

Technology and the Position of Women by John McCarthy - carls
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/future/women.html

======
lkrubner
I don't see a date on this essay, but I am assuming it was written in the
1960s? It has many assumptions that sound 60sish.

This is true:

"A longer fertile life for women would permit two or more children to occupy a
smaller fraction of a woman's life."

However, the emphasis in some of the other sentences needs to be qualified.
For instance:

"The first independent achievements of women were by upper class women in
hierarchical societies."

You can say exactly the same thing of men. Of ancient societies, we mostly
have the writings of men from the upper class.

And about this:

"The changes permitted women to stay home and raise children, while men
foraged."

This falls into the fallacy that women didn't work or forage for food. As a
counter-point, there is the Grandmother Hypothesis:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_hypothesis)

I've read estimates that in some of the African hunter-gatherer tribes
(studied during the 20th century) the majority of calories going to newborn
babes came not from the mother or father but from the grandmother (remember
that in many of these tribes women become grandmothers in their 30s).

His comments about "the upper middle class can't afford as much domestic help
as in the past" sounds like it was written during the 1960s.

He argues that greater wealth and economic advance has lead to this:

"All this has reduced the relative desirability of housewifery and led to an
increased demand for a better position for women."

There is a counter-argument (which reverses the cause and effect) put forward
by Barbara Ehrenreich in her book "The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the
Flight from Commitment". She argues that after 1945 there emerged a culture of
entertainment, adventure and pleasure seeking that caused men to pull away
from traditional commitments and traditional social mores (such as marriage)
and the women's movement of the 1960s was a reaction to that.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Hearts-Men-American-
Commitment/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Hearts-Men-American-
Commitment/dp/0385176155/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388640903&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=hearts+eherenrich)

This if() statement is lacking its else() branch:

"A girl can wait and if she is attractive good things may happen to her."

This much is very true:

"A disproportionate number of adults with initiative come from separatist
social groups where the parents prevent children from taking their values from
their peers or from the schools."

This is possibly true, though I think other conclusions might be possible:

"Getting more women in higher positions in society depends on breaking this
tradition."

This bit is borderline cliche and should be paired against the fact that in
the USA 70% of all divorces are initiated by women:

"However, a desirable man can get better terms than this, and the academic
community is full of cases where a man first marries an intellectual equal and
then replaces her by a second wife without so many ambitions outside the
home."

This seems to be the core of his argument:

"Greater equality will be achieved if the amount of work required to have a
nice home with well brought up children can be reduced to the point that a man
of ordinary energy who shares the work equally with his wife suffers no
disadvantage in his profession, and likewise a woman of ordinary energy who
keeps a home going does not lose in her outside work."

Missing from his essay is the possibility that things might simply fall apart:
that the divorce rate would spike upwards to almost 50%, and that single
motherhood would spike upwards to include over 40% of all children. His tone
suggests that he was writing when the solidity of marriage was still being
taken for granted. Anyone writing nowadays would have to take into account
both the high divorce rate and also the high rate of single motherhood, which
combine to suggest that perhaps there will be no easy reconciliation of what
women want and what men want.

~~~
mturmon
Regarding the date, the HTML appears to be hand-edited. There is a comment at
the top of the file saying:

    
    
        <!-- Changed by: John McCarthy,  9-Dec-2006 -->
    

and the same date appears in the title page.

I think the author would be well-served to delete the whole piece. It's like
pub chit-chat from a doddering parent or grandparent -- just a bunch of
preconceived notions and outmoded viewpoints.

It does serve the unwitting purpose of illustrating how deep are the origins
of tech's problem with inclusion of women.

~~~
mjn
> I think the author would be well-served to delete the whole piece.

The author died in 2011, so I guess that won't happen (though the site might
disappear entirely at some point):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scienti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_\(computer_scientist\))

I'd just treat it for what it is: a short off-the-cuff essay written by a
retired CS professor in his late 70s, speculating on a subject he hadn't done
much research on. It appears among this unfinished draft collection of
futurist speculations: [http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/future/](http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/future/).
Some of them are interesting, some not too great. IMO lots of the stuff he
wrote in AI is great, and I'd start with those essays if you want to read
something by McCarthy on a subject where he was both knowledgeable and
insightful: [http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/#pub_ai](http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/#pub_ai)

~~~
mturmon
"...I guess that won't happen..."

Touché. My mistake.

I agree that experts are best read when addressing what they are experts at.
But sometimes the other stuff can give insights on who they were, and I guess
this piece is like that.

------
guard-of-terra
Raising babies is a major turnoff. Somehow nature screwed us royally on that
one. We'll have to fix it ourself.

This is predominantly human-primate problem. Cattle is born pretty functional,
but human babies require years of continuous monitoring and care.

~~~
kofq
I am not sure what to say ? Honestly, why you exist ? No seriously. You don't
want to raise babies, want everything that is gold plated , everything that
looks good and count only in $MM. Do you think having penis makes life easy ?
Answer is NO. There are large scale difficulties faced by men also. I honestly
think we should strive for equality rather than making it gender specific. It
always comes down to individual to grab that part of success.

~~~
guard-of-terra
First, I'm male; second, both parents suffer the upbringing of a baby; and
third, I think therefore I exist as a sentient being.

------
peterwwillis
To rephrase the point of this article: Modern Conveniences Make People's Lives
Easier.

The idea that the progress of technology in and of itself will improve the
position women have in society is about equivalent to saying that improvements
in water treatment plants will help women live longer. Sure it will, and it
will help non-women live longer too. You could make the claim that the advent
of cheap 3d printers will allow girls to print out their own toys they find on
the internet and avoid gendered marketing in toy stores. But boys will do the
same. Tech affects a lot of people in lots of different ways, usually for the
benefit of everybody, not just one group.

