Dutch spoiled princesses
Mon 29 November 2010
, Maurice Eykman, LEAP!
What do hardworking Americans think about Dutch spoiled princesses?Women should work longer hours. It is their duty to use their educations and skills. But instead of financial independence or interesting careers, most Dutch women strive for relaxation and fun. They quit work or flee in part-time jobs once they have found a partner with earning capacities and the first baby arrives. Society should ask those women its money for their education back. This more or less sums up the message of Spoiled Princesses by Elma Drayer. Reactions to her book were – although sometimes quite heated, also quite predictable. More interesting is the view of the Americans on their lazy - or is it happy - or is it victimized - Dutch sisters.
Some people said Drayer is an old-fashioned feminist who didn’t get it: happiness is more important than economic independence. Some said Dutch women are forced to work part-time; they are no princesses but victims of Dutch culture, the tax system and the lack of child-care possibilities. So far, nothing new. But what do our American sisters think about our princesses? They have some new insights. Our shops close too early! And Dutch women find fulfillment in other things than work. And their husbands are working overtime to make this possible: wait till massive numbers of them want to switch to part-time work as well.
Dutch women want freedom On the website of the Economist a blog with the title: Why Dutch women don’t work longer hours? tries to find answers to why Dutch women work so much less than their American – counterparts. It quotes Jessica Olien who lived in the Netherlands for a while: “When I talk to women who spend half the week doing what they want—playing sports, planting gardens, doing art projects, hanging out with their children, volunteering, and meeting their family friends—I think, yes, that sounds wonderful. I can look around at the busy midweek, midday markets and town squares and picture myself leisurely buying produce or having coffee with friends. In a book released several years ago called Dutch Women Don't Get Depressed—a parody of French Women Don't Get Fat—Dutch psychologist Ellen de Bruin explains that key to a Dutch woman's happiness is her sense of personal freedom and a good work-life balance. But it's hard to transplant that image to the United States, where our self-esteem is so closely tied to our work. I wonder what the equivalent title would be: American Women Don't Get Satisfaction”
Dutch shops close too early The author, whose name we don’t know, she/he is only shown as M.S., warns that although there are certainly things one learns about American culture by comparing it with others, there's also a temptation to romanticize the differences: “Dutch markets and town squares are busy at midday because Dutch stores still close at 6 or 8 pm, often by law. This is one reason why women are less likely to work full-time: who would do the shopping, and when? And if "Dutch women don't get depressed", I must be meeting a very biased sample. On a more subjective level, much of what Ms Olien phrases as enviable time for and interest in self-development can be seen, in conservative parts of Dutch society, as the same kind of housewifely status competition that Americans have stereotypically reviled since the 1960s. Meanwhile, in the more lefty New-Age segments of Dutch society, people who talk too much about their careers are likely to be criticised for failing to "work on themselves", and the obligation to talk about your latest exploits in yoga, home improvement or travel in Central America quickly becomes almost as much of a stressful status competition as the worst American networking sessions.”
Dutch women don’t earn enough A certain Matthew Yglesias is cited pointing how this intersects with high standards of living: “I think it would be a mistake to say that Dutch women are happy because so few of them are involved in full-time work. I would say instead that most Dutch women are happy because Dutch people enjoy an extremely high material standard of living (you should really see what passes for a slum in the Netherlands, it’s absurd) and that this reflects itself in part via women’s disinclination to toil for long hours in jobs they don’t find rewarding.”This all however leaves unexplained why American women from upper-middle-class backgrounds, who are statistically speaking much richer than Dutch women, often work insanely hard to achieve success at the very kinds of management jobs that Dutch women don't consider worth their while.
Dutch women have other things to doM.S. concludes with saying: “I have a strange and non-falsifiable theory about this: I think a lot of Dutch women enjoy part-time work because the challenge of arranging a complicated schedule and forcing the world to deal with it is empowering. It's part of the way they valorise their lives. In that way it's really quite similar to the way that, as Ms Olien writes, American career women boast of everything they've managed to do during a particularly hectic day. There's an element of national culture here, in that making schedules complicated, and then demanding that others keep track of and adhere to them as a matter of what the Dutch call "norms and values", is sort of a national pastime in the Netherlands. I can't tell you how often I've called up a bank, a government department or a software firm and been told that I have to deal with Ms DeWinter, who's available on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays between 11am and 3:30pm but is away on sick leave until next week, when the office will be closed Monday for the Ascension holidays. Coping with these schedule demands is considered part of the social obligations of citizenship, and the ability to set the schedule is a mark of power. Somehow it all goes back to the complexities of timing ships' passage through the locks on the canals, or perhaps something about the dikes. It's always about the dikes.”
Dutch men are left making up for them..People who commented on the blog – presumably Americans – seem rather attracted by the Dutch example and say: “Americans have never understood that one works to live; Europeans are much saner in this regard.” “Good for Dutch women. I wouldn't work if I didn't need to either.” And: “Unfortunately, in America, we have to actually work for a living. I wonder how Dutch men feel about female underemployment, and do they tend to get in on the underemployment fad, or are they left making up the deficit.”
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