A thought I had about one consequence of the rise of Women's Rights...

indpndnt · 2011-09-26T16:19:28+00:00

Part of the reason you need 2 incomes is inflation. The federal reserve and government spending really spiked in the early 20th century. This coincides with the same time as women's suffrage, but I wouldn't say the two are correlated.

mugsnj · 2011-09-26T18:10:50+00:00

No. You seem to be assuming that we doubled our workforce and divided the same amount of work across twice as many people. Growing the workforce allows the economy to grow. When women started working and generating income, they also started spending the money they earned, creating work for someone else.

Look at it this way - what if we didn't start increasing the size of the workforce in the 40s and 50s by adding women; what if instead we reduced the size of the workforce by removing half of the existing workers. Would that have a positive effect on our economy?

At the macro level it seems to make sense that doubling the size of the workforce would reduce wages, but it didn't happen overnight. People are generally hired when a position is open; positions open when someone vacates it, or when an increase in work necessitates adding a position. The workforce won't grow unless positions are added to do work that wasn't being done before. Have you ever worked at a job where your boss hired a new person, and he paid their wages by reducing how much he paid everyone else?

It is true that since women have entered the workforce, we have shifted from generally being able to support a family on one income, to needing two incomes. The correlation is there, but to blame that shift on women entering the workforce is to ignore everything else that has happened in the world in the last 60 years. It's a vastly different place now. Globalization happened, and I believe an inevitable result of that is going to be more economic parity between countries. A lot of work that used to be done in the United States is now being done in China, India, and other Asian countries. We have raised their standard of living, partly at the expense of our own.

annoyedatwork · 2011-09-26T18:01:41+00:00

It's not quite that simple. It's about 45 minutes, but very enlightening.

ignatiusloyola · 2011-09-26T16:08:02+00:00

Women weren't forced to stay at home. There were certain things that were not there, like birth control and expressed and powdered milk and a surplus of female friendly jobs that caused the effect.

2011-09-26T16:10:55+00:00

As for the "problem" with the surplus. Technology created a surplus of female friendly jobs beginning in the 1970s.

As for less money, a couple both working full time today earns has less then the same couple with one working full time in the 1970s. See "The two income trap"

hopeless_case · 2011-09-26T17:55:41+00:00

That would only make sense if there were a fixed amount of wealth that could be created in a year. If that were true, we would never have progressed beyond the stone age.

BinaryShadow · 2011-09-27T10:28:08+00:00

The problem is more to do with middle class wages stagnating as housing prices and cost of living continued to rise due to inflation and the introduction of outsourcing.

2011-09-26T16:27:15+00:00

its among the reasons, but it is not a sole cause. That being said, it is more of a side effect than a consequence.

But reaganomics, general inflation, and a globalized economy have all had their impact as well.

2011-09-26T17:01:24+00:00

It is far from the only reason, but it is pretty clear that the increase in the proportion of adults working (or seeking work) has depressed pay compared to where it would be otherwise. (You can argue that the greater workforce has improved the economy, but it also seems clear that most ordinary working people - in the US at least - have not significantly benefited from the economic growth of the last few decades.)

That doesn't mean it's right to impinge on a woman's right to work on the same basis as a man (given equal capability/ability and contribution) - sometimes the morally right thing to do leads to an undesirable consequence. Only real ideologists claim that their approach magically solves all problems.

thetrollking · 2011-09-26T18:43:33+00:00

Yeah, a lot of this has to do with competition. It used to be that men mainly competed with other men of the same class. This breaks down when you look at the poorer classes in society where women always worked but holds true for upper class and middle class and some labor intensive aspects of the lower class.

Then we expanded, doubled roughly, the labor force and men had to compete(still do) against their wives and future wives for jobs and benefits.

If you double the labor pool then you can drive down wages by about half.

But...

This is only one aspect of the problem. Today we live in a global economy so we don't just compete against men and women in America(or your home country) but also against men and women in China or south Korea or Canada or Egypt. This lowers or raises the bottom line for workers depending on whether it is a contracting or expanding society/economy.

India and China are expanding at drastic rates and now their average and lower class workers are making more than ever. In America we are contracting due to many different factors and we are losing ground on wages.

There are many vectors to look at and women play a role in all of them, the same as men and especially the elderly.

carchamp1 · 2011-09-26T21:02:19+00:00

Well, a couple things have happened. One, as you mention, more women have been educated and entered the workforce. Two, thanks to modern convenience the utility of the housewife has eroded almost entirely (I wouldn't say women used to be "forced" into housework. It was more like they needed to be there). So, it is MUCH harder these days for the average man to keep a housewife. I would NOT say, however, that "everyone gets less money". None of this is bad IMO.

r2r2y · 2011-09-26T15:56:56+00:00

yes.

of you double the size of your labor pool, your laborers will work for much less.

truthjusticeca · 2011-09-26T16:17:24+00:00

This is where I question the accusations that feminism is a socialist conspiracy.

Doubling the labour pool increases supply and lowers wages. Capitalists are laughing all the way to the bank.

thingsarebad · 2011-09-26T16:56:22+00:00

women weren't forced to stay home, shaddup

getthefuckoutofhere · 2011-09-26T16:06:46+00:00

I mean, if there are more people available to fill the workforce, doesn't that mean that you would pay each person drastically less?

YEP YEP YEP

Demonspawn · 2011-09-26T16:10:53+00:00

Women and the vote: Our government went from 2% of GNP to 40% of GNP since women have had the vote. All of those extra taxes take money out of a family's pocket.
The drive for the "family-friendly" workplace compounded by females shoved into work by affirmative action (and the lawsuits for those who don't comply) has made it much to expensive for businesses to employ American workers. To compete on the global scale, they need to hire workers in locations to keep labor costs, driven by mandatory government programs and entitlement, down.
The more women we keep in the workplace, the more they demand (and receive) special treatment, the better it will be for corporations to hire workers where that is not the case. There are women that would better the workplace and productivity, but at the cost of allowing the vast majority of women into the workplace is an overall cost rather than an overall gain.

Jo3M3tal · 2011-09-26T18:36:33+00:00

I mean, if there are more people available to fill the workforce, doesn't that mean that you would pay each person drastically less?

Only initially. The economy recovers and more jobs open up. Unemployment was less than 5% in 2007 ref

GDP has been on a consistant rise as well as income GDP ref;income ref

Remember that is is americans that make jobs as well as fill them. Women can start up jobs and hire women that produce product that doesn't interfere with a man's ability to get a job or the wage he will make. Think of your job as taking a percentage of the product the US makes. If the us makes more things, then has more jobs, you will have smaller percentage of a larger gdp.

The general rule of thumb is more workers = more money for everyone in the long term, less in the short term. More money later because efficiency and job competition increases. If there are 4 companies making the same product instead of 2, there is a better chance of one of them coming up with a great innovation that moves the industry forward.

spiral-staircase · 2011-09-26T16:20:29+00:00

Back when women were generally forced to stay home, a house was pretty able to support a family on a single income. Today, it seems more and more that it takes 2 incomes to support a household.

This is an ubiquitous example of social regression caused by feminism. Especially in the lower classes and poorer families. And this is exactly why I oppose the social and economic emancipation of women, what feminism considers the "right to work" is actually mandatory and it's why the consumerist movement have always supported feminists in the media.

zyk0s · 2011-09-26T18:11:16+00:00

Some believe that having women join the workforce to have more workers giving up their hard earned money as income tax to the government was the main idea behind feminism: Government tells women that they should fight for rights and makes them feel as if being a mother and homemaker is equivalent to being a man's slave, women all join the workforce, more money for the gov't. Don't know if that's actually the case or not, but I wouldn't put something like that past the gov't.

Title	A thought I had about one consequence of the rise of Women's Rights...
Author	TheTyger
Upvotes	9
Comments	51
Date	September 26, 2011 3:52 PM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/krwxy/a_thought_i_had_about_one_consequence_of_the_rise/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/a-thought-i-had-about-one-consequence-of-the-rise.1034082 https://theredarchive.com/post/1034082

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