Paired Discussion

Adrienne and I talked about Losse and how we think she would respond to Atwood’s society based on how she feels about Sandberg’s view of life. Losse doesn’t think that work should be a never ending race and that the life Sandberg glorifies isn’t the sort of life that Losse thinks women should have to live as in order to advance in their careers, and their advancement and pay raises definitely should not be seen as a threat to male coworkers. Losse also doesn’t think that career advancement and pay raises for women should be seen as threats to men and therefore be used as excuses for not being given the pay raises they deserve, but that “threat” to men doesn’t seem to be a thing with the Gods Garderners especially since their way of living is different.

When looking at the workplace in The Year of the Flood we can see how the compounds vastly different from the Garden although there are still some similarities. Adrienne though gender equality in work depends on the group; Gods Gardeners seemed mostly egalitarian because everyone was supposed to do their part based on their expertise and it didn’t seem to matter whether or not males or females did specific jobs, but Zeb was the one who taught survival and hunting skills (hunting is a traditionally male job in many historical societies, save some Native American ones) and Toby and Pilar knew about medicine and healing, and wasn’t Rebecca in charge of cooking? (healing and cooking are traditionally female duties in many societies). Things were different at HelthWyzer though. Frank worked whie Lucerne was a trophy wife who spent his money on clothing and luxuries and pampering at AnooYoo, and even Glen’s mom who escaped the Compound seemed to be just a housewife to her husband.

I agreed with Adrienne that the Gods Garderners definately seem more egalitarian even with some stereotypical gender roles in their society. What’s also interesting is to note how Lucerne is probably the exact opposite of what Sandberg thinks a woman should do with her life. Not only does Lucerne not work, she also seems to neglect her familial duties which is something Sandberg would consider as a form of work. Towards the end of the book we can see how Lucerne has completely abandoned Ren and spends all her time at Anoo Yoo getting spa treatments. Sandberg would probably look down on her vanity. Sandberg is very keen on spending all her time simply working and that anything that’s not considered “work” isn’t really worth the time. Losse on the other hand thinks that Sandberg may be pushing the idea of work too far and would probably be okay with some of Lucerne’s shopping sprees and treatments. It’s also interesting to see how within God’s Garderner’s society there is very little indication of there being anything related to entertainment. Sandberg would probably approve of this since less distractions is better. There’s no mention of vacations, hobbies, etc. Everyone just continues to work to help the community.

We also talked about how both Losse and Sandberg would see some areas of this book as demoralizing to women especially with Toby getting basically raped at Secret Burger and the continuous mistreatment of female workers at Secret Burger. There’s also the issue with how sexual harassment seems to be something women should just ignore because “it’s not really a big deal”. I think it would be interesting to get their opinions on Scales and Tails and the SeksMart Corp in general. In The Year of The Flood, prostitution is basically legalized, and employees get health care and other benefits just like any other job would. I personally think Sandberg would not be so against the idea of prostitution especially if it’s something the women wants to do and feels they are good at. Even within Scales and Tails, there’s a hierarchy for the prostitutes. It would be interesting to see if she just sees as a way of living and the workers at Scales and Tails are simply just doing a job they picked or if working as a prostitute is demoralizing.

Besides Losse, we also connected it to Sandberg and how she would view the different societies in The Year of The Flood. We both agreed that it seems that within Gods Garderner there’s very little social mobility. Everyone is about the same with the exception of the Adam’s and Eve’s being a bit more respected. Although working as a God’s Garderner isn’t really a monetary job it’s still seen as work for these people in order to survive and within this system the hierarchy is pretty limited which is something Sandberg probably wouldn’t appreciate and find it oppressing.