We live in a sexist world of work. Analyzing how this unfortunate point was reached would take a long time and pages. That is why I prefer to focus on what has been happening for more than a decade. In my opinion, there is a fair labor revenge for women. The traditional phenomenon of the working male, a prehistoric aftertaste, the one who went out to generate sustenance for his partner and offspring, is falling apart even in third world continents like ours.
The different economies - pressing in more than one case to survive on a single income - forced women from home or away, to add more income for the economic well-being of the family structure. With this forced entry into the labor arena, the woman discovered three things: She could compete with equal results against a man in more than one task. She could generate her own economic income, which I consider to be the basis of the true and longed for female independence. And the most important point: He discovered that for certain jobs in today's competitive world, he had key skills that he developed during this historic hibernation.
I am referring specifically to the skills of relating and reaching agreements. Technically called "Customer Service" and "Sales". The explanation that I will give next seems homey but it is no less illustrative for that. In a historically macho world, women fulfilled the role of serving others. Not only to their family nucleus but even to their visits. This ability - to serve well without looking at who - is learned from a young age at home. The second skill, that of being easy to reach an agreement, has two sources of compulsory learning. The first, men - especially at a certain age - we understand each other more than with words.
Situation different from that of women, who resort to words - with some exceptions - to establish points of agreement with another person. The second source of learning (we go back to the average home again) was the transition from single to married and then to mother. Where before the first problem between the children, the male father wielded: "Let's see, see what happens with your children." Or: "Do me a favor to fix that problem", a well-known elastic phrase that could go through inconveniences such as that the neighbor's dog barked a lot, that the gardener pruned a tree a lot or that the water bill had inexplicably increased and needed to be done a "face to face" claim. In short, the female member of a macho household became an expert in solving problems - through dialogue, I insist - without having to resort to force.
Prehistory left its mark
The funny thing is that this revenge has been germinating since prehistoric times, but today it takes on a surprising role. Millions of years ago there were hominids - bipedal primates - that, saving distances, were fully our relatives, understand, part of the origin of man. Anthropologists, when studying the customs of these hominids and subsequent evolutions, found something really surprising: In their communities they worshiped goddesses. Clay pots clearly show admiration for female figures with large breasts and a prominent belly, that is, for pregnant women. The primary and practical reasoning of our old ancestors had its logic: women hunted, fought, ran, bit and snored just like men… but apart from that they gave birth. I was giving birth. It was the generating plant of more offspring (members), for its tribes.
And as is known to this day, a tribe with more members than another could assert that supremacy by force, overwhelm it, conquer it. The figure of the prehistoric man dressed in leopard skin who hits the woman with a club and drags her to the cave, is nothing more than extreme stupidity taken to the field of comics. Nothing further from reality. Proof of this is that 9,000 years before finding the Anatolian writings, man only reasoned and deduced that he had something to do with procreation.
Yet it occurs - according to the researchers - a revealing fact that marks the first great breach of male power. With the appearance of the plow, the history of the goddess woman changes to a relegated woman. It is enough to understand that in distant times like those, the plow (a pointed stick pulled by straps), was dragged by both men and women. Not even thinking about animals, yet. But there was a problem: A woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy could miscarry by pulling the plow, read: Losing a young for the tribe.
Then… the woman was destined to take care of and put in order the belongings of the tribe, to care for and educate the young (children) themselves, to keep the fire burning at the stake, etc. What we now understand by extension as "household chores." Meanwhile the function of man was one, simply one: Get resources for the tribe, hunt. Simply that. If we study a bit of neurobiology, especially the creation of neurons and their connections in the brain, we can conclude that we are associative animals. There is no where to get lost in this basic concept from the field of idea processing. Hence, going back to prehistory, time sculpted substantial differences in the female and male brain.
Because while she was attentive to more than one task, the woman developed network thinking. For her part, man developed thought step by step. Proof of this difference in information processing is that the prefrontal cortex (called the executive of the brain) of women is larger than that of men. Hence, since forever and today it is noticeable much more, the woman captures more details of the world around her and can perform several tasks at the same time, without losing the thread of any. The man, on the contrary, is more analytical, expert in compartmentalizing his attention. First this, then this, and finally this…
It is enough to conclude that then there is no female intuition. Quite simply, women are genetically and historically better equipped to succeed in today's world of work. A highly competitive and aggressive environment where knowing how to relate and having the will to reach agreements are the keys. A field where the rapid processing of a lot of information or variables makes the difference between a wise, timely decision or the open door to a business or commercial disaster.
Women are setting trends
Who today has not observed that the great relational and work networks, called Networking, are in the hands of women… is that they went blind or suffer from advanced myopia. Let's go to another relational extreme: the Internet. Studies show that the largest users of relational networks (from social networks like Facebook to businesswomen like Xing) are women, who well use these unlimited channels of interactive information - back and forth - to generate new and more business. Businesses that in more than one case have had to forge tooth and nail, because there is still a "glass ceiling" in governments, public institutions, corporations and companies of all kinds, which prevent women from reaching the upper stratum of the organization.
These women, now trained, with their own income, with key skills to ring the cash register, innate teachers in relationship management, have become an uncontrollable race of entrepreneurs. Women who have left the comfort and stability of dependent employment and have been encouraged to create their own companies or business units. As early as 2002, as an example of this unstoppable wave of talent, nine million American women owned their own businesses. And the number continues to grow… But even women must continue to battle against incomprehensible situations.
Not everything is rosy
The ILO (International Labor Organization) has just released a report in its Seminar equal pay for work of equal value, where the wage gap between men and women varies between 12% in the Nordic countries and 50% in Africa. In Bolivia, the country where I live, the situation is not at all pleasant. The gap ranges from 28% to 63% (in rural areas). If your question is why this notable difference in pay exists, the answer is tough: Because you are a woman.
To this unfair gap must be added other typically female problems in the labor field, such as, for example, the questioning of how a woman was promoted to key positions in the company, a situation that is not discussed or discussed if it is a man. And finally, in my opinion the most worrying, also a remnant of the prehistoric essence of the male man, former sole generator of daily bread, is that they cannot stand, tolerate or understand that a woman is successful or more income than they.
Hence, many successful women today live condemned to future divorces, strained relationships with a partner and children, constant self-blame, etc. Not for nothing is it said that men are afraid of failure and women are afraid of success. It will be a matter of beginning to break that ancient scheme of thought so that women begin to enjoy more this golden age that in sight will have no end.
