Feminism sold a lie - Women, today, are worse off than ever

This for some perspective.

I wasn't allowed to do the subject I wanted to in school because I would have been the only girl in the class (I wanted to take tech drawing because I wanted to be an architect).
When I started work, I was paid literally half of what a male counterpart was getting.
I couldn't have got a loan (including a mortgage) without a male acting as guarantor. So no, I don't think I'm worse off today then I was in 60s and 70s.

I would say a home is more important than holidays and cars - those you can live without. Not a home though. It’s crazy getting on to the housing ladder these days.

Yes, housing market is a whole other kettle of fish. But as previously mentioned, feminism and economics do intersect and affect one another. Many women are trying to navigate and juggle building careers, get on the house ladder, and start families. It seems impossible to do it all. I know to a certain degree it always has been a juggle, but the housing situation at the moment, esp in this country is particularly dire. Childcare is extremely unaffordable as well.

Well homes were more affordable in one way - but so many other things like cars and holidays were unaffordable

the past is the past

women working didn’t screw the housing market - imagine that women didn’t work but house prices went from 3 times the man’s income to 6times … it would suck just as much and unless women working caused the house price problem it’s not the fault of feminism - that’s they world you are in - irrespective of feminism house prices have become uncontrolled

I agree @aurynne
The lie that was sold to many is that we can ignore the fundamental biological inequality.
In reality, we simply can't.

The difference is the ability to bear children and the expectation to do the lioness' share of their care and rearing.

I am a woman and I have never, ever had any issue with achieving equality. I have travelled, developed two professional careers, worked with men and women at their same level, with same opportunities and earning the same as them. In my relationships my partners and I have always been equal (the ones who weren't keen on it were given the boot or adapted pretty quiclkly, because I had the same power as them and did not need them). I am now 49, I am very comfortably, I work wnenever I want and set my fees most of the time, I am planning to spend next year travelling to celebrate my 50th, I have a house, an investment property and lots of savings. I love my life. Oh, and currently I have an amazing partner who is more of a feminist than I am. Longh may it last, but if it doesn't... I'll be perfectly ok.

Why could I "have it all" so "easily"?

There is a simple answer: I never wanted children.

I have zero doubts that my life would have been much less equal if I had had the desire to have children. For starters, pregnancy and birth, even if they go seamlessly well, would have set me back in my career and studies. In the worst case scenario, it could have caused me injuries that I would carry for the rest of my life, and set me back even further. Then childrearing: I could have worked on choosing the perfect partner as much as I wanted, but if my partner changed after the baby was here, of ih he proved to be useless with child rearing, then I would still have to do the lioness' share of the baby's cares, because I wouodn't have the heart to just tell the child: sorry baby, you dad is useless, so I am going to be useless too and let you suffer".

Women don't abandon or neglect our children in the same proportion as men do when they are unhappy, so we feel the need to compensate the child, who never asked to be born, for their useless father. So most women end up having the child living with them and doing the majority of their care while the father pisses off looking for a younger, freer woman (untill she has a baby, where the cycle normally repeats itself). Or even if the father stays home, if he refuses to do his share we don't simply refuse to do ours, because we are painfully aware that now there's another person here who will be the one paying for their parents' uselessness and lack of commitment.

As long as women are the only ones with wombs, and with a maternal instinct that stops them from abandoning/neglecting their own child when things don't go to plan, we will never have true equality.

Oh deary me, again with the comparisons. Yes mortgages were 14% but the house prices were far far lower and salaries were higher - it was much more affordable. My Dad’s first house was something like £14,000. Ours was £210,000.

It didn’t evolve that way, it was constructed that way. Religion did a lot if heavy lifting on that side.

You think the col is bad now try having 24.5% inflation (1975) and the inflation having to bail us out. There's a reason why we ditched the old monetary system. In the 80s interest rates on mortgages was around 14%.
Honestly you don't know how bad things were for the working class women. Look up why family allowance was brought in.

On a slight tangent, I often wonder why the human race has evolved with the sexes effectively being encouraged to see each other as enemies? It seems utterly counter productive as essentially we're driven to replicate and create and innovate, yet the systems in place disadvantaged both sexes in different ways.

I suppose there's possibly either some biological underpinning, or it's just a further reflection of divisive tactics that enables political control and power. However, you'd think by now given all the marvellous progress, knowledge and technology we would have evolved to do better by now. I don't like the former idea as it plays into my pet hate, evolutionary psychology, which is being used as a regressive weapon against women by pseudo intellectuals like Jordan Peterson.

Sometimes I'm just utterly baffled by everything to be honest. Maybe there's a chance of enlightenment in the post mortem cosmic soup..... one can only hope lol....

Don't anyone pull the 'husband/partner does 50% of everything' card, because the majority of men do not. And they still expect the wife/the mother of their children to go out to work though (as well as picking up most of the domestic work!)
Feminism has fucked over many women, because just like our mother/grandmothers/great grandmothers and so on, many of us STILL have no choice. The difference is many women today have no choice but to WORK. As well as taking on all the domestic duties, childcare, and gruntwork.

@zov you do have a choice, you should have a picked a better partner. I genuinely don’t know of any relationships out of my friends where the husband and wife are not 50/50 in childcare and housework. If you tolerate this, then your children will be next….as the manics said

Read about the marital status of women and women's rights in Ancient Rome. These women were very equal

Oh hey….right wing misogynist. Yeah, I’m fine thanks. I feel totally empowered and….fuck off

That part. There were always many women with various means or married into riches who in fact were given a chance to invent, paint, draw, sing, sculpt, converse, earn and spend from modest to big money, all the way down to Rome, Ancient Egypt, Israel etc. Read some history, Cleopatra, does it ring a bell??

Its not an failure its us recognising that your challenges aren't unique their just a variation of what we and our mothers and grandmothers went through only you have more rights and legal protections than we had because we fought for them and many of us continue that fight.
The real problem is your generation dont realise how bad it really was for us

Agreed. My gran had to spend most of her life married to an abusive man, she had no education or career. Only his death in early sixties freed her. Her sister had no kids, which she was heartbroken about,no fertility treatment or IVF in their day.

Define an insane opinion , to quote @VoodooQualities. I was born in the 1960s and women definitely had it worse then. MiL couldn’t even get divorced from an abusive husband, or work after marriage, children or not. Actually it’s quite a regressive view, and based on no understanding of history.

I think it was great when it still felt like there was a choice. But with more and more women working, two incomes meant more money - and more money allowed house prices to go up and up.

Now most women are back to not having a choice again but it's a shame we couldn't keen the middle ground - where women could choose to work, or be SAHM's and still afford to live.

I feel very lucky that I got to be a SAHM and sad that it is so poorly valued and becoming less and less of an option. It certainly was a huge positive for autistic DS who benefitted hugely from having me at home.

You're insane if you think women have it worse now than in previous generations. Our lives have become incrementally better with each generation, and you only have to go back a few generations before you get to a point where our lives now are immeasurably better than they were then.

You're also insane if you think women didn't work in previous generations. The vast majority of them did and it was usually very hard work indeed.

We did it on less 40k in the South East

No, come let’s not be petty here! We are having a grown up debate.

That’s the way things were. We got through! Is my life worse for it? No! So many speak about luck on MN. Well let’s add choices, as you have stated, choices you have made. Keep making good choices because only you hold your destiny in your hands.

I do believe in hard work. When my DD tells
me how hard it is and I see how hard she is working to gain the life that she wants and is capable of achieving, I gently remind her that she is still young and no one of her age has what she wants yet and in many cases has what she has.

We, gen Xs, and the generations that preceded us, have worked very hard to provide for, support and maintain families. There is still much to do.

All over the western world, Europe and even Russia women gained a lot in the 20th century.

@Hohumdedum But I know multiple people whose husbands don't earn megabucks who have managed to be a sahm until their kids started school.

I don't think being a SAHM for 5 years is really being a SAHM. To me, that's just a career break for the purposes of raising children. A SAHM is someone who is a SAHM for a long period of time (decades).

The point was men could afford to run a household a long time ago and now then can't. This means women have to work to work to ensure all those costs are met. This was my point, they had the choice before and it's pretty much that they don't have the choice.

Yes, that is nothing to do with feminism, and everything to do with economics and politics. The poorer you are, the less choices you have.

@ScrollingLeaves The SAHM mums I know:
One married to someone working for the church.
The other to a primary school teacher.

How old are they? I think it may be a bit easier for people older than me as house prices were not so bad 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.

Not that I would ever receive this offer, but if a woman offered to be a SAHM, I would have to decline on financial reasons alone. I imagine that most men would be in the same boat.