Alison Wolf webchat Tues 11 June 1-2pm

Mamie

Have downloaded to my Kindle and will ask a proper question when I have read it. What immediately springs to mind from the description above is to ask what different now. Surely many women from the (upper) middle and upper classes have always relied on poorer, less well-educated women to look after their homes and children? The era of the "stay at home wife and mother" is a pretty brief one in historical terms. Looking forward to reading it, though.

This raises some of the same issues as Grannyknot, and of course you are both right that better off families have always hired people, in and out of the house, when they can. But the point I was making was that, until recently, very few women were able to take on professional jobs, and so what was happening was that, in most homes, domestic servants worked alongside the 'mistress'. As women, they were all carrying out tasks which were seen as normally or even intrinsically female. Feminist activists (especially the radically socialist variant) thought they were changing that. Everyone would be liberated, and old style female work patterns would vanish. But what has happened is that they have vanished for a sub-set of women but not for the majority. And this means that different women's interests, as well as their life-styles, are also different. It may not seem surprising to you, but a lot of educated women are very uncomfortable with the thought that their lives are only made possible by the cheap domestic labour of other women, many of whom are very far from home (Moldavians in Italy, Filipinos in Hong Kong etc). And it's certainly not what 70s activists expected.

spotification

I was fascinated by your book and have not been able to look at the world in quite the same way since! However, I was troubled by the sense that the young women you write about are making rational decisions, and the corollary of that - the implication that human life is a bit like a market and follows logical premises.

My sense, having reached fiftysomething, is that my friends' lives have frequently been knocked off course by disabled children, divorce, love affairs, infertility, redundancy, bereavement, disappointment, husbands who drink, children who take drugs or develop eating disorders and all sorts of other emotional hits that it's not possible to factor into one's plans.

I felt you over-emphasized the rational in your analysis of the life course for contemporary women. is this fair?

I hope it's not fair but it might be! I totally agree that one's life is often hit sideways, and in fact one of the studies I cite at some length makes exactly that point, by describing how the people who ended up as stay-at-home mothers of large families were the ones who at 17 thought they were dedicated careerists and vice versa. But what I do believe is that, at any given moment, people -women - of all types and classes make decisions in the face of their current circumstances which are very reasonable and indeed rational. I get very cross with people who treat anyone who is poor and uneducated as somehow not able to make sensible decisions - I think we are all, in most of what we do, striving quite sensibly to make the best of our circumstances. But those circumstances are often not under our control: and include alternatives that are more or less attractive, often in financial terms. And what the evidence does show, time and again, is that on average - and I stress on average - when the circumstances change, so do the numbers of people making one choice rather than another. So in that sense, yes, i do believe that a lot of life is quite like a market (which is no doubt why I love Jane Austen so much). That doesn't rule out the role of true affection (Austen again). But it does, I'm afraid, mean that the number of children people have will be affected by levels of child support, especially among those on low incomes.

Grannyknot

Well said alter ego and following on from chubbynanny:

Alison, do you think we need "masculinism"? Has there been a kind of 'role reversal' or a new pecking order established in that I often hear/observe young women who outperform their husbands in terms of income and career success complaining "... what he must realise is that I bring in most of the money" or "I expect to come home to a meal prepared ..." etc. So in a relationship, if money and success = power, where does liberation meet equality?

It is (sadly) true that in relationships money and success do translate into power, often quite subconsciously and with the more powerful one oblivious to this/denying it. At its most basic, whether or not it is possible, in practical terms, to walk away from a partnership has had a huge effect on the relationships among men and women. You get higher levels of domestic violence, in this country, in groups where the women don't have good levels of English, education etc and it's not just 'culture', it's basic power relations. But I'm intrigued by the idea that we might need 'masculinism'. I do sense that some men - many men - feel that they can't criticise, can't engage with nay debate that is 'about' women: women own it, have the moral high ground because of millennia of being treated so unequally. (So my book only gets reviewed by women.) I think those attitudes probably will change as modern opportunities bed in. I hope so: not feeling able to say things breeds resentment.

doubletrouble

What do you think the implications are of your discovery that fertility rates for highly-educated couples are falling? Social scientists have always worried that the poor and other undesirables are reproducing in large numbers - and of course in the early part of the last century there was a panic about eugenics, which led nowhere good. But despite these panics about feckless reproduction, we seem to have gone on making progress.

So does it really matter?

I don't think it is a huge issue, though obviously in many cases there is a lot of individual heartbreak, and I certainly don't think we should call a halt on research into fertility treatment on the grounds that the affluent benefit most. One of the big social benefits of falling birthrates at the top is that it makes it easier to have reasonable levels of social mobility, and given how much is stacked against that, anything is a help! But there is one real issue. A great deal of our 'human capital', and understanding of society, isn't passed on in schools and universities, it's passed on in homes, from parents to children. On the one hand, that is, of course, one reason children from educated families do well. But it also means that, if we put lots of effort into educating (formally) people who won't pass it on to another generation, we are losing a lot of family-based education, not having chunks of wisdom, experience and knowledge passed on to another generation in the way it would be if there were children. It's quite a wasteful model for a society to run with....

Clytie

I haven't read the book either, I'm afraid, but I am curious about the title. I assume it's a reference to the XX chromosomes, but what exactly is the XX Factor? (I did gather from what I read that you're talking about women being very different from each other, so I assume this factor isn't something that we all share).

People project their own meaning onto it I've found...Yes, it's the chromosome obviously, and as a social scientist I was thinking about how we explain the world, its changes, how it works, the future. And there is now one major, heavyweight new variable which needs to be added into an equation - into the explanation of pretty much anything - namely the existence of a very large, historically unique group of highly educated professional women. (It was about 70 million when I sent the galleys off, 20 million in Europe alone.) That's a sort of critical-mass change for any society.

closetgran

You don't talk much about happiness in the book. I appreciate that you're presenting a lot of statistics rather than a commentary or polemic, but in fact there do seem to be a lot of values implicit in what you're writing - for example, you talk all the time about "top women" which implies a kind of approval. You talk about them "pulling away" which again sounds like you're endorsing them. You write blandly about elite institutions - schools and universities - as if they were genuinely meritocratic, rather than the beneficiaries of much greater resources.

We know that happiness is greater in societies where there is greatest equality. Denmark is supposedly the happiest country in the world. Inequality breeds envy, resentment and dissatisfaction and militates against collaboration. You don't seem very interested in the impact your top women are having on other women or the deracination they are experiencing from their societies.

I am a firm feminist and have worked all my life and have done pretty well. But reading your book, I felt profoundly depressed. The society you are describing is quite horrible and, it seems to me, liable to lead to quite a lot of unhappiness on all sides. The implicit assumption seems to be that money buys happiness and contentment - but actually, we know it doesn't.

What is your view on the place in your 15%'s lives of values of civic responsibility, community, contribution?

I thought I was pretty critical, while trying to avoid ranting/stay objective and only say what i had evidence for. And I wrote a whole chapter about the loss to society of all those generations of women for whom duty and community came first, and the limitations of a 'Me" culture...As for implying that money buys happiness: well, I'm definitely with whoever (Mae West? ) said 'Baby, I've tried rich and I've tried poor, and believe me, rich is better.' Being poor, having to think about every penny, is horrible and degrading. And people do respond to money and financial incentives - not all of them, always, but they do. But that is absolutely not the same as saying that only money matters which i absolutely do not believe, and don't think my book does either.

flopsybunny

Hello Alison,

I was intrigued by the bit of the book about Dutch women, who clearly buck the trend you are writing about in many ways, so that even high fliers show a preference for working part-time and for living balanced lives.

If you were a policy maker, would you apply levers to encourage this in the UK, or do you think we are better off with our frantically ambitious and driven and globally-competitive 15-20%?

I'm really intrigued by it too, especially as it is so recent. The Dutch used to have a huge number of seriously house-proud full-time housewives. (Gleaming windows especially.) And yes, I think I would if I could figure out how. It does presuppose a very productive economy - which the Dutch have had for the last few decades, with a really healthy export surplus, but I know they are worrying about the impact on them of the current financial/eurozone crisis.

granIT

What has the reception been to the book? Do you find that women tend to put themselves into one category or the other and respond accordingly?

And interesting that it hasn't been reviewed by men, given the profound social upheaval you are describing. Does that appal you?

In answer to the last question - well, I wasn't surprised, so wasn't appalled, but I was really disappointed! Especially since men I know who have read it have found it really interesting and relevant to them. As for the reception - well, truthfully, so far almost all the responses I've had have been from people who either self-identify as part of the elite group (which doesn't mean they agree with me on everything) or who read the book as being about working versus at-home mothers within the elite, or in other words being about the 'Mummy wars'. Which it definitely is not meant to be at all. Given our attitudes to class, lots of people do feel uncomfortable recognising how well-off they are, relatively, including me. So i think that probably affects reaction too.

loafer

Interesting that you think that women should have children younger where they can. Is that something you have urged your own children to do?

It is, though obviously it depends on finding someone you feel confident that it's right to have children with. Whether they were listening is another matter...

downwithcupcakes

I was fascinated by the parts of your book on Scandinavia - the idea that there is actually more gender-segregated work in Nordic countries, where caring has been outsourced from the home. it certainly contradicts what we've been led to understand about liberated, equal Scandinavia.

Do you have a sense of whether Scandinavian women think it is actually better to be paid for that caring work, though? Could it be that the salary and the status of a job validates that work, in a way we have found it difficult to do when it's been hidden inside the home?

All the journalists I've talked to have been fascinated by the Scandinavian stuff too! I wonder whether in this country we are especially likely to be told that someone somewhere else is getting it all perfect and we are messing up?
On the serious question - I think it's a very interesting question, my hunch is that yes, being paid to do a job does give one a sense of self-worth and identity. But I've tried to stick to facts that I can document and couldn't find anything on that explicitly. The problem, for any society, is balancing things: and the downside to the Scandinavian model is not just the near-impossibility of working part-time/the stress mothers turn out to feel, but also that it is actually very very expensive to run a welfare state that is as ambitious as theirs. And it's not as self-evident as we are led to believe that they have got it right.