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Published in:
- The Northwest Technocrat, No. 281, October, 1980.
- Article Reprint
Scanned in and lightly proofread and trent
Technocracy offers to the women of North America a goal that is really worth fighting for. Technocracy offers equal incomes for all -- not merely equal pay for equal work. There would be equal income as a right of citizenship. The goal of equal rights under the Price System is just not big enough. The amendment for equal rights falls far, far short of what this Continent has to offer through the social design proposed by Technocracy.
Let it be stated at the outset that fighting for equality under the Price System is the epitome of futility -- in short, it is not worth the effort. The fight for the equal rights amendment (ERA) is jousting at windm il Is brought up to date. Proof? Women won the right to vote in August, 1920; the equal rights movement started shortly thereafter and has continued to the present time -- six decades! The U.S. Congress finally passed the equal rights amendment in 1972, but ratification by the states still has not occurred. Opposition to the equal rights amendment has come not only from men but also from very articulate and determined women who fear social change as much as do men. What neither side realizes is that social change cannot be legislated. It cannot be stopped. It has already happened. It was in the same six decades during which women have been battling for equal rights legislation that the greatest social change in the history of the world has taken place. Politics hadn't a thing to do with it -- except perhaps as an impediment.
At the turn of the century, net production of electric energy was 5,969 million kilowatt-hours. Very few households were wired for electricity. There were no gadgets such as washing machines. It was the old washboard and copper boiler on a wood-burning stove that were used. Human muscle was the source of power. There were few vacuum cleaners as we know them today. Only the affluent had anything resembling power equipment in the homes -- operated by servants (female). The majority of women lived in rural areas or small towns serving the farms. Clothes were homemade on a foot-pedaled sewing machine or sewn by hand. The more affluent, of course, had seamstresses come in perhaps twice a year to do the family sewing. Sewing was one of the very few occupations open to women at that time. Marriage was the primary goal of most women. Meals were cooked on a wood-or coal-burning stove. Every day and every waking moment of every day was filled with household chores to do. Monday was washday, with the water carried in buckets from a well -- and with the clothes out on the line before breakfast! Tuesday was ironing day, with the irons heated on the stove (winter and summer). The clothes were cotton, many heavily starched. Fridays were cleaning days -- with broom and scrub brush, on hands and knees, to get the wooden floors sparkling clean. Saturday was baking day -- home-baked bread to last the week. In between, there were children to care for, gardening to be done and even field work when necessary, if the family lived on a farm. There was precious little time for contemplating or worrying about ``rights.'' Women, then, were just too busy and too tired at day's end to do much about it. It was a dawn-to-dusk workday. There was no time for a career outside the home except for perhaps teaching for the unmarried. This was the time when the adage of ``Women's place is in the home'' held sway, simply because there was no choice. It was not unusual for women to bear 10, 12 or more children. The state of hygiene and medical help being what it was at that time, not all children survived to maturity. Birth control was something that was only whispered about and not available to most women. A woman, generally, was worn out by the age of 35. It was also not unusual for a man to have had three or four wives in his lifetime. Voting would not, could not, have helped women, then, any more than it is helping them now.
By 1920, the use of electricity increased almost tenfold -- to 56,559 million kilowatt-hours. That was the year the 20th amendment was ratified, following several decades of women fighting for the right just to vote. It was a very dubious victory, in keeping with the history of political chicanery. The inventor who developed the small electric motor did more for women's liberation than all the rhetoric of all the politicians since George Washington's time. The development of the small electric motor paved the way for the mass production of vacuum cleaners, washing machines, beaters, and a myriad of other gadgets that are taken for granted today. Social change was on the way with a vengeance.
At the turn of the century, the family, for the most part, was a self-contained unit. The man worked outside the home; he was the sole bread winner; the woman stayed home taking care of the home and children, completely dependent upon the husband and father for economic sustenance. She, in turn, provided him with free services of a cook, laundress, seamstress, gardener, housekeeper, nurse, teacher and mistress. They were mutually dependent upon each other. It was all hard, unremitting labor, but more or less independent of outside needs.
Most everybody was in the same situation. With the development of cheap electricity, homes were soon wired, eliminating many tedious chores for women (and for men, too). Electric stoves began to make their appearance, eliminating wood-chopping. Expanding industry demanded greater record-keeping. With the invention of the typewriter and other technological developments in the home and in industry, women began to flock to offices and factories. In 1950, the total production of electric energy was 388,674 million kilowatt-hours; this increased to 844,188 million kilowatt-hours by the end of the decade. The family, as it was known at the turn of the century, had changed drastically. It no longer was a self-contained unit. Small towns around the periphery of large cities became ``bedroom'' communities. That is, people living in the small towns obtained jobs in the large cities and commuted back and forth. A home or apartment became, to a large extent, merely a gathering place for family members in the evening. Entertainment, work and schooling were obtained outside the home.
Social change, brought about by the installation of energy-saving devices in the home, the farm, the factory, is in full swing. Today, our use of electricity is astronomical. Voting had nothing to do with it. Thomas Davenport, of Brandon, Vt., patented the first electric motor in 1837. Nicola Tesla developed the electric motor to where it could be used universally. These men were apolitical. They simply had an idea and they developed it. The commercial use and exploitation was made by Price System promoters, not for the liberation of anybody or any class, but because it was profitable. In the process, both men and women have been ``liberated'' from the back-breaking toil that obtained from early history. The irony, here, is that the vested interests that promote labor-saving gadgets for profit are mostly the same vested interests that promote the insult of women being treated as second-class citizens. Their wage scales, as compared to men's, for the same type or work, attest to that.
Technocracy offers to the women of North America a goal that is really worth fighting for. Technocracy offers equal incomes for all -- not merely equal pay for equal work. There would be equal income regardless of the work, be it menial or cerebral. The goal of equal rights under this Price System is just not big enough. Where do today's feminists want equality? In business? In politics? Both these endeavors are legal, lawful, confidence games. A politician operates from one election to the other; a businessman operates on the profit basis -- if it pays, he will support almost anything. The financial balance sheet is his criterion. The amendment for equal rights falls far, far short of what this Continent has to offer through the social design proposed by Technocracy. After six decades of fighting for equal rights, women are still discriminated against in the job market. Sexual harassment is one of the recurring complaints of women who have succeeded in invading traditionally male occupations. Fearful of losing their foothold, after years of schooling and preparation, women either submit or work in less than ideal conditions. In a Technocracy, both men and women would be free to give their attention to the job, without fear of intimidation. If a person were transferred or demoted, the move would not affect his or her income; it would be guaranteed for life.
Women would also be freed of having to work a ``double shift.'' That is, after a day at the office or factory, women now generally still have to do the housework, cook or whatever; if they have a family, children, it is doubly hard. No better picture has been drawn of this situation than the one by Ann Berk (My Turn, Newsweek, September 29, 1980): ``Most working women in their 30s and 40s are physically exhausted and emotionally drained, hysteria nibbling around the edges of their lives. They're the ones who still believed in having babies, who were taught to please men and sometimes even enjoyed it. And while they no longer worry about floors you can eat off, they find it hard to shelve their children's needs and the desires, however quaint in 1980, of their men. Those in their 20s who think they have a lock on sanity, because they've decided against having children and permanent attachments, may wake up when they're 50, if they haven't succumbed to a heart attack or lung cancer, to find themselves curiously empty.
``However women play it, there are hard choices to be made that all entail loss -- and while that career clock is ticking away, so is the lifeline to the rest of the territory that remains steadfastly theirs. For babies still usually turn to their mothers, women still usually keep the children after a divorce, do the cooking, the cleaning and laundry and decorate the house and call the plumber. There are still ballet lessons and piano and softball practice, dental appointments and teacher conferences, and no one has yet found a way to eliminate adolescence.The beat goes on -- it's merely in double time now.'' This is the price that our present social system extracts from one segment of the population. The march of technology has pushed women out of their traditional, historic roles, but the Price System has not ``moved over,'' has not made way for the social change that technological innovations have created.
It must be borne in mind that the Price System is a system of disadvantage. So long as it exists, so long as we try to operate under a Price System, someone, or some group, or race, will be exploited by the small minority that has succeeded under the rules of the game. Women have long been on the receiving end of this system of disavantage. Men have promoted this, to a large extent, because of a belief that women are a threat to their jobs. In a Technocracy, this threat will not exist. Many myths regarding the relationships between men and women have already been laid to rest by the implacable march of technology.
Up until the 17th century it was known by all the most learned men and the ecclesiastics that men were the dominant factor in procreation. In some societies it was thought that men were the sole 'factor and women merely incubators. Then the microscope was developed! Although it took a couple more centuries or so of trial and error, (refining of the lenses to make it more accurate and workable), in 1854 someone observed the fusion of the ovum and sperm (this in the sperm and egg of a frog!). So, there was the irrefutable evidence of the female being equally responsible and a full partner in the creation of another life. (In some circles it was even conceded that the female might, after all, have a soul!). This startling development (fusion of the sperm and ovum) shattered ten thousand years of ignorance, superstition and bigotry regarding women.
Unfortunately, new myths developed which were just as denigrating to women: it was felt that women's brains were too fragile for higher education and that women were unable to fend for themselves; they must have a man to take care of them. It was held that women were unfulfilled unless they were pregnant and caring for children. ``Barefoot and pregnant'' was only one of many derogatory terms expressing this view. With the world filling up with people, both men and women are waking up to the fact that procreation, unchecked, threatens the very survival of mankind.
The myth that this is a ``man's world'' and woman merely an extension of the male, a subordinate being, is being shattered by the march of technology. Also, the march of technology is obliterating the line between ``woman's work'' and ``man's work.'' Women are not inferior, nor are they superior to men; they are different, but of equal importance. They are both energy-consuming biological entities. In a Technocracy, no differentiation will be made as to sex, as far as incomes are concerned. Neither the male nor female will be penalized for being male or female.
The really hard work is done by extraneous energy
today. Muscle power is on the way out as far as having
to make a living by it. A restructuring of the entire social mechanism
would eliminate many problems; they
just would not exist. Many jobs for which women now
compete will be eliminated -- advertising, for one. One
of the most powerful mediums in which the myth of
women's inferiority is promulgated is television commercials and
programs. As Kathleen Newland has pointed out (Sisterhood of
Man, W.W. Norton & CO.), they
usually depict women as ``economically and psychologically dependent,
deceitful, incompetent, indecisive,
foolish and cruel, or competitive toward other women.''
In another study, women in ads were almost exclusively
portrayed as sex objects or ``moronic housewives obsessed
by cleanliness.'' Huckstering being one of the mainstays
of the Price System, it would be impossible to eliminate
this bias, because it is too profitable. Given the number
of hours devoted to TV viewing by the majority of
people, it is easy to understand the difficulty of changing
the image the world has regarding women. To quote
from a report in the Unesco Courier of July, 1980,
written by Margaret Gallaqher, ``In many ways mass media
systems are a reflection, in microcosm, of distribution of
power and control . . . In the sense that cultural agents of
institutions contribute to the socialization process within
systems which are directed by political and economic imperatives, the
mass media's role is primarily to reinforce
definitions and identities set in a framework constructed
for, and by, men.'' In other words, the status quo will be
maintained as long as it is profitable. Only by elimination
of the entire system of disadvantage can both men and
women develop to their full potential.
This does not mean that there would be no conflicts between the sexes. Far from it. Given the orneriness and cussedness of the human race, there would still be much for the Social Sequences to do in this field. This would be a special sequence that would concern itself with human relations. Although our present judiciary system presides over conflicts between humans, the litigation is over property rights, for the most part -- attorneys battling each other in a ``court of law.'' Under the Price System, justice is on the side of the most money. The personnel in a Technocracy would have no such restrictions. Any conflict between humans would be dealt with by the most objective and impersonal methods available. Competing for jobs will not be a point of conflict except only so far as ability goes. Women and men will be trained and given every opportunity to develop whatever skills they have. They will not receive an income for what they know or do, but because they are citizens of this Continent.
The energies of women, today, can be directed toward the elimination of a system that uses the most flagrant, obscene processes of wasteful destruction of resources to maintain itself. The evidence is before us in many ways -- and tolerated by men and women alike. Women have been as short-sighted as men (equally so!) when it comes to interpreting the events that are unfolding before our eyes: the disappearing species of birds and animals of various kinds; the disappearance of our most valuable prime farmland; the disappearance and ravaging of forests all over the world -- for the sake of profits; the exploding populations that make more and more demands on the world's dwindling resources. Women have pursued the same short-sighted goals as men -- jobs, possessions, prestige.
Paradoxical as it sounds, unless we do institute a system of scientific governance, a scientific method of production and distribution on this Continent, and soon, we shall not even have any descendants to study us the way we now study our ancient ancestors. We shall have to institute a system that treats all humans equally, male and female; black, brown, white or purple; not especially because of any humanitarian reasons, but because it is too costly and too wasteful of resources to maintain this Price System. Technocracy offers a higher standard of living than has been imagined by even the most affluent, with none of the pressures or the need to be wary of someone taking it away that exists today. In a Technocracy, there would be no ``second class'' citizens because all incomes would be equal. And the irony is that we had better do this or else our very survival will be in jeopardy. We can no longer afford to continue to indulge ourselves in the wasteful degradation of our resources for frivolous, throw-away junk. We must institute a system wherein only the optimum design will be used, whether it be in cars, homes or household equipment of whatever kind -- designs that will last. It can be done. And, for the first time in the history of the world, women will be accepted for what they are: part and parcel of the human race on an equal basis with men.