i was at our local Women’s Center the other day and ran into Kaitlin
who is continuing Her graduate research. (See my earlier post, “MatriarchalUnderground: Father Didn’t Know Best,” Oct. 25, 2013.) She has accumulated a lot more data and is more confident in the trends She
is seeing. Apparently Women during the past several generations have had a lot
more control than we suspected!
You may think of the '50s and '60s as being the era of the obedient
Woman. Well, think again. And you may think that was not until the '70s that Women
gained some real control and personal freedom. Not necessarily so! Yes, the '70s
were a time when 
Consider the following trends that are materializing in Kaitlin's
research:
§ The more educated the man, the more likely he is to be
in a Female-led relationship. Kaitlin muses that this raises an interesting
question: “If we want to achieve Matriarchy, do we simply have to educate men?”
§ In the majority of couples surveyed by Kaitlin, Women exercised
financial control.
§ In the all cases studied, the husband had more
education than his Wife, but She was still in charge.
§ In the relationships studied. all of the men did at
least some housework, and they did it as a matter of routine as dictated by
their wives
§ In half the relationships studied, men did at least
50% of the housework.
§ In 15% of relationships, men did all the housework.
§ The wife not working outside the home had no bearing
on his doing housework; couples deemed it fair that he take on responsibility
no matter what Her employment status.
§ Women felt that their social life and personal
pursuits took priority over housework; men agreed.
§ About half of the Women interviewed have admitted to having
an affair. Interestingly, when this topic was brought up among the male half of
couples interviewed, none of the men suspected their wives of an affair. Women
apparently keep secrets well, even though most of those who admitted having an
extramarital affair also said they had confided this to at least one Woman
friend.
§ Some affairs were one-night stands, some lasted years.
The number of lovers varied, but no one to date has approached Darlene's 20+gentlemen.
§ Prior to the 1970s, Women with jobs outside the home
were less likely to have an affair than were women who were full-time
homemakers. It was not until the '70s that working outside the home correlated
to women having an affair.
§ Although it's not the subject of Her research, Kaitlin
suspects that today's professional Woman is highly likely to have an affair
because of the attraction that strong, powerful Women have to desirable men. i
can see this dynamic in play with my own boss, Carol.
§ Kaitlin also cites a statistic from some other
research that says that when a Woman earns more than $75,000 per year, the
likelihood of Her having an affair goes way up.
Where is Kaitlin's research headed? An intriguing question. All I can
tell you is that Kaitlin, who regards Herself as a Female Supremacist, is
pursuing a graduate degree and wants to find a college teaching position,
perhaps in a Women's Studies program, from which She can continue to work
inspiring and empowering Women.
d
8 comments:
The above post was my point on an earlier post. Women have always been in control. The only difference is overt or concealed control. Two quotes to re-enforce this point.
Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.”
― Robin Hobb
O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.
Sun Tzu
dennis responds to Sheryl:
Yes, Women have always been in control. Growing up in an all-Female household, for me Women's control was open and apparent. From the outside it may have appeared that our blue collar household was a bastion of patriarchy but, looking a bit closer, one could see that Women, not men, were the real power brokers. Women may have played the game, but only to manipulate men -- and manipulate they did! i admired these strong and powerful Women who, despite the deck being stacked against them, prevailed. i knew Women were in charge and so did many others, Women and men. Kaitlin's research is drawing this out to prove Women's leadership to the skeptics.
d
I'm certain Kaitlin isn't the first to look at socialogical trends within the home over time. I would suspect that she should have 15-20 other sources of similar or related studies. I wonder how her results compares with those. Be interesting to see. I struggle with some of her conclusions such as the wife controlled the finances. Just because she did, probably because her husband was away working doesn't equate to being dominant. Because a man helps around the home similarly doesn't mean the woman has oppressed him and forced him to do whatever he did.
I'd be careful with interpretations especially when the study is approached with an inherent bias which is obviously present.
Furthermore, if there was such a femdom presence in the 50's and 60's then one would think there shouldn't need to be such a revolution needed now. But looking at our society now there is obviously quite a bit of tentativeness on the part of women to assume a conscious and overt dominance and to me that is quite difference than a woman that controls much of the family function. A submissive as well as a dominant woman can do that equally.
Just my two cents.
Having grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, I can honestly say that the study does accurately reflect what generally occurred. Women did control the house, the children, the money and the husbands. That is just what women did. It was not about being dominant or submissive. Even submissive women controlled the house, the children, the money and the husbands.
I grew up in such a household.My mother was the last word on everything. My grandmother was her back-up plan. Everything. Daddy gave her his paycheck, played ball with my brothers, taught us to fish and drive, but the important decisions---"If your mother says it, then that is all."
Men may not have been aware of this, thinking they were in control, but we know that in the 50s and 60s and even the 70s, fathers/husbands were more involved with working outside the home and bringing the money home than with the family dynamics and being involved with their children.
In the 60s and 70s we feminists fought for change in the attitudes of the general society, the workplace, institutional equity, etc. But in the home and family, women held the power, and all of us knew it, and some of us admitted it in public.
Men had PERCEIVED power, but life is not lived in the newspapers or television. The Feminist Movement was when men were finally forced to recognize that they were in fact NOT the boss of us!
That said, you will always have some people who want to live in the 1960s television sitcom world still and fantasize that the Little Woman is in fact subservient to the male. They may enjoy that, but it is not the reality.
Let us remember the play Lysistrata by Aristophenes. The Greek women withheld sex until men signed peace treaties to end the war. So you see, this goes back way before the 1950s in the Western world.
dennis responds to I'm Hers:
Katlin is conducting academic research and has done a broad literature study. Further, there is always bias in any research and this work is no exception; Kaitlin is broadening Her sample set to try to mitigate any bias.
d
dennis responds to Ms.Naydi:
Ms. Naydi, thank You for Your perspectives. Your comments certainly reflect my experiences in the '70s, and numerous individuals i've spoken with over the years attest to Women's authority in the '50s and '60s. i think many have a hard time accepting Female authority because they take it to extremes applying, for some reason, a certain degree of fantasy to the mix. Women didn't need fantasy to be in control. While i grew up in an all-Female household, there were plenty of examples of Women-run households in our neighborhood - no fantasy, only Women who ran things and men who were compliant.
To be more highly educated means you have been shown more options than you might have experienced yourself. Those options include those not practiced by the majority in current society.
That aside a more intelligent male will embrace the concept of Female Supremacy and Female Led lifestyles and not be prejudiced against those who wish to follow such lifestyles.
Femsup
The reason for the correlation between male education and Female control is that the more educated the male was, the more likely it was that he had some sort of Type A businessman's job in an urban center a long commute away from the suburb. Between the stresses of the job and the stresses of commuting he had no energy to dispute his wife's pre-eminence when he was in the home.
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