Why "fun feminism" should be consigned to the rubbish bin

[Tumbulu]

249. back now

I think that one has to try to compare these mortality rates in the same units, say # dead per 100,000

Death during childbirth has been tremendously reduced due to great advances in medicine and prenatal care. But we in the US still have a ways to go.

Also there is another measurement- called the "Lifetime risk of maternal death" - for industrialized countries it is 1 in 4300 women die due to some complication of childbearing (way down from 1 in 31, but still a difficult thing for a body to do).

http://www.childinfo.org/maternal_mortality.html

Here's another list of risky jobs with their risk of mortality expressed in deaths per 100,000 workers (I presume per year?) :

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/pf/jobs/1108/gallery.dangerous_jobs/index.html

The point I am trying to make is that people do chose these high risk jobs - men and women both. And these occupations pay the person to work and take these risks on.

Women have only recently been able to choose when/if to bear a child. And the republicans are working very hard now to remove that choice. Up until 100 years ago it was 1 in 100 women died in childbirth. I do not know of anyone being paid to bear a child. In fact for most women the financial suicide of giving up paid work, loosing out on the social security one would be paying into, etc. makes it nearly impossible to stay home with their child even for the first few years - the years that are so critical for the child.

I agree that safety improvements in risky jobs are crucial. Much better now in terms of safety for all professions as well. The interest in and continual improvement of safety standards is important for our entire civilization.

Women tend to take lower paid jobs so that they can spend as much time as they can with children, or be more free to take care of other unpaid family obligations that culturally fall disproportionately on women in our culture.

In my professions as both a scientist and as a farmer I have always made about 60% of what men in the same positions have made. At every job that I left either two or three men had to be hired to replace me and each was paid more than me- and asked to work just 40 hrs while I worked 70+. And I am not unique in this experience. But I am older, this may not be the case these days. At least I hope that some progress has been made.