Don't say you're too tired to fight

I sent out a bunch of emails asking people if they're interested in being my adviser today! Very much sound like a broken record.

I got a bunch of out of offices (2 out of 5 so far...), was emailing a lot of academics who work on gender and education, female labour supply, paid parental leave etc. so the irony was not lost on me when it turned out two of them were on mat leave.

Although..... one of the said academics on mat leave actually followed up because she was so interested in my topic!! Yay things are going somewhere 😊

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This is going to be a bit of a disjointed post because I'm currently thinking about too many things at once, these include (but are not limited to):

• getting the necklace that my mum bought me when I was 14 fixed because it broke this week 😭
• going to my parcel locker to collect a bunch of shoes I bought on to try for wensirama's wedding
• Taylor Swift (listening to only the young/I forgot that you existed)
• some mysterious, secret business
• replying to two academics that just responded to my wall-text about writing on gender economics
• listening to some lecture recordings
• what kind of depressing, professional services job I want to work in after I graduate
• whether I fit the slick image of Professional Woman who is most likely a liberal feminist (answer: no)
• why is my linkedin profile pic so derp
• this depressing paper about women taking on more low-promotability tasks in the workplace
• how I can do the things that I find most valuable in a workplace, despite knowing that others consistently undervalue it, even if they recognise that it's something that makes the workplace better off
• how pervasive and insidious the patriarchy is - 'male' tasks are valued higher than other tasks, and 'male' tasks are most likely to be done by males. Money and general notions of success also seem pretty male-biased given lots of female labour isn't valued by the market. And guess who actually gets to participate in the market? The rational decision-maker/homo economicus, who only exists as a self-interested, rational market participant because all his emotional needs are taken care of by others. While homo econ was busy maximising his own utility, homo econ's mum was probably making dinner for him. From this paper:

This takes us to a fundamental critique of homo economicus, defined as a self-sufficient, selfish, and rational individual, who is active, has perfectly defined preferences, is not influenced by society, and interacts on the basis of self-interest in an ideal market where prices are the only necessary means of communication. This agent is faced with unlimited desires and limited resources and is always successful in optimizing his/her choices. This figure is used as a universal metaphor of the human being, even if its qualities are those that our culture traditionally associates with hegemonic masculinity, while it lacks everything that is traditionally associated with femininity: feeling, body, dependence, community, abnegation, tenderness, nature, unpredictability, passivity, and connection (Marçal 2016). In other words, this figure symbolizes the privileged subject of the dominant economic system (white, bourgeois, male, adult, heterosexual, with no functional diversity, urban, and Western), transforming the rest of the population into the “other.”

The funny thing is, culturally feminine characteristics might be more important for a developed country like ours, which will need to rely on productivity gains (not just population growth) if it wants to continue its growth trajectory. What might improve productivity? More investment in human capital i.e. education. And guess what, females are more likely to invest in the education of children than men.

The other funny thing is, I've come across more men than women in my life (not saying there aren't women like this) who take homo economicus (a thin model of an agent specifically so economists can easily maximise utilities across populations by making very few assumptions) and make it their raison d'être. Maximising welfare by maximising self-interest might be legit if you're a no-face, no-named data point in an overlapping generations model, but to take 'greed is good' from that context and adopt it as your moral compass is an incredible abuse of both the economic model in question and the meaning of life in general. \end{rant}

And I guess the other thing I was thinking about is that the workplace patriarchy, gender pay gap, emotionless men (generally speaking - my wording in this post is generally not very eloquent) are all the status quo. Meritocracy is the PC name for the entrenched patriarchy in most workplaces. Not fighting and not doing anything means you preserve the status quo and let the inequality continue. There is no innocent bystander here. Of course standing up to structural barriers is scary and I'm not saying everyone needs go out there and start doing it now, but we need to at least start from a point where no one can say "it's not my business". Because by doing nothing, you are enabling it. You are an enabler of gender inequality that hurts both men and women, the people you love, your future kids should you choose to have any, victims of family violence, men who don't understand consent, kids who don't identify with their socialised gender identity and would rather die etc.