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Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
I think this skill/ability is something that women have actively promoted, probably to compensate for the rarity of opportunities to succeed in the business world. With that world changing, it now continues by tradition, and at least has the divorce courts convinced it's true.
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I'd agree with that to an extent. The value of nurture has changed in recent history. What's intriguing, however, is that when nurture was seen as an exclusively female occupation divorce courts leaned heavily towards giving custody to the father. It is only in the last 30-40 years that women have been preferred in custody questions.
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As a result of trying to gain traction, and respect, in the business world?
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Partly that yes. But also partly women's participation in public discourse. Often you find that questions of gender become very prominent during times of economic upheaval, or at the advent of major technological change. As work and workplaces change, there is a new struggle to define them in gendered terms. It's fairly understandable that this would happen. Right or wrong, we tend to conceive of gender in hierarchical terms and work in gendered terms, and we assign a greater economic value to masculine skill. When the economic landscape shifts, for example with the introduction of new technology, that throws into question, potentially, the gender of the work. This is particularly acute when a technological shift has changed a job from heavy phyiscal labour, to lighter machine operation; or when a job which is primarily auxillary in nature starts to take on more dominant roles: the role of the nurse in western medicine has expanded from comfort-giving and bandaging, to minor diagnostic and even in some cases minor surgery (very minor, and mainly in the case of practice nurses).
This shift in nursing, intriguingly is mirrored by a subtle shift in its gender assignation: it is more acceptable now that there are male nurses. It is still, however, primarily auxillary to the role of Doctor, which we culturally still see as 'male', despite women's participation in that field. Consequently, we still have a slight cultural discomfort with the male nurse.
Currently a very interesting trend is happening within computing. The more highly technological the field, the more likely it will be coded male, at least at the higher levels. We are over a quarter of a century in to the true 'computer age' and our cultural markers for people who work within the computer industries, both hardware and software are overwhelmingly male. There have always been women working in the field, but it's only relatively recently that women have started to go into it in numbers that could change the landscape. It's quite interesting to watch that change.
K that turned out way more rambling than I'd intended...but in a nutshell, economic and technological changes of magnitude tend to enforce a redefinition, or reinforcement of gender identities, which is played out through workplaces and popular discourse.