BridgeTheGap (1000+ posts) Fri Oct-22-10 03:05 PM
Original message
Petroleum = Patriarchy
What’s keeping women down in the Middle East? It’s not Islam but oil, according to UCLA political science professor Michael Ross. Women tend not to work in the oil industry because of physical and social barriers, in turn reducing their political influence and leaving oil-producing nations with “atypically strong patriarchal cultures and political institutions,†Ross writes in American Political Science Review.
Ross backs his provocative argument—that Big Oil subjugates women—with a litany of research. He studied all the countries in world—Islamic and non-Islamic, oil-producing and non-oil-producing—and ran statistical models that linked high oil production to fewer women in the workforce, fewer female legislators, and fewer female cabinet members. At the same time, he found that Islam has no statistically significant effect on these same measures of female empowerment. His conclusion boils down to a neatly alliterative maxim: “Petroleum perpetuates patriarchy.â€
http://www.utne.com/2008-11-01/Politics/Petroleum-Patri...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=229x12541Oil extraction = physical labor = patriarchy
I wonder what else involves physical labor and as such a predominantly male occupations.
Hm-m-m...
Construction workers
Lumberjacks
Steel mills
Heavy industry
Road crews
Plumbers
Warriors
Freight haulers
Mariners
The list goes on.
I don't know if liberals like roads and houses and buildings and logisitical networks but it seems if they do then they might well be accused of supporting misogynist industries.
I wonder if they ever watch "Dirty Jobs"?
I would also like to suggest that what makes Islamic countries misogynist isn't oil, it's Islam. Now I realize that pretty much ends any hope I may entertain for a job at NPR, but there you have it: The Truth.
This is not an attempt to take the fault of Islamic misgyny to Islam but to shift it to the developed world and reduce us to some sub-Luddite existence to be more easily managed by those who want to call themselves our superiors but lack the power to take it or the wisdom to earn it.
