Club Troppo

There are two kids’ games that are very gendered not so much in their gendered content as we understand the genders, but in their appeal to boys and girls. The first I observed in my daughter when she was in early primary school. It’s routines that involve the mutual clapping of hands accompanied by rhythms and rhymes of various kinds. Boys play this game a bit but they’re heart is rarely in it. For girls it seems all the rage for about a year or two around grade two or three in primary school and then a year or so later it’s pretty much all over.

I’ve actually been reminded of this by my 10 year old son who has, in the space of about six months become consumed with the equivalent male primary school craze trading - trading cards that is. Mainly footy cards. And there are some fancy chips - like the chips in a casino - which are decked out with footy players and which it is therefore desirable to amass whole sets of. Girls don’t do this much, just like boys don’t play clapping games much.

It’s intriguing that boys’ behaviour is so stereotypically proto-economic. Of course they’re growing up in a very commercialised environment, and the firms that market cards to them are trying to hook them any way they can. Then again, I’m sure they’ve done what they can to ‘hook’ girls, and they don’t seem too interested. Anyway, it leads me to wonder if the male gender has some kind of natural affinity with that part of our nature which Adam Smith described as one of the central things that lies behind our humanity and behind the evolution of markets or as he put it ‘commercial society’.

Regular readers of this blog have been introduced both by me and Don Arthur to Hayek’s distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ‘extended’ orders, an interesting idea that is worth pondering. (Continued)

I’ve never known. Anyway, I’ve discovered a blogger I’d not read before - a stroppy femmo who’s a great read - who seems to have similar views to mine. Go and have a good squiz around her site.

In the recent mega blog discussion kicked off by Don Arthur, I ventured the opinion that “the truly remarkable thing is that the Gini coefficient of equivalised disposable income has only increased from 0.28 to 0.31 in the last 30 years of so.”  Given the underwhelming response from other commenters to those words of wisdom I thought I might expand a bit on how I came to that conclusion.

Lets say for starters that we are back in the 1950s.  We have five working to middle class families, with varying numbers of kids.  Lets just suppose that all of the husbands work full-time in similar jobs in a local factory, or bank, or insurance office.  All of the wives are ‘homemakers’ (dontcha love that word?), most having retired from work when they got married.  In that world, equivalised disposable income is mainly affected by the number of kids in the family, but overall inequality in disposable income (the Gini coefficient) is relatively low.

Fast forward to today.  All of the Dads still earn similar incomes, but probably in a wider range of jobs.  In one of the families, Mum went off to university and got herself a degree and a well-paid full-time job.  In another, Mum has a permanent part-time job, say as a teller in the local bank.  The Mum in the third family works as a casual in a local supermarket, because she likes to be available when the kids come home and to take time off during the school holidays.  The fourth Mum still believes that a mother’s role is at home as full-time homemaker and mother.  And the fifth family has split up when the parents decided they didn’t love each other any more. That Mum has moved with the kids into public housing in a nearby suburb - she has a bit of a part-time job during school hours, but is mostly reliant on income support.  Guess what’s happened to the Gini coefficient in this world, compared with the first?

Well, I’ll admit that that is a highly stylised account of some of the changes that have happened in Australia in the last 50 years and that there have been a lot of other changes overlaid on the top of these.  But it’s pretty obvious isn’t it that even if the distribution of wages hadn’t widened, household income would be a lot more unevenly distributed these days than it used to be.  And the other relevant point for me is that the increased inequality has come from people making free choices about their education, work and living arrangements.

So my question for those of you who believe that Australia’s level of income inequality is too high now is this - what would you do to reduce income inequality among this particular set of families? 

I’ve just been asked by the Department of PM&C to nominate someone to go to the 202o Summit. Who should I nominate - and why?

This post will be moderated strictly. Suggestions should be serious and I hope you’ll provide good reasons. Of course there will be people who want to express an opinion about the Summit itself, and for that reason I’m creating an accompanying post inviting discussion on that topic. But in this thread, please concentrate on the proposed subject. And links to other blog discussions of the subject (good nominees, not whether it’s a good idea or not) would be most welcome also.

My own idea would be to try to think of someone who has some good concrete ideas about specific things we should do in the world of government policy - and so lower down the list would come

• people who’s analysis and views about our current circumstances might be very astute, but who might not (necessarily) be expected to produce particularly outstanding suggestions for policy. By way of illustration - and illustrious illustration at that, I’d put Inga Clendinnen in this category even if I might be quite wrong - that is that in addition to being an extraordinarily acute observer of our world she’d be good at suggesting good policy changes.
• people who are pretty interesting and capable of coming up with worthwhile ideas but who already have plenty of exposure to put those ideas.

If you want to nominate anyone right now - including yourself - just go to this website where you can do so (unaccountably the most efficient form of data transfer they’ve got is the email of a Microsoft Word document. Perhaps the option of a feedback form might have saved them some time arranging the data at the back end.)

One formula for op ed writing is to annoy your readers. Another is to lay out some set of actual or imagined social phenomena onto some Procrustean ideological bed for interpretation.

This lazy and infuriating piece of fluff from Catherine Deveny in the Age which is headed by the words above follows both formulas. I doubt she wrote the words in the headline - which are the subbie’s condensation of the wisdom she imparts in the article. But the summary is fair enough. It’s a lazy piece of linkbait and sad to say, here am I falling for the bait.

I won’t dwell on Deveny’s argument much, but she claims that any women who change their name on getting married are bowing to the wishes of their husbands. She offers no evidence of this whatever - not even an anecdote. She claims that those who argue it’s easier are just rationalising, because it’s actually easier to keep your own name. Again, no evidence.

Well the Troppo poll that I ran yesterday came up with no evidence to back her claims up - unless those people who said that convenience was one reason women changed their name were lying too.  Of 23 commenters, not one reported any pressure from husbands.  Of course it’s not a representative sample, but it is at least evidence. I asked people to try to be as factual as they could yesterday, so as not to influence the way people reported their experience. So if anyone wants to make any more strongly opinionated comment (or any other comment) below, please do.

I have no reason to accuse Troppo readers of being particularly representative of the community from which they come, but I’d still be interested in the experience of those whose experience is relevant to this question.

Why do women use their husband’s surname when they marry? (This is a question about what’s going on today, not in days gone by.) In particular, do you think the views of the husband or the wife are more influential in the choice made?

So as not to bias the poll (any more than the sample already biases it), I will not at this stage say what my own views are or what has prompted me to post this, and I will ask commenters to try to be as factual as possible rather than to raise any issues for debate.

I will then put up another post where people can debate the issues if they are so minded - but in this thread, please don’t do that.

But the more reflections about your own practice, or the practice of others you know, the better. And if you could be clear if you’re using a pseudonym if you’re male or female, I’d also be grateful.

According to Patricia Karvelas in the Australian yesterday (accompanied by the picture below) , it will be up to John Howard to decide whether or not same-sex couples will be granted equal status with heterosexual couples under Commonwealth law, since the Cabinet could not agree.

I was rather intrigued to read in this article that one of the reasons advanced against such a change was that the reforms “would cost taxpayers millions in extra social security payments”.  This was news to me, since the main effect I can see on social security entitlements would be to save the taxpayers millions, both through payments of lower ‘partnered’ rates of payment and through taking account of the partner’s income.  While it was once the case that people could get social security just by being “married” to someone, thankfully those days are long gone.

In this morning’s radio discussion on the topic between Gerard Henderson and Fran Kelly, Gerard opined that it was a difficult decision to make, with arguments for and against, etc, etc.  To her credit, Fran rather pointedly asked him what the main argument against reform would be.  The best he could come up with was that while some (higher income) couples would do well out of it financially because of getting access to survivor’s superannuation pensions, other (lower income) couples would be worse off because they would get lower social security payments.

So once again, the political argument for and against policy change is not couched in terms of what is right, but in terms of who will win and lose and the political implications of the losers in particular. 

While Gerard is perfectly right that some people would get lower social security payments if their marriagelike relationships were recognised, this would require them to have willingly volunteered the fact of their relationship to Centrelink.  Anyone who wants to preserve the advantageous financial position of presenting as two single people only has to stay in the closet. 

Somehow I can’t see Centrelink zealously pursuing a couple to prove that they are in a same-sex ”marriagelike relationship” - those are difficult enough to prove when the people involved are of opposite sex.  Once the inevitable happens (perhaps not with John Howard, but certainly with the next PM of either stripe), it will indeed be interesting to see how many same-sex couples receiving income support manage to resist the ‘obvious’ financial incentives and declare themselves to Centrelink.  I suspect quite a few will do so.

Well I’m sure there was, but you wouldn’t know by reading this bit of nostalgic Weekend Age fluff by someone who’s apparently planning to turn her reminiscences into a book.

I had the same response to this that I had reading Virginia Trioli’s little debut in the book market.  At least Trioli’s book was beguilingly well written, but alas had little to say - I can’t really remember anything of it other than the good impression it’s clean writing made when I first stated reading it. And my disappointment as I read on.

Naomi Wolf’s debut was similar - announcing the arrival of the author rather than any really grappling with the issues which might turn up something new, unusual or threatening to the author’s priors.  The issues it raised never really got dealt with - if I recall correctly the difficult issues always slid away into buck passing - it was all the fault of male domination. The role of women in the perpetuation of practices that were disapproved of (like extreme slimming in Naomi Wolf’s case and I know now what in Trioli’s case) was systematically minimised.  Anyway, it did them no harm. Naomi went on like the more serious feminists from the 1970s to involve us all in the dramas of her Next Stage of Life in the next blockbuster. Trioli’next popped up (on my radar anyway) on ABC drive chat doing a pretty good job.
I expected to enjoy the Age piece but got nothing out of it. It recites all the silliness as if it had some real value - well that’s being too harsh I guess - it’s just a bit of reminiscence she can share with the old girls.  So maybe it will sell which is why a publisher might publish it.  But it’s not got much to say to the rest of us. (Continued)

A little post to get the year off to an uncontroversial start!

I mentioned a book I’ve read - “Children of the Lucky Country” below. Here is a quote from it relating to the division of labour at home between the genders (p. 83).

In the past, the way society arranged for the care of children was to ensure that women had little choice but to take on almost the whole of this work. They could not be financially independent, so they had to rely on their husbands for their income. In return, their husbands expected them to take full responsibility for the domestic work and caring for the children (whether or not they actually liked this role). Now women can earn their own incomes, and a majority choose to do so. Who, then takes care of the children? At present the assumption is that this responsibility still rests largely with women.

There’s a particular barrow being pushed here. Note how the expectations (and I guess the collusive power) of men shape the first world. No doubt there’s some truth to that. But there’s some truth to lots of presentations of complex phenomena. Undoubtedly some women actively resisted the institutions in the way the past was organised. No doubt many resented requirements for women to give up many respectable professional jobs once they married. But plenty of women wouldn’t have resented the rules — and would have accepted the way things were set up. So why put the point in such a loaded way? Especially when it’s not necessary to point of the book which is a heartfelt plea for children’s interests to be more fully represented in our social thinking and our institutions. (a cause with which I could not agree more by the way — hence my reading the book).

Most women and men agree today that the kinds of rules that came under attack in the 1960s and 70s and which have been swept away are unacceptable. So it seems to be adding gratuitous (gender political) baggage to one’s cause to set out ‘the past’ as rigged by one side.

Now read the description of the state of the world today. I assume what everyone reports, namely that women do substantially more work around the house — even when they do as much work as their male partners. Why is that? The authors say its ‘an assumption’ that the responsibility still largely rests with women. I read (between the lines and perhaps conditioned by the earlier content of the para) that these assumptions are being made by men. (It seems odd that they’d be made by women, because it seems to be a — pretty understandable — bugbear of women that men don’t do more of that work.) So the problem is being driven by men’s ‘assumptions’.

I wonder what readers think of an alternative cause for the same phenomenon. (Continued)