My Friends, I am angry. Very angry. Bone-achingly, teeth-grindingly, put-on-a-smile-for-the-camera-honey-frustratingly angry. I am angry that women are underrepresented in federal politics, both in the US and in my country (Canada). I am angry that women are underrepresented in the upper echelons of Corporate America and Canada. I am angry that women are over-represented in poverty statistics. And this anger grows every time another election roles by and very little changes, every time a Stupak-like amendment is voted for, every time I turn on the TV and Proctor and Gamble (a company run mostly by men) is telling me what I need to do to be fresh and clean, and every time a salesperson addresses my male companion before me.
But mostly I am angry that I contribute to this system, this patriarchy. Every dollar that I spend on an item produced by a company run by men is a little vote reinforcing the system. Every literal vote for a political party run by men tells them that I'm cool with being represented by people who do not have my best interest at heart. I'm tired of women being treated like we are powerless, like we don't count. I say that it is time to show that we do have power. I say that it is time to force the powers that be to let us in, or lose us. As over 50% of the adult population, we have strength in numbers. As the people who, traditionally, do the household grocery and holiday shopping, we have strength in dollars. I say that it is time to use it.
My proposition is this: a boycott. Or a man-cott if you prefer. A
system-cott may be more appropriate (and less inflammatory). Let's use
our dollar-votes and votes-votes to express our anger. Think about the
things you buy on a daily or weekly basis: who profits from your
purchases? If a woman ultimately profits, glut yourself sister! If a
man ultimately profits, hold back. Look for other options - instead of
buying your daily coffee at Starbucks or Tim Horton's (for my fellow
Canucks) make it at home and bring it in a reusable mug. Is the make-up
you buy sold by L'Oreal (11 out of 15 BOD members are men) are the
feminine "hygiene" products you buy made by Proctor and Gamble (11 out
of 14 BOD members are men)? It is not hard to find owned-by-women
replacements on-line (think DIVA Cup!) The meat and vegetables you buy
at the grocery store? Chances are they are grown and processed by men.
Obviously, we all need to eat, but we can eat smart. We can ask these
companies what protections they have for victims of sexual harassment
in their factories. We can find out what percentage of their work staff
is female. Same goes for clothes, alcohol, book publishers, and music
producers. We can pick and choose who we support with our dollar-votes.
On to the service profession: Is your doctor male? Request a woman.
Even if that's not possible with the doctor shortage going on, if every
female patient requests a female doctor that's going to make an impact.
Send your request in writing so the clinic has a hard copy. How about
your dentist? Hair dresser? Car mechanic? How often do you eat at
McDonalds, Harvey's, Wendy's, Swiss Chalet, or Montana's (to name a
few)? How about your local restaurants? If you ask, many will be owned
by men, but there will also be many that are owned by women. Eat at the
latter. Write to the restaurants you have stopped eating that and tell
them why they have lost a customer (please disregard if your local
restaurant and its owner do good for your community - i.e. provide
healthy, vegetarian, and/or organic food, support pro-women actions,
etc).
Your votes-votes count too. Vote for a woman. If a woman is not
running in your riding (Canada) or district (USA), vote for a man with
a pro-woman platform. If neither a woman nor a pro-woman man is
available, don't vote. Use the time you would have spent voting to
write a letter to your party and tell them why you didn't vote. Yes,
yes, if we don't vote only men will be voting and then only men will
get elected! If a female representative is getting 100% of the female
vote (plus our male allies!) how long before the other districts and
parties cotton on and start adding more women to the ballot?
I'm not saying this is the perfect solution, it has problems (which I
know you'll highlight in the comments section). But if we are over 50%
of the adult population, we have power in numbers, dollars, and votes.
We can use it to send a very powerful message to the powers that be.
Think about it, how do you use your dollar- and vote-votes? What can you change to support your sisters?
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If your goal is to make feminists look like rabid men haters while not actually changing the world, then I think this idea is a winner.
You do realize that you are calling for people to boycott businesses just on the basis of the sex of the owner, right?
Yes, yes, if we don't vote only men will be voting and then only men will get elected!
It actually turns out that the greater the percentage of men among voters, the more likely the representative is to be a woman. Take a gander. Now, I'd always encourage everyone to vote (except, of course, those legally barred from doing so), but it's always wise to check one's assumptions.
I think I have better things to do then discriminate on the basis of sex.
That should be 'than'=)
Your votes-votes count too. Vote for a woman. If a woman is not running in your riding (Canada) or district (USA), vote for a man with a pro-woman platform.
So a woman is always preferable to even a pro-woman man?
You'd urge people to vote for Sarah Palin, should she be the nominee in 2012, over Barack Obama?
Voting for women is not always the best choice for women's rights. There are, after all, quite a few Republican women in the House and Senate.
i totally agree with this argument, except for one thing: when did obama become pro-woman?
This is pretty classist, IMHO. We can't all afford to only buy what you estimate as "pro-woman" products.
Hey Commentors
Thanks for your comments! I realize there are a lot of problems with this proposal (discriminating based on sex is a big one, as is the Sarah Palin phenom).
I mostly wrote it to re-emphasize for all of us how great the power imbalance is in the upper echelons of most societies.
If you think "discriminating based on sex" then what do you see as the positive part of your proposal?
Excuse me. If you think "discriminating based on sex" is a problem, then what do you see as the positive part of your proposal?
Sadly, not all women are pro-other women. I see your point in wanting to promote women's advancement, but if it comes down to giving money to a company/candidate that is woman-friendly but largely male-run/male vs. one that is female-run/female but supports policies that are hostile to women, I'm going to pick the former hands-down. (Sorry if that's hard to parse, I've been up since 4 am.)
I'm also not sure (with all due respect) what the point is of brewing coffee at home vs. buying from Starbucks, unless you're growing your own beans. Chances are the folks who make Folger's et al are mostly men, too.
It is posts such as this that engender disrepute of the entire feminist movement. It is naive and gender divisive in the extreme. It also insults a hell of a lot of women who don't share your particular definition of what it means to be "empowered."
Do you want to encourage men to boycott women? Seriously, who would that be hurting?
As a woman I would love men to boycott me. To completely leave me alone. Would be a big improvement to my life.
Voting for a woman just because she is a woman is just as sexist as voting for a man just because he is a man.
Also voting for a woman because she is a woman infantilizes women by suggesting they are not qualified, tough or intelligent to be judged on their merits.
YOU MUST VOTE. Women, please for the love of God, vote. Heroic women were raped, tortured, starved and killed so that you can vote. Heroic men fought genocidal fascists so you can vote. When you vote, you honor every one of those people.
And more: when elected officials know that you WILL vote, and that you will tactically vote against them even if you aren't a big fan of the other guy/gal, they will shape their policies to attract you.
Your sole vote won't swing the election. But knowing your vote WILL be wielded changes EVERY policy meeting that the guys at the top have. Your sole vote COULD be the one that ticks the turnout for your demographic from 49.9% to 50% and makes your group fall into the 'people we should notice' cateogory. There are enough American women aged 18-24 to swing EVERY election. If they all voted without fail, there would be zero possibility that abortion will be banned; no politician would dare. At the moment they are the least-voting group. Where it is known that women use the vote, "women's issues" like public health becomes a higher priority and education gets better. See Kristol and WuDunn's "Half the Sky".
Your vote is your one bit of power. Do not throw it away just out of a fit of pique that for some of us, it is our only bit of power. Parlay it up into real power.
I don't care what gender is profiting from you buying from a company; a company is a company and they are all trying to get your money. You make it sound like women run companies are not shamelessly trying to get your money. You also brought up the upper end of the corporate ladder. The business world is designed for men by men, this is why women do not have much of a desire to succeed in the corporate world. I have also noticed that this site claims to be a feminist site and feminists claim that they support and fight for gender equality, but with all of the discriminatory man-hating that I have found on this site I am beginning to see that feminism is just a ploy for women to victimize themselves in order to appear to have the moral high ground over men.
Yes, is so much fun playing the victim. It's right up there with watching a good movie and playing a damn good game of ping-pong.
Isn't it a bit disingenuous to make this claim on a Community post that all the commenters have disagreed with so far?
Ugh, I knew this post was going to bring out the anti-feminists.
I am a bit curious about all the other "discriminatory man-hating" you've found on this site, though. Usually if a post is the least bit misandrist, the author gets called out for it in the comments section.
Quick, name a worthy movement that wouldn't be invalidated if judged by its looniest advocate.
"The business world is designed for men by men, this is why women do not have much of a desire to succeed in the corporate world."
Um.
Hahahahahaha. Oh god, that's a brilliantly stupid thing to say.
1. Women don't have much of a desire to succeed in the corporate world? News to me. News to a whole ton of women. News to whoever coined and uses the word "glass ceiling."
2. Speaking of that ceiling, maybe the reason why women don't succeed as much in the corporate world is because they're being kept out by the people who designed the system? Maybe? This is not a radical idea. In fact, this is a pretty widely accepted idea among people who don't even think of themselves as feminists. You know, mainstream America. If such a thing exists.
If you had just said, "Buy from companies that are pro-equality and justice", you could have something nobody could disagree with.
For example, I would rather buy from a company run by 100 men that isn't despoiling a massive habitat (the resulting poverty and ecosystem collapse usually hurts women way more than men) than one run by 100 women who are putting deadly chemicals in the sea.
Well, unfortunately, there aren't any companies that are "pro-equality and justice" - corporations are pro profit first and foremost - maximizing shareholder rate of return on investment is always priority number one, and all other priorities are secondary, that's just how capitalism works.
What if the shareholders are women? Or care about women?
Uhhh....
voting does NOTHING! Don't you see, my friends? No matter who we vote for, things won't change. Rape won't end, war won't end, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia... you could have 100% Women of Color in office in America and that won't end sexism or racism. It's not the authority figures who sit high up in Washington who make oppressions start or end, it's the people of the nation who do that.
=(
Boooooo for liberal thinking. Sorry, this is a blog fail.
First of all, I am a college student. I have no money to buy toilet paper and tooth paste, let alone try and find the companies that are prowoman. Second, even if I did have the money to be choosy about which products I did buy I still wouldn't be able to buy them since my only option of where to shop in the town that my college is in is walmart. The nearest city that has more than a walmart as an option of where to shop is an hour and a half away. I have no car, and there is not a bus from here to there. The very idea that the majority of people could feasibly do this is wrong. On top of that the idea that women should not vote is not a good idea either. I do not want my voice to go unheard because had more women in my age range voted I can guarantee you that george bush would not have won either election.
Let's assess some hypotheticals:
if I, as a pro-woman man, were to run for office against a conservative woman, you'd vote for the woman because she is a woman.
if I were to run a fortune 500 company (or any company, apparently), you wouldn't be a patron of my business because I'm a man. Regardless of the ethical stances of my corporate model. Or even if I had women in the high positions of my company, but maybe not on my Board.
How about doing a boycott against companies which are objectively anti-woman? It's like how I don't shop at Wal*Mart thanks to their worker treatment in Central and South America.
I'm really hungry for manicotti now.
Okay.
Rlly?
So we should have voted for Palin? You'd buy Ann Coulters books, cause she's a lady? You'd listen to Phyllis Schlafly because she's got the same genitals as you and therefore she MUST have your best interests at heart?
This whole premise is hogwash. Not all men are out to get you/us. Some men are, but most are JUST AS ENSLAVED by sexism and double standards as we are. If there is any thing I think 'third-wavers' should be able to get behind it's the idea that eliminating sexism frees BOTH men and women.
Thankfully Feministing is a place for StephG to be able to write about the anger that we all feel from time to time about the inequalities we find all around us!
We may not wish to join StephG in boycotting male businesses, but it would do us good to think about where our money goes so thanks for posting! Our spending power is real power in numbers.
I would love to be able to refer to a website which contained gender details as specified above.
StephG - keep up the anger, without anger the status quo would have never been challenged!
Hooray, let's totally ignore trans people again. They're used to it by now, right?
(Fighting the power using the gender binary as the sole qualifier for a boycott...a misstep for so many reasons. Most of which have been pointed out.)
I hate to play devil's advocate - actually no, I'm clearly lying, I love it a lot - but I have to agree generally with the sentiment StephG's expressed here. The power in the west (run by capitalism) is the money the companies want, and if you don't give it to them they either die out or they change.
I'm not saying using your votes to vote for a woman-hating woman instead of a woman-liking man (which would be ridiculous), but since most candidates (locally, at least) have very little to set them apart from the others why not positively discriminate? At least until the balance is redressed? In the UK they're (hopefully) going to be bringing in legislation to allow for job candidates with similar qualifications to get a leg up and be hired if they come from a minority group within that profession. So basically if you have two electrical engineers and one is a man and the other a woman (same qualifications) you are allowed to hire the woman on the grounds that there are significantly less in engineering. The same goes for men at a primary school level - there are very few and you would be allowed to put them forward ahead of a female candidate. It will also cover discrimination against (and positive discrimination towards) ethnic minorities, LGBT (with clear cover for trans), people with disabilities, unmarried or married people, pregnant women, mothers and people with different religions or faiths. Looking at that list most people would argue that the positive side of the discrimination is the redressing of a grave and terrible imbalance - why does that argument suddenly seem go out the window once it's used for women as opposed to anyone else in a less-privileged postion? Why does the fact that it's about gaining equal footing for women suddenly make it a heinous crime against equality, and we should obviously know better?
Also most people practice this kind of thing to a certain extent anyway for many other reasons - dolphin-friendly tuna comes springing to mind, as do my own personal boycotts of Rockstar Energy Drinks (I will not line the Savage families' pockets any more than they already have been) and Nestle products (difficult to avoid them, but because of their record in the third world, again, I think it's worth it). Even Cindy Crawford was advocating using your purchasing power for the betterment of women this week (ignore the skinny bit in the headline, I think she's more promoting positive and normal body types):
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a187160/crawford-wants-stop-to-skinny-models.html
She's never really been a particular influence on me, but the point she makes is sound - we have more power to change things than even we've seemed to realise, and we need to use it! Don't be worried if people try to use the old "but it's discrimination" chesnut. Most people bring that up when they're afraid their privilege will be lost (which many many men's would be if the imbalance is corrected). Just do it, get the balance right, then there'll be no need for discrimination in future. Ta-da!
Totally agree!
The interview in the Guardian contains more of the interview than the one above with the misleading headline: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/12/question-time-cindy-crawford
Cheers for the link - it's much better to read the whole article than the one I linked to, and reading it in full makes me like what she said even more (without all the gossipy hype of DigitalSpy)!
:)
I think the point we're making is that of course you should put your money where your principles are, but that choosing women over men just because they are female is not a good principle.
Positive discrimination does shake things up, but it's a stop-gap solution. It's like in Jamaica they had a very big murder problem so they temporarily brought in the death penalty for anyone carrying a gun. It worked, a bit. But it was still wrong. And it was an easy law to just switch back, as are positive discrimination policies.
I think a victory founded in the slow grind of incremental change, punctuated by some setbacks (Stupak) but also by stirring successes (the first Kuwaiti women to win office), is impossible to reverse.
I also don't think feminism asks men to give up anything, relative to what they gain. Steinem, "Men who demand submission cannot imagine the joys of cooperation". There is a reason the most feminist countries are the richest (and feminist companies make the most money - check performance stats, they outpeform the least feminist by about 35% average) - partly their wealth is a cause of feminism, partly it is just correlation, but mostly, feminism caused the wealth by unlocking twice the potential. Men need to understand that their self interest is at stake too, not because they will get to play with dolls or teach preschool (which they may not admit even to themselves they COULD want), but because they will get to be infinitely richer. They like that idea more than they like sexism. That's why they get on board.
I love teaching preschool. Not in this country though, that would be suicide.
"Positive discrimination does shake things up, but it's a stop-gap solution."
Totally agree with you there - there's no point in making it easier for women, ethnic minorities, the elderly, etc. etc. to get into the positions they deserve without making sure other policies are implemented to address the underlying causes of the inequalities. For example, I remember living in the US in the 1980s and 1990s when I first heard about positive discrimination. Lots of people complained (mostly white men) about POC getting an undeserved leg up into the system. I never saw that - all I saw was a group of people who had been excluded in every way possible, from outright discrimination to the less thought about situation of inner city schools, which had appalling academic and attendance records, therefore blocking many students from higher education through a poor primary one. So I thought it was a good idea to temporarily implement it while extra investment occurred in the schools that needed it the most. It's happened here recently - it was found that richer students from higher class backgrounds outstrip poorer students academically, getting all the university places, not because they're smarter, but because they could pay for a better education. So the universities took it upon themselves to agree to allowing lower grades from state-school educated students than privately educated ones, and removing the entrance exams (these were taught as subjects in private schools, meaning they were able to pass them more easily). They didn't do this to just be nice - apparently when the students eventually graduated the poorer students on the whole gained higher marks, so in just accepting those with higher grades at school they were missing out!
Although I agree incremental changes can work too, it depends upon how incremental you want it to be - if we'd waited for poorer students to catch up it would simply never have happened. They would never have been qualified enough, wealthy enough, or ever met enough of the right people in order to gain a position of enough power to do so.
And it's true what you say about men not really having to give up anything if you look at the big picture, but I'm not really talking about how countries as a whole fare when things are more evenly divided - all a lot of men can see is "she took my job, now she has more power/money than me" and how it affects them individually which, if women were given a leg up in a lot of the higher paid professions (where the gender gap is the widest) then those men would suffer a little individually. In light of that it can be hard to give it up, it would be for me in the same position!
Of course people vote with their dollars all the time. Even when choosing the grocery store that has more organic apples than the other one. The thing is, this sort of thing takes at least a minimum amount of research and reasoning. The OP proposes a sweeping plan of action that hinges solely on gender, which can lead to some head-smacking results.
I'd also disagree most local candidates are similar to each other - local politics can often touch us more directly than national ones, and many people have local concerns that are very different from the high-stakes fights that occupy our attention on this blog. In any case, it's worth researching to make sure your positive discrimination vote doesn't put someone on the school board who, I don't know, supports teaching creationism or something.
I guess all I'm saying is, be informed. When buying dolphin-safe tuna, you're informed about what it is you're choosing and what the results of that choice are. The same should be true about any boycott.
I see what you are saying but to me, any action against the (to deliberately misuse your quote) "sweeping plan of action that hinges solely on gender, which can lead to some head-smacking results." namely the kyriachy, is ok with me.
"I guess all I'm saying is, be informed. When buying dolphin-safe tuna, you're informed about what it is you're choosing and what the results of that choice are. The same should be true about any boycott."
Wise words, and I totally agree - as I said, just voting based on gender could end up going badly if the person you've elected ends up being anti- whatever you thought they were about in the first place! But I've got to stand by my statement about local government - I know in the US certain local bodies have greater power than over here (for example the right to interfere with what is being taught in schools, which over here is decided nationally in central government) but not all local offices have that kind of power.
For example, my local council have the power to change what days the bins are collected and what date the Christmas lights go up in the town centre - most people don't even know who they're voting for when they go into the polling station and don't even care, they just vote either according to party (which at a local level doesn't make any difference as they don't wield much power) or eeny-meeny-miny-mo. In that instance I can safely say if a woman or minority/disadvantaged person came up I would vote for them based on that, and there's nothing wrong with that. If there's nothing to choose between them then influencing the next generation of disadvantaged people to consider themselves as candidates because that's what they see seems as good a reason as any! An equivalent over in the US would be the more ceremonial positions - there are lots of them which are either nominated or elected, with no real power, but to get some different faces up there could really kick-start a change in entrenched attitudes.