Would you Eve it?

We all know women are to blame for everything but three guesses where this question leads:

Does the woman in your life really need a job?

Yes apparently working women caused the credit crunch. Not those irresponsible bankers over lending on toxic assets, no it’s mere tomfoolery to suggest such a thing apparently. Just another way of blaming men – see the writer (Newton Emerson) suggests it’s wrong that “from Iceland to Australia, men are blamed for causing the credit crunch” no ‘cos those bankers weren’t men (in the main), not at all, and capitalism isn’t an essentially masculine concept based on competition and, frankly, a lot of willy-waving nonsense. No not at all. Poor menz being blamed for, erm, well, their actions.

But Newton isn’t finished – far from it – as he avers that “Women also have an important role to play in jobs that are too demeaning for men, like teaching” (because obviously educating the next generation is demeaning rather than, well, crucial and I assume he’d draw the line at women teaching science or in Universities because that’s far too butch for us and we might break a nail /end sarcasm/).

But wait for it, not only is teaching apparently demeaning but Newton thinks it can simply be abolished – along with medical jobs like being a doctor or nurse or policing or in immigration or tax posts (that’ll help the credit crunch surely be restricting the flow of revenue into the government (don’t blame me, it’s as sensible as Newton’s dodgy grasp of economics) and all other public sector work…

It would be ludicrous to suggest that women should be sacked purely to give men their jobs. In many cases, their jobs should be abolished as well. Women are twice as likely as men to work in the public sector. They account for two-thirds of the Civil Service and three- quarters of all public employees. Yet they are barely represented in the useful public services..

Right now for the economics bit according to Newton this is the problem

Women working = families with more money = high house prices = credit crunch

Anyone else seeing flaws here? I am, like the fact that most higher house prices was a side effect of 90-100% mortgages making credit more available even where evidence that repayment was possible was limited. But wait that’d be asking bankers to take responsibility for their actions and Newton can’t do that so guess what? He’ll blame women.

So Newton’s solution to the credit crunch is that women shouldn’t work. Now there is an inherent contradiction because either Newton mean’s it’s OK for some men to be demeaned by doing those pesky jobs like teaching or those pesky jobs won’t exist. Which won’t create more work for men, it’ll just create more people unemployed. See the problem?

Add to that the fact that, y’know, for some families women’s income is the only one they have either through single parenthood or through the man being unemployed already or disabled or being single women or being in a lesbian relaitonship.

The “additional benefits” of the article is laughable, by the way – citing the fact that twice as many women as men travel to work by public transport Newton argues banning women from work would halve the pollution problem. Conveniently ignoring that men, we therefore surmise, travel by car which is a far more pressing environmental issue assuming they don’t liftshare.

(H/T to Penny at The Anti-Room)