Sex, gender, and sexual orientation  (Page 7/7)

Discrepancies in earnings

Minorities, which for the purpose of this discussion, includes white women and all people of color, earn significantly less for the same work than white men. White women earn about 76 cents for every dollar earned by a white man. Hispanic women, who are the lowest paid of any minority group, earn about 57 cents for every dollar earned by a white man. When adjusting for educational attainment and professional job categories the percentage of difference between the earnings of minorities and white men shrinks but the differences still remain. (For more information about this topic, please visit the following website: Table 633. Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers—Number and Earnings: 2000 to 2008 in the Statistical Abstract of the United States)

According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, separate career ladders for minorities and men create glass walls; while the glass ceiling is created largely due to homosocial reproduction. Minorities (white women and people of color) are severely underrepresented in upper-level corporate positions and the glass-ceiling blocks minorities from being able to climb the corporate ladder to the top—one can see through it, but can’t get through it. Rosabeth Moss Kanter in her classic study of women’s work and men’s work in one large multinational corporation, Men and Women of the Corporation coined the term homosocial reproduction which means that, since most management level personnel are white and male and since most people want to be around people who are similar to themselves, white males are hired and promoted in greater numbers than white women or people of color. Some of the consequences of sexism, therefore, are economic. But Mary Daly writes of one of the most egregious consequences of sexism.

Female genital mutilation

Between two and five million girls in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia are subjected annually to a pre-pubescent rite of passage called female circumcision or, more properly called by the World Health Organization female genital mutilation or FGM. There are various forms of this “procedure” as Daly writes.

1) Sunna Circumcision: removal of the prepuce and /or tip of the clitoris.

2) Excision or Clitoridectomy: excision of the entire clitoris with the labia minora and some or most of the external genitalia.

3) Excision and Infibulation: This means excision of the entire clitoris, labia minora and parts of the labia majora. The two sides of the vulva are then fastened together in some way either by thorns . . . [sic] or sewing with catgut, Alternatively the vulva are scraped raw and the child’s limbs are tied together for several weeks until the wound heals (or she dies). The purpose is to close the vaginal orifice. Only a small opening is left (usually by inserting a slither [sic]of wood) so the urine or later menstrual blood can be passed.

It should not be imagined that the horror of the life of an infibulated child/woman ends with this operation. Her legs are tied together, immobilizing her for weeks, during which time excrement remains within the bandage. Sometimes accidents occur during the operation: the bladder may be pierced or the rectum cut open. Sometimes in a spasm of agony the child bites off her tongue. [This “operation” usually occurs in the child’s home, without anesthetic or sterile instruments—sometimes kitchen knives or pieces of broken glass are used are used by the child’s female relatives who perform this torture.] Infections are, needless to say, common. . . . What is certain is that the infibulated girl is mutilated and that she can look forward to a life of repeated encounters with “the little knife”—the instrument of her perpetual torture. For women who are infibulated have to be cut open—either by the husband or by another woman—to permit intercourse. They have to be cut open further for delivery of a child. Often they are sewn up again after delivery, depending upon the decision of the husband. The cutting (defibulation) and re-sewing goes on throughout a woman’s living death of reproductive “life.” Immediate medical results of excision and infibulation include ‘hemorrhage, infections, shock, retention of urine, damage to adjacent tissues, dermoid cysts, abscesses, keloid scarring, coital difficulties [!!!], and infertility cause by chronic pelvic infections. Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Beacon: Boston. 1990. pp. 156-157.

For more information about Female Genital Mutilation see the following websites:

Female genital mutilation ; Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project ; Female Genital Mutilation: A Fact Sheet from Amnesty International ; Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting from Unicef ; Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Debates about FGM in Africa, the Middle East&Far East from Religious Tolerance.org .