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The Futures Of Women: Scenarios For The Twenty-first Century

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Sometimes a book comes along at just the right time. Perhaps this is one of those for the women across several generations who may have the chance to work together towards a common vision. The Futures of Women speaks with a strong voice about four future scenarios created by the authors based on current ideas, trends and facts. The authors tell us,
"Scenarios permit us to see how the choices each of us makes in the present are linked to outcomes 20 years in the future. Imagining these four possible futures today gives us a means of grasping the consequences of choices and gives us hope of influencing the course of events."

Each of the four futures has been extrapolated to provide a vision into "what might happen if" scenarios entitled Backlash; The Golden Age of Equality; Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back; and Separate and Doing Fine, Thanks! As we read the scenarios we bring personal view points to whether this or that envisioned future will be predominant. What matters to the scenario process, however, is that we expand our view of what is possible as we read them and allow the process of thought to promote individual understanding.

Innovation requires that we expand our understanding of what is possible and to "see" problems, opportunities and solutions before others see them. Perhaps scenarios are most effective as development tools in the innovation process rather than the divining rod for innovative ideas. The simple act of gathering the material to use for imagining variations of what the future may hold drives one of its most important benefits. In understanding where we are and what could happen through sifting evidence of our culture and time, a foreshadowing of who we might become is unearthed within several possible futures. The storytelling in the scenario weaving process then provides the context for relationships between ideas that may lead us to imagining futures whose paths are trajectories that we can either access or build towards.

Tired of the banalities of "futurists" who are either dead wrong or tell you what you already knew? McCorduck and Ramsey offer an *intelligent* exploration of several possible futures for women. They have done their analysis carefully, and have woven together the facts and some believable creativity into four scenarios for women.

The scenarios are richly detailed, and many aspects of each are hauntingly familiar-- as if some of these futures have already happened. Set aside your preconceived views about what you believe the future holds, and embark on this journey. It will be an eye-opening adventure.

I have written a longer review of this excellent book [online].

The Futures of Women The Authors' Perspectives

PAMELA MCCORDUCK is the author of Machines Who Think and The Fifth Generation.

NANCY RAMSEY is a former legislative director to Senator John Kerry and co-author of Nuclear Weapons Decision-Making.

The Futures of Women began as a project for the clients of Global Business Network (GBN), Emeryville, California. The central business of GBN is the planning and creation of scenarios for corporate, government, and nongovernment long-range planners. The principals of GBN are encapsulated in the Shell Oil team that in 1968 predicted both the sharp rise in oil prices and in the early 1970's the fall of the Soviet Union. GBN claims not to have predicted either event. Rather, "they examined the predetermined elements and identified what they viewed as the driving forces." (p. xi) In 1993, from October through December, GBN gathered in two meetings to examine facts and trends, destroy complacency, and predicate thoughts about the roles of women in the next twenty years-a generation into the future. The two conferences, on-line and face-to-face, generated many novel ideas, one of which is the fact that "most women are years ahead of most men in thinking about changing roles. Most men are just now beginning to [admit] to women, 'You really mean it.' Many men are confused; some are resentful. They consider themselves decent and good and are pained to be perceived as obstacles. They also realize that the privileges their sex enjoyed for centuries are threatened with extinction." (p. xiii) The on-line conference produced so many emotional stymies that as a model of the real world, it is clear that unfulfilled emotional business will play a role in the real future. "The on-line conference was evidence that men especially are anguished about pending changes....McCorduck had never seen so much raw emotion on the computer screen. The face-to-face meeting, on the other hand, provided exhilarating evidence that women and men working as respectful partners can envisage a world that meets, even exceeds, our rosiest expectations." (pp. xiv-xv)

Introduction

Main Idea: The Reality of the Present--Women Are Not Achieving Equality. "Statistics collected by the United Nations since 1975 show that in most economic respects, things are getting worse, not better for most women in the world. (p. 320) In 1970, the top managers of major American Corporations were 99 % male. Twenty years later, only 95% of top mangers were men. At this rate, it will be the year 2270 before women and men are equally likely to be top managers of major corporations. In Congress, were 6 % of elected representatives in the mid-1990s, a tripling of the 2% they were in 1950. At this rate, Congress will achieve equality between men and women by the year 2500. The percentage of high-level women may remain frozen forever at under 10% in business and in politics....Women generally avoid thinking about these numbers and the difficulties they represent because nobody has the stomach for confrontation and battle, or for large-scale organizing efforts, the traditional means of achieving what women want and of preserving what they have. (pp. 9-10) Should this trend continue into the future, we might think of it as a more subtle form of Backlash." (p. 320) Main Idea: The Wish List of Problems for Desired Equality. In an upbeat response, women from all over the world identified a list of problems common to them: they desire autonomy over their own bodies, they desire health and education, they desire equality in the workplace, they desire freedom from violence, and they desire a share of political and economic power. "All over the world, women will recognize an internal change in themselves, and they are preparing to seize...their own futures.... Women's transformed view of themselves, combined with other global seismic shifts-the restructuring economy and the rapid spread of information technology-means that this is a very new future we all face."(p. 5) "If the genuinely powerful, nearly all of them men, view the world as a zero-sum game, convinced that the gains of others must be their loss, then even those modest but real advances that women have made toward equality in the last few decades of the twentieth century seem to be a startling threat to the powerful. (p. 10) Main Idea--Future Implications: With No Common Standard of Law, Women Will "Go Backward" in Equality. Moreover, the Western notion of individual rights, protected by national law and international action, is being ferociously resisted as an international norm. With no common standard of law, and with nations powerless to enforce that standard if it existed, women go backward." (p. 17) The book offers four possible views of the future world in the form of four scenarios: (1) Backlash; (2) A Golden Age of Equality; (3) Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back; and (4) Separate and Doing Fine, Thanks! Each scenario is written as a blend of description, novel, and biography-graphic, ripping with emotional truths of the abuse of women and of the fundamental resistance to the changing roles of women, and intellectually connected with both history and future. One must read carefully to discern the thin line, where real events of the late twentieth century end and the fiction of a possible future begins. Contemporary abuses against women throughout the world, in every culture, leap out of the pages to enlighten the reader of the collaborative, collusive containment of women in the culturally and worldly traditional roles-both metaphoric and real-of mother, of housewife, of "harlot," and of "slave" in restricted positions of responsibility and/or of salary in the western corporate world and in the primeval third world countries sans technology. The common thread that is embedded in and generates each scenario is the state of the global economy and the political and philosophical factions that govern a country or rule a company. "In one of our scenarios, individual rights generally prevail and the global economy grows robustly. Result: 'A Golden Age of Equality.' In another scenario, the rights of groups-religious, political, tribal, or national-tend to prevail over individual rights, and the economy grows robustly: 'Separate and Doing Fine, Thanks!' When individual rights prevail over group rights, but the global economy is depressed, the scenario is 'Two Steps Forward, Two Steps back.' In another scenario, group rights prevail over individual rights, but the global economy is depressed, resulting in 'Backlash.'" (p. 21) In each scenario the same predetermined elements play a role-demographics and technology for two-but the plot line differs in each scenario. "Electronic money may encourage easy buying in one scenario, but it could camouflage fraud and crime in another. Money itself disappears in some places, to be replaced by barter...The voices of imaginary women who have lived through them help to give realism and texture. Thus [the four] scenarios are a textual form of virtual reality.... (p. 21) Main Idea--Future Implications: One of the main purposes of a scenario is to illuminate the present, not necessarily to predict the future." (p. 311)

Scenario 1: Backlash. "In this scenario the priorities, mores, and values of religious, tribal, political, or national groups dominate over individual rights in a depressed, no-growth, regionally oriented economy. A black economy, far larger than a local black market, is itself fueled by international narcotics trade.... For women things have seldom been so grim: If they work for pay, they are the last hired and first fired; they get the worst jobs and differential wages. They are expendable." (p. 28) In this futuristic world, Christian and Islamic fundamentalist leaders lay the troubles of a suffering people-crime, poverty, political corruption, disease, failing schools-at the feet of women. "It was women's unnatural ambitions for themselves that had caused them to neglect their duty to their husbands and children and upset the old, peaceful, natural, and God-ordained order." (p. 29) By 2005, women were bound to their guardian husbands and fathers. "Women who had once been fearful only of going out after dark now needed to fear the daylight too. Thus many consented to having homing devices placed under their skin, which certainly permitted them to be found in emergencies, but which also offered them up as victims of spying." (pp. 31-32) By 2015, sex was perceived as a weapon. "Men accused women of using sex to exert power in business, to get extra business, to get promotions, whatever they wanted. Conversely, many women argued for asexuality-avoiding anything but electronic communications with men, refusing to talk or think about sex. [These women] believed that if they denied their sexuality they would be safe." (p. 36) In the 1990s men were determined "to put women back into their traditional place. If beating women is traditional, then beating wo

In this futuristic book by Pamela McCorduck and Nancy Ramsey, the authors step into the future to describe what women's lives might be like two decades from now. In addition to their knowledge gained through various opportunities and extensive research, the book is an outgrowth of attending the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China (September 1995). The authors created four scenarios by mixing group and individual rights, economic trends, and the impact of present day events and trends. The four worlds include the following:

o Backlash: Women lose what they have gained in society

o Utopia: Women rise the economic ladder through technology and science

o Status Quo: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

o Separatism: The loss of individual rights in a different kind of society where women develop separate (all female) groups within society

The Futures of Women: Scenarios for the 21st Century is a wakeup call for women throughout the world who are interested in understanding their roles in society. The experience of reading about our future in past tense is, at times, alarming and disheartening. Throughout the book, the authors remind the reader that these are scenarios developed to "illuminate the present, not necessarily to predict the future". The Futures of Women: Scenarios for the 21st Century was written to provoke thought and stimulate readers as an invitation for further conversations about possible desired changes that will impact the future of our society as a whole. The book is imaginative and somewhat frightening in suggesting concepts that could easily, in fact, become reality. The book will help the reader recognize his or her responsibility in facilitating change for women, if change is desired.

A Discussion Guide is now available as a partner to this book at: http://www.womenswork.org/futures/guide.html

By starting with current trends, then extrapolating those trends into four possible scenarios for the future, Nancy and Pamela provide strong material for illuminating our present decisions, policies and actions. It may be fictional material, but never has there been a book that so strongly presents the consequences of our current state of behavior. By adding vignettes of women's lives from around the world in the years 2010 to 2015, the scenarios come to life and become personal - almost too real. No woman (or man) who cares at all about the well being of the human race - woman or man - should miss this book. It is both startling and hopeful, both entertaining and informative.

This book discusses an important topic. Why are women not moving faster into the upper echelons of power in business and politics?

The book's underlying hypothesis is that two factors determine the status of women in the world. Men exploit women economically and freeze them out of positions of power; and religion and tribal custom serve to subjugate women by giving men physical power over them.

The book outlines the futures of women as being determined by how these two factors--economic oppression and religious/tribal oppression--play out. The authors use the terms "growing global economy" and "depressed global economy" to describe the optimistic and pessimistic cases, respectively, for the economic "driver." They use the terms "individual rights prevail" and "group rights prevail" to describe the optimistic and pessimistic cases, respectively, for the extent to which women's autonomy is respected by religious and political institutions.

This set-up gives rise to four cases:

1. "growing global economy" and "individual rights prevail": women achieve full equality.

2. "growing global economy" and "group rights prevail:" women achieve economic parity but must go "underground" to evade the Orwellian repression of their cultural freedom.

3. "depressed global economy" and "individual rights prevail": women are able to fend off physical violence, but economic oppression is overwhelming.

4. "depressed global economy" and "group rights prevail": women are economically oppressed and physically subjugated.

The book stands or falls on its quasi-Marxist assumptions. Like Marx, the authors view the world as a class struggle, and every facet of life is subsumed by it. Where for Marx the oppressed class is labor, for these authors the oppressed class is women.

For example, included in the most optimistic scenario is the overthrow of science: "Was science as it is practiced nothing more than a white male, Eurocentric construct which must be dismantled before it collapsed and crushed everyone?" (p.122)

One is reminded of Hitler's attack against "Jewish science." The authors cannot accept the possibility that the scientific method is a well-developed manner of thinking, as opposed to an instrument of class repression.

What if the quasi-Marxist diagnosis is wrong? What if some other factors account for the traditional roles of women? Factors that come to mind include: the high rate of infant mortality that prevailed until the last 200 years or so in the West; and the importance of physical strength in warfare up until very recently, which put men into the military, which in turn acculturated men to solving problems of logistics, strategy, and discipline that also were important in business.

If these factors were important, then with the advent of low infant mortality and the diminished importance of physical strength, the culture is likely to adapt to greater equality for women. This will take place without the class struggle envisioned by the authors.