In a text published October 29 in the newspaper Dagbladet, I argue that the plan of the conservative government to shorten the father quota and make it transferable to the mother is not a wise policy. Fathers’ rights are taken away, in the name of free choice, without testing if the situation is right. All participants in the debate say they want active care-giving parents, yet free, gender-balanced choice takes time to settle, and gender segregated norms and traditions are still strong in Norway. I predicted that taking away the father quota would lead to more difficult negotiations for couples with babies, both at home and at the workplace. See:
http://www.dagbladet.no/2014/10/29/kultur/meninger/fedrekvote/likestilling/debatt/35963182/
Now, a new survey of leaders (N=1003) and one of employees (N=1515) indicate that I am right, at least regarding working life.
The survey report shows continuing gender segregation and care discrimination in Norwegian working life. The situation of recruits and employees who have to care for a baby is very much a contested terrain – even in relatively gender-equal Norway, 2014.
A conflict has built up around pregnant mothers, especially, but fathers meet negative judgments too. 60 percent of female employees have been on sick leave when they were pregnant, and among younger female employees the proportion is 80 percent. As a kind of “response”, 1 of 2 leaders thinks that it is too easy to go on sick leave when pregnant. Many also report that job recruits are not honest, regarding children and parental leave plans.
However, 1 of 3 workplaces does not adjust the job for the pregnant woman, according to the employee survey. 1 of 2 male leaders is willing to break the law, agreeing with the statement that “It is OK to ask if a job candidate plans family increase” [plans getting a child]. Twice as many male leaders, compared to female leaders, agree to this statement. Likewise, 1 of 2 leaders “understands” that companies are reluctant to employ pregnant women.
Even among the employees, 1 of 2 agree that mothers of small children have a lower work capacity, and many also agree that the same goes for fathers of small children. This lower work capacity view is more frequent among men than women, and the gender gap is especially notable regarding fathers (52 percent of men and 39 percent of women agree with the lower capacity view).
The results indicate that gender equal caring arrangements meet opposition not just from leaders but from many colleagues as well, especially men.
Sources:
Øystein Gullvåg Holter: Fedrekvoten i Warszawa [The father quota in Warszawa], Dagbladet October 29, 2014, cf.
http://www.dagbladet.no/2014/10/29/kultur/meninger/fedrekvote/likestilling/debatt/35963182/
Stein Andrè Haugerud: PAMA Proffice ArbeidsMarkedsAnalyse, Sandnes, November 3, 2014, cf.
Klaus Schultze: Audentity (1983). Innovative communication KS 800025-26 (2xLP – photo: signed copy, bought at Ringstrom in Oslo, August 2014).
The title may be a little pretentious, but this is a very good double album.”Audentity” – well, in a sense, yes, it is about audio identity. The songs are symphonic works, up to 31 minutes per LP side. The musicians are really allowed to stretch out.
Instead of poor orchestration (typical of progrock etc), we just get Schultze (“computer and keys, program”) and Rainer Bloss (“sounds, Glockenspiel”) doing several synth voices, replicating an orchestra, and if this is a little limited, it is also often rewarding and fresh. Moreover instead of a drum machine we get Michael Shrieve, excellent on drums as always. Besides Schultze, the album’s biggest surprise is Wolfgang Tiepold on cello, who offers much of the orchestrated feel, playing stellar complex cello along the way.
The Beatles is a major indicator, for this purpose, 1963 onwards.
They were the greatest thing happening for music, at the time. Artists and producers tried to succeed, according to new standards set by the Beatles.
At this date – February 14 – i do not have a full data material on the Beatles. However I have some material.
One analysis of the way “love” is treated in Beatles songs, suggesting three main periods:
1 Mixed – communal. E g She loves you, which not only tells of a woman active, loving a man, but another man, lovingly giving the message. A mega hit of all time, due to this special angle.
2 More troubled – from I feel fine, to Ticket to ride – also gradually, more private, less communal or collective. Increasing misogynism.
3 More reflective – from All the lonely people, She’s leaving home, and onwards. Less directly realist, more widely experiental. Reduction of misogynism.
Later we heard J0hn the main Beatle like he was divorced, Paul happy with Wings, and so on. But I think these were the three main Beatle stages.
“Why don’t we sing this song all together
Open our minds let the pictures come
And if we close all our eyes together
Then we will see where we all come from”
There is not much misogynism that I can hear, on this LP, with the demanding title: Their satanic majesties request. This album was released later in 67, after the three albums described in my first blog post on this topic.
There is no mistake – they really tried to re-adjust their course. I have the original UK LP with the 3D cover. Mick in the center is visible from all angles while Brian is mostly invisible. Brian contributes much to the sound however, a bit like Eno, later.
Richie Unterberger, at Allmusic, writes: “Without a doubt, no Rolling Stones album — and, indeed, very few rock albums from any era — split critical opinion as much as [this ..] psychedelic outing. Many dismiss the record as sub-Sgt Pepper posturing; others confess, if only in private, to a fascination with the album’s inventive arrangements, which incorporated some African rhythms, Mellotrons, and full orchestration. What’s clear is that never before or after did the Stones take so many chances in the studio. (Some critics and fans feel that the record has been unfairly undervalued, partly because purists expect the Stones to constantly champion a blues ‘n’ raunch worldview.) ”
The album was not seen as successful. The opinion of the day, in the music press, was that the Stones should get back to their roots. They had been misogynist before – but in my interpretation, it was mainly after this “slap in the face” reaction to Their satanic… – and the death of one of their members – that they developed this into a more general “sneering attitude”. Thereby the band changed their direction (Sympathy for the devil), contributing to 1970s misogynism in rock music, beyond attitude, as staple fare.
After some years they tried to stop this, in their own records (e. g. You can’t allways get what you want, A fool to cry, Waiting for a friend, and others), yet it was not much heeded, since at the time, the Stones were gradually falling out of fashion. and had become marginal, to pop/rock in general.
A rolling stone?
I was surprised, recording digital versions of my LPs Around and around (1965), Aftermath (1966) and Between the buttons (1967) recently, how mysogynist the Stones were at the time.
It is not just “who needs yesterday’s paper, who needs yesterday’s girl”. It is “Under my thumb” (“the girl who once had her way”), and much else. It smells bad, worse than I remembered. Together with some stylted upgrading of idealized women (“my sweet lady Jane”), the main impression regarding women is that they should be distrusted and kept in command.
True, this was not the main message of the Stones – the main message was one of revolt. But it was part of the “sneering revolt” attitude. No longer the idealized love of the Beatles – love in more low-down ways.
Although the Stones got their largest hit Satisfaction from a text deriding consumer society rather than women, other hits (e g All over now) have misogynist traits. True, the Stones got some of it from the traditions they followed, but there is no mistake, they gave it a further twist too.
However – why is it that misogynist traits in music from this period sometimes go together with the best music? I don’t know. This is a private rule of mine, since it happens on several records (e g Deep Purple: “Why did not Rosemary ever take the pill”) from the 60s and 70s.
I think, perhaps it is not misogynism, this is not what actually happens in the music-making, it is more like a bit daring text, or some other element of revolt, also against women, the things close at hand, as well as society. These are actually two very different aspects, although they have often melted into one. It is only the first revolt aspect that actually engages the good music. Misogynism as a longer term proposition instead tends to stifle artistic creativity. This is my hypothesis.
Later, the Stones tackled life crises and more gender-equal relationships like everyone else, sometimes with depth and perception (You can’t always get what you want; Black and blue; I’m just waiting for a friend). But at the time, in the 1960s, they were the great “opposition” to the love theme of the Beatles, a more working class and less women-friendly version.
“We want Rolling Stones, Beatles go home, yeah yeah” was a slogan here in Norway. The Stones and the Beatles both stood for a new “free” sexuality. But the Stones were associated with “macho” tendencies in the youth revolt of the late sixties.
One could say, the Stones had balls, they tackled this dilemma by the horns, creating songs like Sympathy for devil. “Please allow me to introduce myself – I am a man of wealth and taste”. This is not, actually, so far from Roy Harper: I hate the white man, or other critical songs at the time. Even if it is not Leonard Cohen: Suzanne.
And there is no telling, whether things would have been better, with a more feminist attitude in the band. I think so. Yet according to the morale at the time, it could have meant a less intense, less good band. E g in the direction of the US band Bread (quite a horrible thought. Or a UK version of Jefferson Airplane – doable, but not likely in this setup). The Stones did try the psychedelic direction, including more madonna-like portraits of elevated femininity, without much success (Her satanic majesty’s request). Go back to where you sneer, seems to have been the main reaction – back to your roots.
There is the possibility that the Stones were not mainly recording their own sentiments. They were just doing their best as critical pop-rock musicians, musical journalists – more obviosly so, in songs like Mother’s little helper – recording the sentiments and happenings at the time. This is not all there is to it, but it does connect to a major part of the code at the time, and deserves a hearing.
Together with the assumed “misogynist” texts we find much youthful suffering and will to establish a relationship (e g Time is on my side). The so-called misogynist statements are partly derived from an older blues context and should be seen in a wider context. At the time, it was age and class rather than gender that governed the attentions of the day. The Stones’ early output was part of an age revolt, a youth counterculture, not a gender revolt.
Even so, however, the background misogynist pattern, and the chosen “sneering difference” from the more optimistic love message of the Beatles and others, become more obvious, listening to their 1965-67 albums once more, in 2014.
[NOTE: Raewyn Connell and Michael Kimmel have mailed comments to this text – to be updated]
Jeg fikk Mannsprisen 2013 på et arrangement på Litteraturhuset i Oslo 25.11.13 arrangert av Mannsforum. Jeg er bare delvis enig i Mannsforums synspunkter, men begrunnelsen for prisen var bra – det var en takk til meg som kjønns- og likestillingsforsker. Derfor sa jeg ja.
Project kickoff seminar Oslo Dec 5-6 – more to come.
This new anthology (in Norwegian), edited by Berit Brandth and Elin Kvande and published by Universitetsforlaget / University press, Oslo, is the most thorough overview of research on the father quota in Norway so far.
I have written one of the chapters, discussing the idea of the father quota as an “export item” in Europe. This is not due to “socialist” thinking – but mainly the fact that quota type reforms work out, while other types of reforms don’t work out. They don’t give the same clear results. Therefore, the father premium / quota principle is being introduced or discussed in many European countries today – using different terms, and in different contexts, under right wing as well as left wing governments.
I am reading “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin”, where the American historian Timothy D. Snyder creates a convincing and new portrait of what the World War 2 was mainly about. Perhaps it does not “change our view of the 20th century” but it is certainly interesting reading, even for a reader who already has a couple of shelf meters of literature on World War 2 and has for long understood that the eastern front was decisive. Snyder laconically tells of death numbers, this can be a bit repetitive, it takes a while before the message sinks in. He shows the suffering of Poland, right in the middle of the “bloodlands”.
From the Nazi side, this was a race war, Snyder reminds us, not just a geographical war. And especially, it was changed into a race war, as the geographical war did not succeed. Victory over the Jews through the holocaust became the absurd “answer” of the Nazi regime to the lack of real war victories. Snyder makes a good point here. He calls it “surrogate victory”. He also makes a good point that Hitler was able to learn from the already established Stalinist killing methods, although he could have added other sources of inspiration also, including British methods of subordination, perhaps American. The Nazis generally were willing to learn from anyone regarding killing.
Perhaps Snyder overdoes the Stalin-Hitler connection a bit, although he wisely does not move into a conspiracy terrain. These were different social processes, even if they both ended up with unheard-of numbers of dead people. Ann Applebaum in Gulag – a history draws a line between a system that kills people on and off, like the Gulags, and a system designed for death, like the Nazi Holocaust, and she is right in my view. What Snyder contributes is evidence of extensive politically motivated murdering in the Soviet Union long before Hitler had much power to kill in Germany. People were not just put into Gulags, many were shot, with quota methods. Death by starvation was used as a method, whole regions could be starved to death.
Snyder’s portrait of Stalinist policy from the early 1930is is frightening, confirming the reports of Victor Serge (The Course is Set on Hope, described elsewhere on this site, writing about the great terror at the time.
Ironically, the evidence is also much in line with Marx’s theory (e.g. in Grundrisse and especially in “Results of the Immediate Process of Production”, appendix to Capital Vol. 1, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1978) regarding how modern power systems develop. They develop socially, before they become industrial – in Marx’s terms: formal and real subordination. Snyder’s new evidence on extensive Stalinist shootings fills out Applebaum’s Gulag evidence at this point. As more people were shot, the Gulag inmate status sunk from “erring comrade” to “enemy” and from there to “vermin”.
Here is a Vlady Serge (Victor Serge’s son) drawing from this book. This figure sums up Snyder’s new work regarding “socialist” Russia long before today’s historians could get the material. Snyder rightly calls the mass murder a counter-revolution.
The artist, Vlady Serge:
