[VodkaHaze]

I don't think it's a male fantasy. I also don't think it's biological. Just look at how women and men are socialized from a young age.

Example: up until recently, many young girls in the west grew up on Disney princesses. Rewatch the movies, and pay attention to the female protagonists in those movies being active vs passive agents. Most are passive -- they're simply dealt a series of events (which generally happen only because they are beautiful or otherwise intrinsically valuable, not because of how they act).

Being exposed to those narratives from a very young age surely has an effect on identity, personality formation, etc.

[mirimir]

Yes. I totally agree.

I was arguing that how societies got to that point, over the past few millennia, was an historical accident. Or a series of accidents. There have been matriarchal cultures, for sure. With modern military technology, there's arguably no reason why they couldn't become dominant. But just a few decades ago, there was.

[Clubber]

Not only that, but her mother was brought up that way, and her mother, and her mother, etc. The Civil War in the US broke that mold without a doubt, as certainly did WWII, but the people who make the rules and make the propaganda love inertia and keep trying to push women back into that traditional role, even though it is unhealthy in today's knowledge economy.

[gaius]

unhealthy in today's knowledge economy

As I say above, it depends what you are optimising for. Not that long ago, a typical single-income household could afford a house, a car, a couple of vacations a year and to send the kids to college and to save some. Now a typical dual-income household is struggling to make ends meet. I don't have any strong feelings either way on whether the man or the woman should be the breadwinner; that's up to each individual couple to decide between them. But it's unclear how making dual-income the norm is "healthy" for anyone.

[Clubber]

>But it's unclear how making dual-income the norm is "healthy" for anyone.

It's already the norm and has been for quite a while now. I'm specifically speaking on women getting paid their value. I mean if both partners have to work 40s, then might as well maximize profit on that labor.

[laughfactory]

It may be the "norm," but their point was whether the dual earner approach is optimal. I.e., whether it "should" be the norm. Truth is dual earner started as a way to try and vastly increase the household income. Unfortunately all it did was double the supply of labor and drive down real wages. This isn't a gendered argument. We would all likely be better off if every couple chose one of them to work the 9 to 5, and the other one to manage the home and finances (and pursue side ventures). If this happened we'd hope to see real wages increase for those left in the labor market. To some degree we're already seeing this. Labor participation among males is at its lowest point in decades and still falling. Though it's still early days so real wages haven't yet increased to compensate. Unfortunately this may not happen because corporate America is used to plentiful cheap labor, and as the labor supply diminishes they're pursuing automation strategies. In other words, corporate America has options for adjusting to the ebbs and flows of labor supply which they used to lack.

Even now the dual earner household exists because many people believe it improves their lifestyle. But let's be honest, most people wouldn't want to work if they didn't have to. Sure, in the absence of the need to make a paycheck they'd likely still do productive, valuable activities, but very few like to work for corporate America. Most jobs suck. Most managers suck. Most of the time pay sucks. Having a job isn't (or shouldn't be) special for either gender, it's a necessity to whatever point it takes to keep a roof over your head.

Maybe when the robots take all our jobs we'll finally find a better way of living.

[mirimir]

How did the Civil War do that? Was it the war economy, as in WWII? That makes sense.

Edit: http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/women-in-th...

Wow. I hadn't thought of it that way.

[yellowapple]

It's great to see that Disney is starting to branch out of that formula, though. Frozen and Zootopia are excellent examples thereof.

[mirimir]

And "Brave". I loved that :)