The End of Growth is a Women’s Issue!
Sharon October 10th, 2011
Perhaps the first widely read piece I wrote was entitled “Peak Oil is a Women’s Issue” and focused on the ways that an energy decline might affect women. At the time it was written (the earliest version appeared in 2004) the peak oil movement was largely a group of men, mostly geologists, oil men, a few economists and journalists interested in a growing issue.
My argument (more refined variations of which I’ve continued making for years) was that women need to organize around energy and environmental issues, because they stand to lose a great deal in a society that has fewer resources to go around.
At least one critic accused me of writing a “handmaid’s tale” and raising an alarm about nothing, which I find sort of funny, because we all *know* that in hard times women and children tend to suffer the most. Assuming that won’t be true requires an argument for why this time will be different.
The UN has already described the ways that the first and most profound victims of climate change will be women. Energy depletion, and the end economic growth will be no different, unless we act to make them different. We need a new women’s movement that has a profound understanding of the ways that energy has shaped women’s expectations and experience, and that can respond to a radically changing society.
Thanks to reader Vickey, we can see that thus far, events aren’t different – women are paying the price again.. Consider what’s happening in Topeka as a more extreme version of decisions being made all over the country:
In Topeka, Kansas city officials are considering a controversial move to decriminalize domestic violence in the city after the Shawnee County government offloaded domestic violence enforcement on to city governments. Cities facing budget cuts and lost revenue are turning to many different cost-cutting measures, but this is perhaps the most extreme. Already, the county government has turned away at least 30 domestic violence cases.
We know that most domestic violence isn’t reported, that most battering victims are so ashamed and afraid that they won ‘t call the police, so the 30 + cases that were turned away are just the tip of the iceberg – we know that women will die unless batterers can be stopped.
Legal protections for women and children should be fundamental, but we live in a society that regards them as optional luxuries to be abandoned in hard times. Without a shift in the way we regard women’s issues, we are likely to see more of this horror.
- women
- Comments(20)
re. “we all *know* that in hard times women and children tend to suffer the most.” How do we know this, exactly? We are in hard times now, and our respective countries are prosecuting wars of dubious morality. As of September 2010 the ratio of male to female adult deaths in the US military was 98.4% to 1.6% (source: DOD). The ratio of fatal work injuries by hours worked was 92% to 8% – a statistic which will deteriorate as safety standards fall and more women stay home to mind the children. (source: bls) Of work-related homicide – 88%/12% etc. etc. Isn’t it more accurate to say that we live in a society that is so casual about male injury and death we don’t even consider it relevant?
The *last* thing Peak Oil needs, surely, as we desperately seek solutions is grievance politics.
Hi Richard,
Yes, people are experiencing hard times, in some countries, and the fact is that safety standards are just one situation that will suffer under those circumstances. All human life should be valued and a rise in death or injury rates for any sector of the population is important. I don’t know anyone that would argue otherwise. My challenge is that all you have done above is contrast the statistics of men against women rather than contrast the statistics of men and women currently against those in more financially stable times.
The main thing about your argument that doesn’t ring true for me though is that because the suffering of women and children tends to be more “statistically silent” it doesn’t become less real. This isn’t about “grievance politics” it’s about the harsh realities. Things like financial hardship within the family unit statistically increases likelihood of domestic abuse, that when times get tough males will tend to employ males and that women without the ability to be financially independent, all those mum’s safely “staying home to mind the children” are even less likely to remove themselves and their children from an abusive situation simply because they feel they have no choice.
Everyone suffers during hard times but just looking to the situations in countries poorer than those of the first world it becomes obvious that the person who earns the money in the family has disproportionate power. That means as growth turns to contraction and more women are selectively excluded from the workforce through hiring practices or are forced to take even less pay, than the current less than totally equitable levels, there is a real chance that there will be disproportionate suffering by this sector of the community. The only thing that has a chance of standing in the way of this is removing the veil of ignorance around the link between energy and women’s rights before things are allowed to slip too far.
Kind Regards
Belinda
In general, I tend to link woman and children and for good reason. The health and well-being of one is utterly dependent upon the health and well-being of the other. While it’s possible to compare the mortality rates of male and female soldiers or workers as a measure of well-being, it is not a particuraly good lens with which to view the world. A more accurate lens would be access to food, education, housing and healthcare as these are universal needs. Typically, woman and children lose in these arenas as well as in the arena of personal safety. Resource depletion has the power to pit “us” against “them” to the detriment of all. We might be well-served to consider caregivers and care needers, parents and children as the consumate “us”. Let us not allow ourselves to be divided by race or gender or religion or class or politics or any other label that detracts from our core.
Richard, that’s an interesting selection of statistics – how about “present deaths from climate change” where more than 70% are women and children. How about world deaths annually from hunger, where more than 75% are women and children. 64% of US food insecure are women and children. One in four children needs food stamps and other food programs to get to the end of the month, while only one in 9 men (and one in six women) does.
We know this because we know it – it is true that military service deaths favor men, and so do dangerous occupations. Those are two of the only statistics that favor men. And it isn’t about identity politics – it is about a fair understanding of how impacts strike. It is interesting to me that people jump to the conclusion that observing that women and children are the most likely victims means setting them against men – all men have mothers, sisters, friends, daughters – and most of them grasp that when the women they love suffer, they suffer too.
Sharon
I began first with just loving cats, but my love of cats quickly grew to loving cat art. I guess because I am also an artist at heart, I found the combination of cats and art to fit me well.
Although I do agree that women and children tend to suffer the most in times of hardship, this time might be somewhat different – at least for some women. On average women are more educated then men now and often earn more money. My understanding is that men have been hit harder as far as unemployment goes this recession. I personally fall into this category. I am both more educated than my partner and earn more money than my partner. We recently relocated because although I had stable employment, he was unable to obtain it where we were (we both have stable employment now).
All of that being said, what is happening in Kansas is frightening. Since when did any kind of assault become a misdemeanor? and why single out domestic violence and not all assault? Truly a frightening prospect.
Belinda – thank you. I believe I have selected three statistics which are likely to deteriorate further (for men) as times worsen, and demonstrated that they are already appalling. The main thing that, in turn, doesn’t ring true about your argument is the self referential fact that, on these statistics, you (as a group) are most evidently *not* silent. To put not too fine a point on it, you never shut up about it. In my country (UK), we have a Minister for Women, prime time radio “Women’s Hour”, de-facto feminist colonisation of our universities, pro-feminist workplace policies, pro-feminist family policies, women’s marches, pink ribbon days, etc. – the accumulated effect of which is an incessant monologue about these “silent” statistics.
I’m glad you do acknowledge the concept of “silent statistics”, however, and point out that it would be a peculiar argument indeed to suggest that the concept is gender-specific i.e. that there are statistics about women’s experiences which can be silent, but there are no statistics about men’s issues which can be silent. Logically, therefore, since men lack the considerable institutional apparatus (and appetite) for constantly advertising all of our grievances, you are more likely to be ignorant of men’s than men are of yours. So, for example, I counsel men who suffer from the suicidal depression arising from prolonged, enforced separation from their children following divorce, in a system that identifies “women and children” as categorically distinguishable from “men” (more of Sharon’s casual prejudice). Our favoured form of suicide is to drive at high speed into a bridge support – it looks like an accident, so does not invalidate insurance policies for our children. Show me that statistic. This is not the place to recite a list: police reporting systems with no mechanism for recording female domestic violence; incarceration gender bias, etc. Sharon has the humility elsewhere in her writings to concede that she over-generalises.
Sharon – thank you. This is your blog, and I am your guest, and so I respect your opinion while disagreeing strongly with your premise. It is the signature of grievance politics to select “an” issue, label it as “the” issue, and seek the establishment of some legal prescription to contain it which, aggregated, secures by gossamer strands a wholesale shift in the political landscape. It is an enormously effective strategy, witness the spiralling academic failure rate of boys at school, persistently high suicide rates amongst adolescent males, female only vocational training, diverging graduation salaries, wealth distribution, predisposition to crime, gang culture, incarceration rate, drug dependency, life expectancy, etc. “These are two of the *only* statistics that favour men”? – astonishing.
Of course we grasp you suffer. Sadly, you are so engrossed in your suffering, you fail to see anyone else’s in turn. And just as the impact strikes one way, it strikes another – where men may once have dominated in the formal economy, women dominate in the informal economy and if there was ever a label for the economy to which we head, it is informal.
I read your post, with its forlorn, alienating statistics culled from old-world processes hopeless skewed by industrial nation political agendas, and my heart sinks. Here we are, sitting on the edge of ruin, trading the tired old “my pain is bigger than yours” stories. I read your blog with enjoyment, and now I can’t. You’ve hopelessly alienated another potential ally, in feminism’s cynically relentless pursuit of political preferment. And you’ve done it at a time when potential allies in the fight against issues having nothing to do with this, that will kill millions of men and women and children without prejudice, are already hopelessly scattered and disunited.
I’m left feeling sad for the Transition movement.
Why would you feel sad for the Transition movement, when I have no official relationship to said movement? Although that seems representative of your general relationship to what’s being said – it is you who assume that saying peak oil is a women’s issue means it *is not* a man’s issue – the either/or thinking seems more a potential problem for all sorts of movements than anything else.
Sharon
Sharon: there are many agents having no relationship to the Transition movement whose actions make me feel sad. Exxon, for example. I can’t think what you mean.
I distinguish between “gender” feminism and “equity” feminism, and being a rational, moral creature, give the latter my full throated support. We should be equal, but on this I am debating with someone whom I will likely predecease due to our different gender-related exposure to occupational hazards during our lives, and our society’s skewed medical priorities.
“Gender” feminism, on the other hand, does not seek equality, but rather a political system which reflects gynocentric notions of the superiority of certain female characteristics. Like, say, which gender makes the best parent.
“Gender” feminism is enjoying remarkable success, particularly in the academic world. “Institution capture” is big business, and business is up. Issues are manufactured (now, apparently, its Peak Oil), political organisations and transnational institutions such as the UN sponsor research by that academic world, which becomes the source of many of the studies and statistics and policies propagated in turn by those institutions.
On closer inspection, bias, distortions, exaggerations and errors in those policies and statistics are revealed. Domestic violence apparently rose 40% on Super Bowl Sunday. When battered women “expert” Lenore Walker was pressed to reveal her data, it transpired she just made it up. Domestic violence against women was claimed to *cause* more birth defects than any other cause combined. Turns out that more women are *screened* for birth defects than are screened for domestic violence. Wolf and Steinem claimed 150,000 American women die of anorexia nervosa each year. It’s 100. etc. etc. – a fire hose of “silent statistics” which to even question is to validate the gynocentric view that there is a structural imbalance in society that requires a gynocentric view to correct.
Your post is ostensibly about “equity”. But your casual reference to “men” and “womenandchildren” betrays “gender” feminism’s gynocentric worldview. We are not dealing with “men”, “women” and “children” here for whom, when challenged, you belatedly assert this issue equally applies. Women are the natural proxy for children’s interests – it’s a superior female characteristic, and to question that is to prove why legal protections for womenandchildren are necessary. Naturally, it’s merely a coincidence that those children’s interests accrue to women as their proxy and guardian, strengthening womens.
It is an interesting process to watch, and Hoff Sommers “Who Stole Feminism” is a fascinating and forensically researched text on this subject. I’m happy to discuss it, but I don’t wish to trespass.
You know it is always intellectually reductionist to reduce any system of thought to only two worldviews, and your case for this being about “gender feminism” is pretty weak. But of course, you should feel free to define my feminism – I’m sure you know better than I do what I think.
Women and children are not a proxy for anything – women and children historically are tied biologically together for the first few years of life by biology – women give birth to children and then, for most of human history and through most of the world provide their physical nourishment for the first years of their lives breastfeeding (worldwide average age of weaning is 4). I find it pretty funny that you have to ignore those very fundamental biological facts to turn the association of women with children into a theoretical problem. Historically speaking, when families are disrupted, women generally (not always, but sufficiently often to make it a more than fair generalization on both a US and world scale) end up with the primary care of economically dependent children.
The fact that this is a historic fact in every human society – that there is no society in human history where men have been the primary caregivers for children before the age of reason, and virtually none where they have been the primary caregivers for both genders of children before their teens (although quite a few where they have been the primary caregivers for older boys separated into men’s areas – still, usually after age 6 and often much older and for boys only) implies that this is not a theoretical category of gender feminism (which is a construct of Hoff Summers and a few other weak thinkers) but a historical and material fact.
Many of the factors that have enabled greater gender equity in the care of younger children are primarily rich world accoutrements, and are tremendously energy intensive – formula, breast pumps, refrigeration, and probably of temporary duration. So yes, women and children are tied together for at least the first 3-6 years of their lives by every piece of evidence we have, and usually much longer. That does not diminish the role or importance of fathers and men in their lives, but in order to imply that this is a purely theoretical abstract, you would have to make a compelling case for why a low energy future will turn upside down everything we know about the historic structure of child caregiving. Feel free to try.
As for feeling sad for the Transition movement, you are free to feel irrelevantly sad for anything you want, in relationship to anything you want, but there’s something faintly surreal about it – rather like feeling sad for Jesus because you saw a grey hat.
Sharon
Sharon – It is indeed reductionist to reduce a system of thought to two world views, and that’s why I didn’t do it. I distinguished between “equity”, which I charitably presumed you meant, and “gender”, which is what I detected, in the way I distinguish between lemons and limes. The idea that on this basis I reduce your systems of thought to two is as odd as the idea that I reduce the system of fruit to two.
Your ideas about women as “natural” caregivers are problematic on three accounts. Firstly, having raised three children, I can assure you the process is not tremendously energy intensive, and your assertion appears to be opportunist.
Secondly, the decision is – in our society at least – overwhelmingly a political one, not genetic. The Norwegian feminist party, for example, secured a recent victory in resisting the slight European move towards a presumption of equal co-parents on separation. Norway has a history of male adolescent suicide which exactly tracks the increase in female-only households (which tracks in turn its rising oil wealth and freedom of choice for mothers to dispose of fathers after insemination)- the evidence that female-only households are better for (male) children is contraindicated.
Thirdly and, I think, fatally for your argument, feminism rises and falls on the idea that sex roles are arbitrary constructions of society created to keep women “in their place”. To concede that there are some gender differences which yield differences in behaviour and career choices is to invalidate the null hypothesis that only discrimination accounts for observable differences in the is condition of men and women. If we are to accept that women have some innate trait that makes them particularly suitable for the task of child rearing, then we cannot exclude the possibility that men also have innate traits – for example, the strength, speed and stamina with which they prevail in sport – which make them particularly suitable for certain tasks. It is then absurd to argue that there are no paid jobs in which strength, speed and stamina convey advantage, and a violation of parsimony to argue *only* sport confers such an advantage. And if historical and material fact is sufficient basis to justify the status quo in childrearing, upon what argument do feminists base the argument that the status quo on higher paid jobs must be overturned? Sounds like a contradiction to me.
If it is the case that not even a low energy future will turn upside down everything we know about the historic structure of child caregiving, then it sounds like child raising is a Mens Issue, for which legal protection for men and children should be fundamental, but that we live in a society that regards them as optional luxuries to be abandoned when energy becomes less available. Have I grasped this argument?
Jesus and grey hats I simply can’t follow.
That your reasoning does not follow is sort of the point. You seem to take contemporary high-energy industrial infrastructure for granted. If you look at societies that use vastly less oil than the developed world, you will in fact see that both historically and in the present, there are no societies where young children are primarily cared for by men – period. A quick survey of history shows this to be true. Read Judith Brown’s seminal essay on women’s work for a very basic summary.
And yes, developed world childrearing is high energy – we consume many times the resources used in much of the world or historically – again, in order to make your case, you simply must erase all material fact and actual history and replace them with abstractions you twist to your convenience. Your version of feminism is hysterically funny, but bears no actual resemblance to feminism, much less my feminism, which you purport to understand. I think we’ve reached the point where the silliness has passed my ability to waste time on this discussion.
Sharon
Thank you, Sharon. As my Energy Economics Masters thesis (Distinction) was an enquiry into the consequence of ignoring the embodied energy of industrial infrastructure in estimates of EROEI, your assumptions about what I believe, in a protest about what you believe are my assumptions, are dizzyingly recursive.
I get my understanding of feminism from reading feminists (where else might I do so?) They just happen to be the ones you appear to disagree with or, as you put it, “are weak thinkers”.
But an argument that ends with the conclusion that “we live in a society that regards [legal protections for women and children] as optional luxuries to be abandoned in hard times” on the basis of what they are doing in Topeca, Kansas isn’t a great example of what might constitute strong thinking on this subject.
For example, your post appeals to what we *know*, then gives us a link which purports to illustrate that knowledge. “Weak thinkers” blow the whistle on feminist statistics, pointing out that, on inspection, they are often loaded with misrepresentation. And sure enough, when you read what has actually happened in Topeca, you discover that the council’s vote to repeal the *local* law under budget pressure was designed to force the county to resume the prosecutions – and *state* law offers *more* protection!
OK – if we’ve reached the limit of your interest in responses to your posting, I’m done too. Might I suggest changing your blog to say “Leave an Agreement”, to avoid any future misunderstanding?
Thank you for your graceful replies, and enjoy Autumn on your farm, which sounds wonderful.
Not sure if this comment will make it through the censors since it’s not very polite, but I’d like to give it a try.
Richard, I think your arguments are a load of pompous, passive-aggressive manure almost entirely lacking in coherence.
Just had to get that off my chest.
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Yeah Jessica, too bad Sharon fed the troll.
Jessica/Margaret – I find feminist methods of discourse fascinating.
The central assertion of Sharon’s piece is that legal protection for women is a luxury which is abandoned in hard times.
By way of supporting evidence, Sharon pointed to a news story about the shift of funding for legal protection of women from county to state. State law offers stronger protection for women than county law. The effect of hard times has been to *strengthen* women’s legal protection. Her example *directly contradicts* the point she seeks to make.
In the course of making the point, Sharon deployed references to facts “we all know”. According to published academic feminists, feminism is polluted with facts which do not survive.
I did not force my questions on Sharon. She placed her thoughts in the public domain and invited comment. Those thoughts are at best incomplete, and could be defective. The only way to find out is to debate.
I don’t think the objections I have raised are unreasonable. I believe it is possible to disagree strongly and remain civil. You pair evidently don’t, or can’t. Feminism is the poorer for it.
(Don’y worry, I don’t propose dragging this out. I only popped back in to get the original news reference. Please accept my best wishes.)
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Just because there’s a sanctioned law under State legislation, doesn’t mean adequate resources will be deployed to deal with domestic violence either. It’s a longer arm to stretch now that a woman can be “denied” protection from County resources. At least with two levels of government before, women stood a better chance of being protected, but as Sharon pointed out, the loss of protection process has *begun*.
Richard, it sounds like you’re frustrated men’s issues don’t get enough air play. That’s fair enough too, they don’t and it’s something men have to start dealing with. But it also sounds like you’re making a plateform for them, based on ensuring women’s issues get demished by sullying feminism as a “beat-up about nothing” movement.
If you wouldn’t counsel a man by telling him their issues don’t exist, then why treat women any different about their issues?
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