Money for Nothing & Chicks for Free

My Technology Diary post for Week 1, the Freedman, Rosser, and Sterling readings, will focus on money.  Money comes in many different forms but is something that we are all familiar with and use in our daily lives.  After reading the assignments, especially the Freedman chapters, I realize how important money is to not only the oppression and liberation of women, but to the divisions of women by race, class, and occupation and the constant efforts to deny women rights.  My thoughts about money were most clearly related to the Freedman and Rosser readings—it was slightly more difficult to link money to the Sterling readings.

The Freedman chapters began with separating the monetary value of women’s work from women’s actual contributions to the economy.  It brought up questions for me of the monetary value of women’s work, whether domestic or commercial.  Both men and capitalism have ascribed these monetary values; they have devalued the jobs that women do, both on the basis that women’s work does not bring in income (no wages for home childcare/domestic labor) and on the basis that women do not contribute as much to workplace or do not need to contribute as much to their families (low wages for commercial/service industry labor).  While it seems that financial freedom is the way to women’s liberation, it is difficult to achieve because of lower wages, less access to managerial positions, less access to more lucrative fields/devaluation of women-dominated fields, and expectations of financial and time commitments to both family and work. (Freedman, Chapter 6-7)

Money has helped women achieve liberation—for example, middle class white women, the leaders of first-wave feminism—while leaving some women still oppressed—for example, women factory workers in the technology industry in lesser industrialized nations.  Without the status and determination of the first-wave feminists, women’s rights would never have been recognized.  However, the oppression of the factory worker women allows our consumer technology industry to grow and flourish.  While money helped middle class women to lobby for their rights, it also helps to control working class women by denying them fair living wages and thwarting their attempts to unite by pitting race against race, developing nation against undeveloped nation, and class against class (Rosser, 36).

The best way I could relate money to the Sterling readings was through a similar idea to having the financial freedom to pursue feminism—having the financial freedom to pursue one’s gender identity.  Sterling mentions the development of homosexuality as identity (Sterling, 14).  However, I feel this identity would differ based not only on historical time period, but also on class status.  In an article in the LA Times, a Pew Research Center poll found that “Income levels, too, reflect differences of opinion; those with family incomes above $75,000 support gay marriage, while those who earn less are evenly split” (LA Times).  A study by The Williams Institute, highlighted in a US News article found that homosexual couples make slightly higher incomes than heterosexual couples (US News).  I feel that throughout history, those at higher income levels may feel more comfortable accepting and expressing homosexual identities because they have financial freedom and the mobility and status that come with it, just as higher income women were more comfortable speaking their minds because of their status.

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I had a lot to say after these readings, but wanted to make sure it came out clearly.  Oh, and the title?  It’s from a Dire Straits song called “Money for Nothing”, and refers to a rock star gets “money for nothing and chicks for free”, just by getting on stage.  I thought it was relevant because of the ways that women often do work for “free” at home discussed in Freedman’s book.  This is probably the only time I’ll ever think of a catchy title, haha.

Outside Sources

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/20/news/la-pn-same-sex-marriage-support-poll-20130320

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/01/gay-couples-more-educated-higher-income-than-heterosexual-couples

Technology Diary 1

My initial idea for this week’s blogpost was to choose a household appliance after reading Freeman’s observation that “housework can actually expand with new appliances,” and that time studies show that women with “‘labor-saving’ appliances” more or less spent the same amount of time doing housework as women without this technology (2002, p. 132). However, after receiving this week’s round up email, I was fixated on a phrase in the description for technology diary posts: “think of technology broadly- pens, pencils…” With the readings in mind, I could not stop thinking about BIC “For Her” pens and the subsequent internet outlash on them. In a nutshell, the pen maker, BIC, began selling/ marketing pens under the moniker, “For Her,” in 2010 and in 2012 or so, sarcastic and humorous Amazon “reviews” of these products became viral (just google “bic for her” for examples of the media coverage) along with a skit/ monologue on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Full disclaimer: I don’t actually use BIC For Her pens, which does not really fit the criteria that this specific piece of technology is part of my daily life (I guess I have been using “man pens”).

However, the official description/ presentation of the product and the reactions of the internet to it encompass many of the concepts of this week’s readings especially Sue V. Rosser’s “Using the Lenses of Feminist Theories to Focus on Women and Technology.” A huge part of the critique of BIC’s For Her pens can be summed up as the conflation of sex/ biology and gender/ a highly specific kind of femininity. The “BIC Cristal For Her Ball Pen” is marketed as having a “thin barrel to fit a woman’s hand.”  This is directly references to the fact/ belief that “biological” women are smaller in size to “biological” men or that female bodies are inherently different from male ones (essentialist). The appearance and discourse surrounding these pens also reference to a highly specific form of constructed femininity. Words like “elegant,” “beautifully smooth,” “style,” and “soft” are used in the product descriptions. Visual markers such as certain colors or as Ellen notes, “lady colors,” are used for the actual product and packaging along with “jeweled accents” and floral designs.  All of these markers socially and culturally imply a highly specific form of femininity (that is arguably subordinate to men), which many of the Amazon reviewers have detected and ran with it (with descriptions of using it draw “hearts and ponies” or using the product at their jobs as secretaries or for writing recipes or at worst, that women can’t read or write).

A related main theme of the critique of these pens is the idea of actually labeling the pens “for her”/ “just for her.” As many of the authors of the readings note, the act of categorizing and labeling something can construct it into reality. The act of labeling these pens “for her” / “just for her” simultaneously imply all other unmarked (to throw in a term I learned from linguistic anthropology) pens are the male (norm) and that the specific feminine connotations described above are intrinsically tied to being a woman. These ideas are specifically combined with technology as a general theme in Rosser’s piece is a “gender polarization of technology” in which “men design technology and women use it” and in an extreme case, women are excluded “as users of technology” (2006, p. 25-26). The critics of the BIC pens touch upon these themes. The top Amazon “reviewer” of this product succinctly declares that “those smart men in marketing have come up with a pen that my lady parts can identify with.” Ellen also snidely remarks, “Companies have spent millions of dollars making pills that grow men’s hair and fix men’s sex lives, and now ladies have a pen.” These comments bring up many feminist concerns about technology as in who is actually inventing it (which is tied with the means to do so), who is actually creating it (the manual labor), who are the intended users, and whose and what needs are they really fulfilling, which can backfire as the “labor-saving” household appliances (men) invented did not really lessen the domestic work of women as described by Freeman. The socialist feminism framework is also salient in this commentary as capitalism/ corporations are a driving force in the creation and marketing of this product.

There are other things of interest in this BIC For Her fiasco (?) including how some Amazon reviewers implicitly or explicitly reference this female technology to other exclusive female technology such as tampons and sex toys. There are also “reviews”/ jokes of men who used these pens and obtaining feminine bodily characteristics, which reminds me of Anne Fausto-Sterling’s argument of the interdependent and tautological relationship between biological processes (nature) and constructionist culture and environment (nurture). Then, there is probably a whole conversation about the technology of Amazon product reviews and how it can serve as a forum and medium beyond mere product reviews, but this blogpost is getting incredibly long…