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

Yes, this piffle boils my piss, and it goes right through history.

The "angel of the home" eras have always ignored the fact that the majority of women have worked and men have worked for as long as there have been people.

See also, WFH - women worked from home, but so did men also, until there were industries to take them away from the home!

The normal way of life for the vast majority of history was living within a small network of villages with most of your family spread across them.

Fudging a bit to cover a lot of history here, but women would variably work as:

• domestic servants
• seamstresses
• brewers/innkeeps
• washerwomen
• small crafts/specific production (sail making)
• nursemaids, wet nurses

Children would often go where their mothers or grandparents went (and often worked themselves from a young age).

OP the things you feel are unfair are not feminism's fault. They are sexism's fault. The answer is MORE feminism.

Of course women shouldn't have to "do it all". But the answer isn't less feminism or going back to a time when women were treated vastly more as second class citizens than they are today.

The answer is the next wave of feminism that tells society that men need to do their share of household and family duties.

Read some women's history. And then direct your righteous anger in a useful direction, just as women have done for generations before you. You are part of a fight that is still ongoing and you will have to join the fight if you want things to continue to improve for women.

Choice Feminism is just about the most dim-witted branch of feminist ‘theory’. The point of feminism is to liberate women from patriarchy. We haven’t achieved that yet, but getting back into the kitchen isn’t going to help.

I’d love to not have to work, but not so I can be subordinate to a man in my own home and up to my elbows in nappies all day.

It’s not feminism you dislike, it’s capitalism.

On the single parent issue, you do know that unmarried women were called whores until not so long ago don’t you?
That divorced women had even less rights than single and married women.
That a woman could not even open a bank account in her own name, never mind get a mortgage.
Yet when women tell you of their lived experience, you say well some things were better.
Precisely what was better for women?
The fact that they had to often stay in violent, abusive relationships? Or endure endless sexism in the workplace? Or there wasn’t reliable contraception? Or they were cold and hungry and so too were their children? Or women did all kinds of things to try and induce miscarriage?

Is this a joke?
Seriously.

And, until 1975, they had no right to be paid the same as men doing equal/equivalent work. Many women still weren't paid fairly after the law changed. Related issues, such as equal pension rights and maternity provisions, were not addressed by the 1970 law (the often misapplied 'married woman's stamp' persisted to 1977). It's a continuing problem, though steadily improving.

Yes absolutely. My MIL grew up in a Catholic home in the early 1950s. She's third of eight children and grew up in a little terrace house. Her father didn't live with them but would turn up periodically, steal cash from her mother and then there would sometimes be another baby 9 months later.

No divorce and he certainly wouldn't show up in any documents as an absent father.

There may have been fewer children with a father divorced from.their mother. But that doesn't mean he was present.

Plenty of men absconded (and many then remarried bigamously). Far more than now died from wars, disease and industrial accidents. Women had little chance of contraception or abortion after rape by men they weren't married to, or consensual sex with a promise of marriage that was never fulfilled. Women had less ability to leave an abusive marriage - especially to do so an keep their children - but a few managed it, and if they did they had to completely disappear so they weren't forced back.

There have always been significant numbers of children growing up without fathers. At least now there's a greater chance the father will still have some contact and pay child support, and much less chance that the child will end up in the workhouse, or an orphanage, or starving to death on the street.

My mum and all my aunties worked full time, 1960s and 70s childhood, as did the mums of pretty much all of my primary school friends.

I agree, and we can also choose to be more picky in the first place and not even get involved with potentially useless partners.

Thankfully, women don't "need" a man anymore in the same way they did "need" a man a few decades ago. A man these days really is an "optional extra" and should only be for where a man enhances and improves the woman's life. Otherwise, what's the point?

And these days, women who find themselves lumbered with a useless man have more choices as to how to plan to extricate themselves from him, i.e. have their own careers, their own savings, their own ability to rent/buy a house, able to take out loans, etc.

I think we could definitely do better on men taking responsibility for their children - but that isn't the fault of feminism, it's down to inadequate men not keeping up with societal change. I do not understand why anyone would want to go back to a time when women couldn't get an abortion, couldn't leave a relationship that wasn't working, were subject to enormous stigma if they did, couldn't have a bank account or mortage in their own name - the list is endless, the items on it hugely significant.

And circling back to men - the reason women end up doing it all is that too manhy men are still refusing to do their fair share in a relationship where both partners work.

We can choose not to stay with a useless partner.

What an odd, narrowly-focused reply. Social systems change when social values change. You don't think the policies were set up in a vacuum, do you? Had some welfare czar created the system according to his beliefs alone, with no reference to life as it was or the people's criteria?

Workhouses were instituted at public demand, and ended after public opinion changed. Also consider the Magdalen Laundries.

Yeah, that's tradwife influencer bullshit.

Re your comment about absent fathers, surely there's a middle way?

I mean surely doing all these things isn't the only way to get men to stay with their families? :

'Married women were then put on a short term contract, a contract which stated they could be sacked at any time and were not eligible to join the company pension scheme. The same did not apply to married men. Some of the lower level(not senior) managers were women but without exception they were older and did not have children. In other words the company thought it safe that they were well past the age of getting pregnant as they had been married a fair few years. Pregnant women were told if they did come back to work it would be on a part time basis. Mothers were never promoted.'

If so many men really do need all these restrictions on married women & mothers to persuade them to stay with their families, that frankly doesn't speak very well of them....!

It's a matter of perspective, as I was said in my post. Might be better for you. That's not a universal experience.

Hmm,, I agree there are problems still but I don't think 'any real benefit' has been negated

Clearly the welfare system did not reflect the values of the public if there was public outcry and the formation of several charities and a special cabinet meeting and changes in policy. Why are you so determined to believe the public were against this if a TV drama produces a tremendous uproar against the practice. Was there any public resistance to these changes?

No, it's more about the values of the welfare system - which reflected the values of society.

I don't think society now is worse than society in the 1950s. Quite the reverse.

This is more about failure of the welfare system

I think I mean that there is no net gain to society as a whole, it has benefitted women in some ways, but the sacrifices either personally or more broadly negate any real benefit. They're just trade offs

Yes the OPs good old days. Where I lived they sent pregnant girls, often ones who had been abused by family members to mother and baby homes, contraceptives were limited so women had big families, borstals were full and boys were being abused there by everyone around them, women were stuck in marriages being abused, penniless. God those horrible feminists how could they, it was so much better for women in the past.

Thank you, yes I did say that..

But also, I think it IS true that as a whole, most women were not in paid work in the Victorian times. As I said, the link I gave estimated 43% of women as a whole worked then.

People cite domestic servants etc but an important detail is they often retired once married.

These stats don't include informal or domestic labour at home, so these shouldn't be ignored.

Have you seen Cathy Come Home? Maybe watch it, to see why children didn’t grow up with absent fathers - if their mothers were destitute (because they couldn’t work and look after children) the children were forcibly adopted.