Seated North American men used to offer women their seats. The disappearance of that “gallant” gesture is a small sign of a big change.

Women gained recognition as humans after long service as jealously guarded pets and housemaids. The seat offer was a relic of women’s former status.

Two facts shine through today’s fog of economic fear. One: The status of  Western women has risen to an unprecedented level. Two: The upward push falls short.  

U.S. women’s median pay for full-time work in 2005 was $585 a week, against $722 for men; 77 per cent of Canadian women aged 25-44 had jobs in 2006, against 87 per cent of men. But many “jobless”  were  looking after children — a poorly paid but vital job.

That case-study poses a  question:  Can we rebuild the world by calculated action, or must we resign ourselves to being carried along like twigs in a flood, by forces beyond our control?

Yes, we can rebuild, if the timing is right. How do we raise the status of women further? How do we  revive a collapsed  economy?

Men blocked early attempts to raise women’s status, until events opened the way, through the Industrial Revolution and world wars fought over the shareout of the wealth  and power that the new machine-driven re-organization produced. Machines  diminished the importance of  muscle power  in workplace and war.  New contraceptives freed women from their slavery to childbirth. “Accidental” events enabled  women’s  right to vote; yet  politicians  still dither about further  changes. Nature impels women to  be the primary givers of child care. This urge hurts them  at home  (because family allowances and day-care financing  are meagre); and in the workplace, (because rivals fill their slots while they do the mothering  job, and they lose the competition to climb the ladder to higher pay).  

Low-cost day care  and early education is widely recognized as  an investment that can return manyfold in lower costs for health care, welfare  and crime.

Keith Sketchley, a thoughtful letter-writer,  challenged my argument  for an agency that will seek a consensus of citizens and experts  and press the findings on lawmakers,  enabling democratic/scientific management.

I share his distrust  of  experts.  Economists are locked into market exchange. Their doctrines imply that the “free market” is a self-standing, natural thing. We break its rules at our peril.

But the market  and the “expert” label are human creations. People can change both. We are a brainy, co-operative species. Karl Polanyi  and followers have shown that market  exchange is only one of four continuing human-invented ways  to distribute the goodies.

The others are reciprocity: resembling the exchange of Yuletide gifts; redistribution: payouts that include the opening to the populace of Roman granaries, and president Roosevelt’s Great Depression networks of transfer payments which still  help smoothen the bumps in the market; and mobilization: the assembling of resources  for a grand purpose, like building a pyramid, waging war or flying to the moon.

If we really let the market run free, it would starve “inefficient” people. Mr. Sketchley blames government- encouraged reckless lending and speculation  for the current financial disaster and  the 1929 crash. Others blame greedy capitalists. Both claims probably are true. The market includes exchange of support for political favours. Blunders happen in the struggle between redistribution and market.

But I doubt Mr. Sketchley’s beliefs: that voting fixes political messes, and that democratic/scientific planning means  Stalinist central planning. Planning should be a flexible blend of vision-making and science. A majority of electors  rejected Harper, but he gained office and trashed national day care and condoned health-care privatization. We need a House of Policy as well as a House of Power.

If opponents ditch Harper, Canada can lead a global  Internet-focused reawakening  that overshadows the industrial and agricultural revolutions and mobilizes everything from child-care money to the manufacture of folding rental cars for train stations.

gemort@pacificcoast.net

—G.E. Mortimore is a Langford-based writer. His column appears in the Gazette every second week.