Here's an interesting report up at the Star which found that second generation immigrant women in Canada are more successful than men in the same group and are even more successful than women of comparable education whose parents were born in Canada. The sociological explanation makes perfect sense. Women with parents settling here from Africa, India, and China experience a huge cultural shift within Canada's emphasis on egalitarian institutions and structures. Women are no longer restricted or limited due to their gender as their mothers were in cultures that placed little value on women's worth. The men from those nations experience the opposite or a reversal of gender prestige. Having a penis isn't enough to guarantee affluence here. It's a merit based society where you need skills and/or an education to thrive. Immigrant men need to abandon the hyper-patriarchal traditions and embrace women's equality or they will be left in the dust.
10 comments:
It's as if they've removed their spiritual weight boots, I think.
Can you imagine arriving from those countries to find the freedom of being able to be anything you want/desire?
I've hired immigrants and I can tell you... they kick ass over the slackers I get locally. Especially the women.
It's so true, Boxer. Women who come from countries where they you are legally and culturally chattel blossom when they get the opportunity to get out. Makes me feel like a slacker for sure.
I see many men from those countries working jobs here that they think are beneath them and they can't disguise their contempt. It's all about ego over doing what they need to get ahead.
When I lived in Minnesota there was a rash of horrendous murder-suicides in the Hmong community. I can remember the details of 3 separate instances where a Hmong husband and father blew away his family because he saw their new-found Western freedoms as disrespectful. It caused a crisis in the community at the time and was really extraordinary for how many and how fast the cases arose for a time.
The Hmong community is surely one of the most patriarchal in the world. Family really are possessions.
Yes, Sam, excellent point. Men in immigrant communities often resort to femicide when they feel they've lost control/power/status in the West. The Star said that there have been just under 1,000 cases of femicide here in Canada since 2005 and in the U.S. it's over 8,000 in the same period.
Shocking.
eh I like the picture.....I really do....
What the one of the woman from the newspaper article or that awful Arthur Miller production, Manuel?
From the newspaper article....quality
Phew, Manuel. "The Misfits" is the bottom of the barrel. The pic is a nice version of Rosie the Riveter.
There are some very interesting guest blogger posts on Feministe this week which touch on this a bit. V interesting, especially regarding the conflict successful Muslim women can feel - how coming out as pro-feminist and criticising things like female circumcision can be seized upon by conservatives as evidence that all Muslim women are oppressed, Islam is awful, only the West can save womankind. So Muslim feminists tone down their criticisms so as not to get nailed by people within their own communities for assisting the spreading of prejudice. All v complex but interesting and it's hard to know where lines can be drawn.
I didn't see that over at Feministe so I'll need to take a peek, Dino Girl. Your point reminds me of what happened in the African American community in the early 80s in particular when black men charged that women were scapegoating men in order to appeal to a white audience (after The Color Purple came out and such). You could argue that this is a concern for any woman in a marginalized group who may be viewed as a traitor to the men in her community when she embraces feminism.
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