[PEN-L:11387] Re: Male Chauvanist Mathematics

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 07:28 AM 7/22/97 -0700, maggie coleman wrote:

>I think "maleness" and "femaleness" are both ALMOST completely socially
>determined.  While hormones may drive us all to a certain extent, I think our
>behavior is taught us from the cradle and our tendencies to rank are learned
>skills.  Since we are separated by gender right from the beginning, I think
>women and men learn different ways to relate to their own gender and the
>opposite gender (using polarizing language here for the moment).

I reply: I think it is a neat idea, very intelligently argued, inter alia,
by Nancy Chodorow; in essence she claimed that because women are almost
exclusively child care takers from the day 1 children are born, that creates
differential experiences in the ways male and female personalities develop;
while young girls develop their personalities by emulating their mothers
they are constantly in touch with; young boys lack regular contacts with
their "role models" because fathers are, for the most part, absent from
home; consequently, they develop their personality in a "negative" way, byr
rejecting the feminine qualities seen in their mothers; if they see mothers
being nurturing, care-taking etc, they identify their personality by
negation as aggressive, competitive etc.

An interesting thought, indeed.  My only problem with it that it is rather
hard to think of a situation that might falsify it (there are not too many
babies taken care of exclusively by men) -- which (unfortunately) puts it on
the same epistemological footing as many fairy tales invented by the NC and
the rat-choice people.

>
>> When females enter the
>>positions of power previously reserved for men only, their behaviour tends
>>to resemble that of their male colleagues.
>AAAAhhhhhh, one of my favorite questions.  Why do women emulate male behavior
>when they achieve powerful positions?  Simply because the male form of
>leadership is the one we all learn--which is why I think testosterone and
>estrogen have less to do with all these things than learned skills.  Several
>branches of the social sciences have found that leaders promote others who
>are mirrors of themselves.  It only makes sense that in a world where most
>leaders are men, that those men promote those few women who display facility
>with male interaction techniques.  Further, I think that exercise of power
>may lead to abuse regardless of the gender, race, or sexual preference of the
>power wielder.  Further still, since there are few women in leadership
>positions, very few of us have a range of experience with women leaders.  For
>example, most people by middle age have worked for a range of male
>bosses--and can point to some they could stand and some they couldn't.  Women
>bosses are so rare, the tendency is to point to their ability or disability
>in their position as a direct result of gender.  If there were more women in
>powerful positons, there would probably be less of a tendency to blame/credit
>all their behavior on their sex.  Finally, as a society, it is o.k. for men
>to be agressive but agressive women receive all kinds of negative
>descriptions--women leaders are no exception.


I reply: Look, I'm not a male chauvinist pig, and I do accept that there are
differences between men & women.  I do, however, believe that the argument
you presented above is flawed beacuse you assume in you premises what you
want to prove.  If you a priori define corporate pecking behavior as
intrinsically "male," as you seem to do in the second sentence or rather
question of the above quoted passage, then of course you will end up with
the conclusion that the few women who manage to get to the top "emulate" it,
etc.

I am not in disagreement with your argument for the reproduction of the
power elite (the bosses like to surround themselves with the types like
themselves), but I still can argue that the pecking order, competitiveness
and kindred characteristics of the corporate behaviour result not from
"maleness" (genetically or cognitively defined) but from the nature of the
interaction in corporate settings.  That is, any person who regularly finds
him- or her-self in situations that require submission/domination relations
to others, competitiveness, aggresion etc. will internalize those behavioral
traits -- whether that person is a male of a female.  Likewise for those who
regularly find him or her-self in sutuation requiring selflessness,
nurtuting, "making it nice" etc. will internalize those traits as well.

In short: pecking order, competitiveness, back-stabbing, kissing up and
other discrete charms of corporate life are "male" only because males have
historically been occupying those positions.  I am pretty sure that females
are as capable as males of displaying similar behavioral traits in
situations where they could dominate - cf. the recent "indie" film "Welcome
to the Dollhouse."

A very interesting argument for this interactionist view on human behaviour
can be found in the book by Jack Katz, _Seductions of Crime_ in which he
argues that criminal behavior is a result of interaction and situational
logic rather than "propensities" embedded in one's personality or mindset.
Of course, the same can be said about any other form of human behaviour.

As I understand it, this model of human behavior (i.e. cognitive or
personality traits of an individual being a result of behaviour, or social
interaction) is antithetical to that implied by the rat-choice paradigm that
views behaviour as a result  of conscious decisions or psychological
propensities of individuals.  I also think that this distinction also
demarcates the bordeline between marxist (=interactionist) and bourgeois
(rat-choice) explanations of the relationship between individuals, economic
institutions, and society.

regards,

wojtek sokolowski
institute for policy studies
johns hopkins university
baltimore, md 21218
sokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
voice: (410) 516-4056
fax:   (410) 516-8233

POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS
IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE.
- John Dewey