A Final Observation about Gender Relations

Sometimes, while a topic is on your mind, it is good to take some time to divert ones focus by reading a good book.  My faithful and obedient companion gently suggested I start reading again.  I believe she thought maybe I might settle down and think about something else besides social changes between men and women.

In that spirit I picked up a book she gave me for Christmas, "Tommy's Honor" a book about the origins of golf in Scotland as told by the author Kevin Cook.  It is the true story about Tom Morris and his son Tommy Morris, Tommy being a multi year winner of the "Open Champion" and whose name is the first one to appear on the Open Trophy.  He had and his father won the title multiple times prior to the "trophy".  The elder Morris, Tom, basically designed the current St. Andrews Layout and was instrumental in the design that became the basic standard for all golf course layouts in the world.  It is a fascinating story.  Both Tom and his son were "commoners" who became solidly "middle Class" through the world of greenkeeping, golf ball and club making and eventually playing golf as "professionals".  Young "Tommy became a "pure professional" who thumbed his nose at the existing class structure, while his Dad was inclined to "stick" to social conventions of his age until the day he died.

The story is as much a commentary on the emergence of a "middle class" in Scotland brought about by the Industrial Revolution and documents the class distinctions between the landed aristocratic class in Britain and essentially everyone else.

Ok so how did my "digression" into a book about golf turn out with respects "gender" thinking work out?

Let me bore you with a particular story related by the author.  One which fortunately (or unfortunately) brought me back to my current topic.

Young Tommy met and fell in love with, and married, Meg Drinnen a "coal miner's daughter".  St Andrew's Golf Historian, David Malcolm, provided some enlightening details about her background as follows (note this is not the word for word account I summarize):


Margaret Drinnen's Father was a coal pit bottomer. He ran the cage that took men from the surface to the tunnels beneath the town of Whitburn.....The family lived in a two room ramshackle home that housed the 8 members of his family and a boarder...Margaret (Meg) shared 3 "water closets with over a thousand other residents of the town.  Many relieved themselves while waiting in line, adding to the stench of coal and sulphur that hung in the air until rain drove it into the muck.

A generation earlier women and children had worked in the mines, dragging coal up the deep flights of steps.  The mothers descended into the pits with their older daughters and each laid down a basket  that was then filled with a load of coal so large it took 2 men to lift and place it on their backs .  The women often wept bitterly on their  journey to the surface.  

In 1853 The House of Commons passed a law barring women from the mines. Who took over?  The boys of course, although in 1873 another law was passed barring boys under 13 from working more than 10 hours per day 6 days per week.  

The mechanical cage Margaret's father operated did help relieve boys from carrying coal to the surface although boys were routinely crushed by coal cars in the mines. When that happened burial always was on Sunday, the only day off for the miners.

I'm not sure women's relief from working in the mines brought much joy when it resulted in burying their sons.  However, I am also pretty certain that the women's rights groups at the time were not protesting about such laws that created gender employment discrimination in the workplace.

Which brings me to my final points on this topic (for which you are probably all grateful!).

For most of human kinds existence there was a recognition of family as the basic building block of society,   Families toiled together in mutually cooperative ways to survive.  At the same time there has always existed a separation between social classes.  Aristocratic women and men did not toil like the vast majority of the population..until the Industrial age.  The cheap energy that untold thousands died to provide enabled the society we all have come to enjoy.  It has freed up humans to attain wealth for virtually all classes of society, something unimagined by those men and women laborers of the 19th century.

I write this last social commentary hopefully to provide some context to our current gender and social "wars".  At one time, prohibiting women from certain forms of labor was looked upon as enlightened social policy.  A very rapid and progressive turn in human relations.  This has all taken place in just a few generations.  I am sure nobody pondered that someday such discrimination  would be looked upon as "keeping women" from attaining occupational fulfillment.

I leave this topic with mixed emotions.  I do not pretend to have insight on  what the future holds for our society.  I also believe that neither the right or left have clue where the drive for a "genderless society" will take us.  I am convinced, however, that there are significant warning signs ( al la Wayward Sons) that the breakdown of our traditional building block of society, the family, needs to receive a lot more attention than it currently gets particularly from our cultural elites as well as the rest of us.


Until Next time (and a new topic)
Adieu