandmother Hypothesis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_hypothesis

I've read estimates that in some of the African hunter-gatherer tribes (studied during the 20th century) the majority of calories going to newborn babes came not from the mother or father but from the grandmother (remember that in many of these tribes women become grandmothers in their 30s).

His comments about "the upper middle class can't afford as much domestic help as in the past" sounds like it was written during the 1960s.

He argues that greater wealth and economic advance has lead to this:

"All this has reduced the relative desirability of housewifery and led to an increased demand for a better position for women."

There is a counter-argument (which reverses the cause and effect) put forward by Barbara Ehrenreich in her book "The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment". She argues that after 1945 there emerged a culture of entertainment, adventure and pleasure seeking that caused men to pull away from traditional commitments and traditional social mores (such as marriage) and the women's movement of the 1960s was a reaction to that.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Hearts-Men-American-Commitment/dp/...

This if() statement is lacking its else() branch:

"A girl can wait and if she is attractive good things may happen to her."

This much is very true:

"A disproportionate number of adults with initiative come from separatist social groups where the parents prevent children from taking their values from their peers or from the schools."

This is possibly true, though I think other conclusions might be possible:

"Getting more women in higher positions in society depends on breaking this tradition."

This bit is borderline cliche and should be paired against the fact that in the USA 70% of all divorces are initiated by women:

"However, a desirable man can get better terms than this, and the academic community is full of cases where a man first marries an intellectual equal and then replaces her by a second wife without so many ambitions outside the home."

This seems to be the core of his argument:

"Greater equality will be achieved if the amount of work required to have a nice home with well brought up children can be reduced to the point that a man of ordinary energy who shares the work equally with his wife suffers no disadvantage in his profession, and likewise a woman of ordinary energy who keeps a home going does not lose in her outside work."

Missing from his essay is the possibility that things might simply fall apart: that the divorce rate would spike upwards to almost 50%, and that single motherhood would spike upwards to include over 40% of all children. His tone suggests that he was writing when the solidity of marriage was still being taken for granted. Anyone writing nowadays would have to take into account both the high divorce rate and also the high rate of single motherhood, which combine to suggest that perhaps there will be no easy reconciliation of what women want and what men want.

ewoodrich• 13 years ago

The footer on the bottom of the article:

"Send comments to mccarthy@stanford.edu. I sometimes make changes suggested in them. - John McCarthy".

"The number of hits on this page since 2004 Dec 18."

From the date listed on the top-level page "WHAT FUTURES SHALL WE MAKE?" it appears that this was written after 1998. [1] Or perhaps digitized after that date, but the footer on the article does list 2004 on the hit counter.

I agree with your observations, though. Both the arguments presented and supporting data seem to be quite dated.

[1] http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/future/index.html

lkrubner2• 13 years ago

He is dead so I doubt he will take my suggestions now.

His comments about middle class families having trouble finding servants sounds like it was written during the 1960s. Certainly, it was a common complaint among upper middle class families of the time. The comment would make less sense now, when domestic help has again become abundant.

mturmon2• 13 years ago

Regarding the date, the HTML appears to be hand-edited. There is a comment at the top of the file saying:

    <!-- Changed by: John McCarthy,  9-Dec-2006 -->

and the same date appears in the title page.

I think the author would be well-served to delete the whole piece. It's like pub chit-chat from a doddering parent or grandparent -- just a bunch of preconceived notions and outmoded viewpoints.

It does serve the unwitting purpose of illustrating how deep are the origins of tech's problem with inclusion of women.

tw2682• 13 years ago

Am I the only one that thinks it is sad that we have to sanitize our web presence this way in the age of Gawker? It ought to be okay to write an article with ideas that go out of fashion in following years or decades to the extent that it sounds antiquated and just forget about it. If someone finds it they can rebut it or ignore it. It should be that people can disagree with you without hating you.

mjn• 13 years ago

I think the author would be well-served to delete the whole piece.

The author died in 2011, so I guess that won't happen (though the site might disappear entirely at some point): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scienti...

I'd just treat it for what it is: a short off-the-cuff essay written by a retired CS professor in his late 70s, speculating on a subject he hadn't done much research on. It appears among this unfinished draft collection of futurist speculations: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/future/. Some of them are interesting, some not too great. IMO lots of the stuff he wrote in AI is great, and I'd start with those essays if you want to read something by McCarthy on a subject where he was both knowledgeable and insightful: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/#pub_ai

woah• 13 years ago

What are your complaints?

wildgift• 13 years ago

As people age, they don't always "keep up" on all the social changes. McCarthy clearly didn't. I've met a lot of old folks say things that would be gaffes, outdated, or otherwise out of step with the current social norms.

I'm middle aged, and have started to notice myself falling into these patterns, particularly regarding transgender people and some LGBT issues. I've never been in a situation where these issues were so prevalent that I "just know" the right thing to do. I used to be educated on the issues, so I could be conscious about them. Now, I'm in need of more education. I ask more questions.

I'm also a sexist. I don't mean a raging sexist or "bro", but as things have gotten better for women, I don't know if I'm as free of sexism as younger men.

It's an uphill battle for everyone, to shed old habits and develop new ones.

stefantalpalaru• 13 years ago

I think the author would be well-served to delete the whole piece.

You sound like a book burner.

tw2682• 13 years ago

I've been using this chart for the increase of single parenting over time[1]. Unfortunately the data doesn't go all the way to the present. I have heard single parenting in the US is now over 40%. Charles Murray has another couple dozen interesting ones along a similar lines in "Coming Apart".

The automation of child-raising that the author talks about sounds creepy. It is an activity that probably ought to have a human component to it, if anything should.

I listened to an interview from a French Marxist who argued that the modern economy has been liberating for upper-class women, but bad for lower-class women[2]. His argument is that the right to work has turned into an obligation to work due to the necessity of two-incomes. This is fine for educated women with interesting and fulfilling work options but bad for uneducated women. Furthermore, the lower-class maids and nurses get paid to look after the upper-class children during the day but they still have their own children to look after, too.

He sees the need to work as a regression and as a new layer of obligation on the lower classes. The ability to be a full-time mom is now a luxury for the lower classes, while it is stigma for the upper classes.

[1] http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/u-s-historical-livin...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do5zrdTb-yI

nathan_long• 13 years ago

> I don't see a date on this essay

This is a tangent, but: everyone, please ensure that every article you put online has a date. Especially if it's technical.

I don't want to find it 6 years later and be misled.

guard-of-terra2• 13 years ago

Raising babies is a major turnoff. Somehow nature screwed us royally on that one. We'll have to fix it ourself.

This is predominantly human-primate problem. Cattle is born pretty functional, but human babies require years of continuous monitoring and care.

yarou• 13 years ago

And what's the alternate solution? Growing babies in pods so the machines can harvest their energy while they live in a complex simulation? Hey, wait a minute, that sounds awfully familiar...

kofq• 13 years ago

I am not sure what to say ? Honestly, why you exist ? No seriously. You don't want to raise babies, want everything that is gold plated , everything that looks good and count only in $MM. Do you think having penis makes life easy ? Answer is NO. There are large scale difficulties faced by men also. I honestly think we should strive for equality rather than making it gender specific. It always comes down to individual to grab that part of success.

guard-of-terra2• 13 years ago

First, I'm male; second, both parents suffer the upbringing of a baby; and third, I think therefore I exist as a sentient being.

peterwwillis• 13 years ago

To rephrase the point of this article: Modern Conveniences Make People's Lives Easier.

The idea that the progress of technology in and of itself will improve the position women have in society is about equivalent to saying that improvements in water treatment plants will help women live longer. Sure it will, and it will help non-women live longer too. You could make the claim that the advent of cheap 3d printers will allow girls to print out their own toys they find on the internet and avoid gendered marketing in toy stores. But boys will do the same. Tech affects a lot of people in lots of different ways, usually for the benefit of everybody, not just one group.

Technology and the Position of Women by John McCarthy

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