Will Creating an Androgynous Society Solve Gender Roles?
The depth of misogyny
According to a recent study from Pew, the economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession has led to surprising outcomes. In fact, the recovery has been almost the same for men and women. But if you dig a little deeper into the data, you will see some disparate results in employment recovery for men and women without a high school education.
In this demographic, women’s presence in the labor market decreased by 12.8% from 2019 to 2021, compared to a 4.9% decrease among men. Although we can’t provide an authoritative reason why this is happening — besides vaguely gesturing towards patriarchy — we can take a good guess: Women without diplomas are overrepresented in the personal service sector, which has been severely impacted by the pandemic.
Our economy, you see, is segregated. Men in the United States produce things, but women serve. I was struck by this report when it flew into my email box last week because I had just finished Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, which is a novel about an alien society without gender — a society where these kinds of problems do not exist, and also an apt thought experiment that asks us: Why? Why are men and women still being treated differently in the 21st century?
