“If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”
The above words were uttered by prospective Republican Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley and were accompanied by loud whoops of approval that were reminiscent of tribal noises heard in cinemas every time the word patriarchy was mentioned in the Barbie movie. Haley’s statement was not even original but was first articulated by UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She, it might be argued, did get things done, though not always in a good way.
The first most obvious point is that had a man made the opposite and equally sexist statement “If you want something said, ask a woman. If you want something done, ask a man,” outrage and accusations of misogyny would have followed. It would have been the end of any presidential campaign and in other fields the speaker would have risked loss of employment. Thats shows the extent to which, contrary to the protestation of Laura Bates and her ilk, misandry has been normalised.
So, what about my experience of this matter? As I write, I look out of the window towards the local park. In front of my flat, it is men digging up the road to repair a leaking water main. They were working until late last night and returned early this morning to complete the job. It is cold and wet outside, the work is arduous and essential, but they seem cheery and uncomplaining. Further afield, there are tree surgeons working hight up in the trees of my local park. Several trees are in a dangerous state following recent storms and urgent attention is required to ensure the safety of the public who walk beneath the branches. The people doing this dangerous and physically demanding work? Men of course.
Then there is my apartment that is, unfortunately, leasehold in a block that is managed by a Housing Association. Here, we see the same dichotomy. The people who work indoors making our lives difficult with their beauracratic and pettifogging approach to property management, are almost entirely female. On the other hand, the people who come to our properties to mend the roof, erect scaffolding or complete the external decoration are almost exclusively male. Those women who work indoor seem to spend too much time on self congratulatory tweets rather than concentrating on their core work. This is just my ‘lived-experience,’ but the picture seems strikingly different from the one painted by Nikki Hayley.
We saw the same pattern play out during the COVID pandemic. Women were more likely to have kind of jobs that could be done from home – ‘saying jobs’ if you like. Meanwhile men were more likely to have jobs where you had to be physically present to do things, driving buses, construction and maintaining our critical infrastructure. Men paid a price for this and workers in manual labour had the highest death rate from Covid. Meanwhile, in the media, feminists were trumpeting their victimhood due to being stuck at home.
Let’s look at some specific ‘doing jobs.’ HGV driver, for example, only 1% of truck drivers are female. The BBC may try to convince us it is otherwise by usually foregrounding pictures of women. In truth, however, this is not the sort of equality feminists are looking for. In construction the percentage of women is little higher at 17%, but I suspect this figure is high and most of those 17% are not working in hands-on areas. In the wastewater sector less than 20% of workers are female. Again I don’t hear feminists complaining about this gender gap. Who fixes your car when it goes wrong or comes to your side when it fails mid journey. Less than 10% of these these jobs are held by women.
Some feminists might argue that these disparities are due to prejudice in hiring decisions. The evidence, however, points in exactly the opposite direction. A recent metaanalysis of 44 years of field experiments on gender and hiring decisions has found no discrimination against women in traditionally male occupations but it found significant discrimination against men in traditionally female occupations that has remained stable over decades- see here.
These differences between men and women may reflect some quite deep sex differences in interests that are stable across cultures and become apparent at an early age. A meta analysis of studies published in 2009 showed that in general men prefer working with things (doing) and women prefer working with people (saying) see here.
In truth, I do not want to denigrate the sort of jobs done by women. The work of men and women is vital to our society. Instead, I want to denigrate the lazy remarks of Nikki Haley and the response her tribal followers who were dumb enough to celebrate her misandry.
toxic feminism 