This weeks topic was a welcome fresh perspective.  It has been no secret that the women's studies class has also been a class on feminism, and so hearing from a perspective that talking about feminism is redundant was interesting.  Not only did we read about how equality has in many cases been reached, but we read "that women, for the first time in history, had in many ways surpassed" men.  I felt that, after reading the handout, this was a limited perspective.  The statistics presented seemed to go against what we usually hear about women, especially those in the workforce.  For example, when the author mentions the "15 job categories projected to grow the most in the US over the next decade, 12 are occupied primarily by women" I had to wonder: what are these jobs?  Because we know they aren't CEOs or runners of Fortune 500 companies.  I also wished the author had emphasized that the job categories that were "projected to grow," as in jobs that are just beginning to enter into the job market, and not necessarily powerful jobs at all.  It would also make sense that these new jobs are being mostly occupied for women, because in many respects there are more women looking for the opportunity to get jobs than ever before, but this does not necessarily mean that there are more women than men entering the workforce.

My favorite sentence in the reading was in the middle of the third page: "Our vast and struggling middle class, where the disparities between men and women are the greatest, is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the workforce and from home, and women making all the decisions." Once I read this, I was unable to find the author a reliable source.  It seems as though the author finds an increased number of women in the workforce as an automatic oppression of men.  The idea that one oppressed party gaining equality will in turn take rights away from the oppressive party is archaic, and I would hope in modern America we would be able to move past it.  The rising number of middle class women in the workforce should be celebrated, rather than condemned.

It is always important to look at both sides of an argument, even if it is only to further prove your own point, like in this case.  The reading echoes the white propaganda of the 19th century, threatening that blacks would take over the world if they were given equal rights.  Women are finally gaining the same opportunities as men in the workforce, and thats amazing.  There of course will be backlash, however, and fear, as oppressed start to gain power over the oppressive.  Women in the workforce today have more opportunities for leadership roles, and therefore more opportunity to hold power over men.  to some that may seem like a matriarchy, or oppression of men, but I merely see it as women finally starting to have equal opportunity in the workforce.