On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, Neil Rest wrote:
> >It's really rather disturbing considering that theoretically the Soviet
> >Union was a very egalitarian place (highest proportion of female doctors and
> >Engineers in the world etctera) on earth, but stats can be deceiving.
>
> It's less surprising if you also know that jobs like doctor which had a lot
> fo women were also low-paid and low status . . .
>
> Neil Rest
>
I forgot about engineers, than was an even more despised profession. For
both men and women, it was something impossible to make the ends meet with,
unless one had some other semi-illegal income, like fixing cars or TV's,
which also was a male-only occupation. (My mother recently was shocked that
I, a girl, can even _drive_ a car on my own, no talking about fixing
one. And my Mom is pretty much a feminist by that society's standards.)
Guess who was the _most_ priviledged profession (other than party leaders)?
Sales clerks in grocery and other stores. They had direct access to the
distribution of everything from soap to cars, and that made them very
important people. Actually, there were a a lot of women among those. So
there was at least one women's profession that implied some money and power
(and everyone hated them).
Now when I write this, it seems that I lived in some kind of science
fiction society...
Marina
"Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society
happens to be selling at the time."
Naomi Wolf
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