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

Yes. I think at least some of the problem is people don't really understand how much more time consuming it was to do things .

When my Dad wanted a bath in the early 50s, my Grandmother couldn't just turn the hot tap on, she had to get the tin bath out and boil three kettles of water.

She didn't have a vacuum, she had a carpet sweeper. TBF, in the 90s I had a 1950s hoover that was left in the flat I rented and that wasn't a lot better.

She DID have a twin tub, but still used the old mangle as well. No disposable nappies, or modern machine washable cloth ones. Nappies were soaked in a big bucket. My own mother did the same in the 60s and 70s with my sibling and me. She said she thought disposable nappies were wonderful when my sister used them for her children.

And all this whilst quite a few of these women still had to work. Oh, and my mum used to have to do the weekly shop in her lunch break because the shops shut at 5:30, even the big supermarkets, and weekend opening was limited.

I can see why a lot of millennial women feel frustrated balancing work, childcare, and household responsibilities is exhausting. I don’t think feminism sold a “lie,” but society and the economy have changed in ways that make achieving real equality much harder. It’s less about feminism failing and more about structural issues like pay gaps, housing costs, and workplace flexibility not keeping up with modern life

I didn't say feminism forced them, capitalism did. Feminism was one of the means to that, other being economic deprivation and erosion of workers rights.

In socialist countries women were "emancipated" much earlier, just because they were needed in the workforce. And those countries had their own ideologies to coerce women into hard work and working full time despite having children, similar to feminism but not exactly equivalent. We have friends in Scandi countries, guys are in fintech and earning more than enough to provide for big families, but women are socially pressured to work anyway and take up meaningless menial jobs. In Soviet bloc work was mandatory for everyone, irrespective of sex, and women worked in really hard jobs think roadworks or construction so absolutely equal with men but I would never call this a social achievement. Socialism provides childcare and social security though, capitalism does not so women are even more overworked and stressed out. There are other variations of ideologies and social and legal pressure on women to exploit them when they needed in a struggling economy, not one of them is beneficial to women.

Bravo. And to cap it all if you were a woman in work in the 70s, 80s and beyond, you had to put with posters in virtually every workplace showng a woman with naked blow-up boobs, and have a "sense of humour" about it and about being groped and nothing ever done about it. Such disrespect for women generally. Millenials seem to have no idea how primitive it was.

I think alot of people who weren't born yet in the 70s or 80s find it difficult to believe that even the "educated and genteel" poor didn't necessarily have all mod cons. Until we moved in with my Grandmother in the 80s, she had a boiler with a mangle, hand-washed a lot of her clothing, a meat safe as opposed to a fridge, no landline, and she rented a TV from Radio Rentals. It was an old Victorian rented flat above shops with sash windows until the 90s, and an open fire in the kitchen. It was big, yes, but a bastard to heat.

It was only the fact that my step-father worked in a warehouse attached to a big department store and could access "special deals" on ex display stock etc that elevated us into a semblance of a relatively decent standard of living.

Both my Nana and my Mum worked whatever jobs they could get, because people also forget that University was out of reach for the majority until grants were introduced.

In addition my Nana returned from Belgium, her then husbands home country a couple of years after the war after he fucked off to the Belgian Congo for a pilot job and never came back, leaving her stranded with three young children. When she hit the UK her only option was to put them in foster care until their teens because she had to work and no-one would rent to her. She had some live in domestic jobs, and her children would alternate seeing her at the weekend with one staying over on a Saturday night, the other two visiting on a Sunday as her quarters were one room.

The knock on effects of this means my family completely fractured after her death, as my Aunt couldn't forgive her for her childhood trauma.

My Mum was fortunately more pragmatic and realistic in realusing that women's options were very limited in the years in question, and maintained a good relationship with Nana till her death, including caring for her.

It's mind boggling how people forget that for many of us, though relatively young Gen X in our 50s, this is our lived experience, it's not dim and distant history, and we had first hand accounts of being disadvantaged purely because of sex coming from our relatives.

Also, Nana was a lapsed Catholic, and the stigma of her divorce was projected hard onto her children, when both her daughters went the same route, for various reasons. It caused alot of tension at the time, but she "came round" in due course.

Nothing is ever going to be perfect but thank Goddess and the tenacious women who helped things improve as much as they have.

I have a different experience, I watched my boomer DM work full time earning more than my DF, commuting into London and also doing everything at home. I am gen X and thought what a stitch. I married a poor man who got rich and had the SAHM life with the two cars, five bedroom detached house, multiple foreign holidays each year, hobbies, clubs for the DC etc etc.

Yes, I was there then. This is true.
Even the professional classes lived more simply than now: things like darned towels, socks and sweaters; sheets cut down the worn out middle and sewn back with the old edge in the middle; washing up and even washing by hand, sewing clothes, far fewer clothes, simple or no holidays, one or no car etc.

Well, yes, married men could afford to run a household a long time ago, but it wasn't the type of household that you're describing, OP.

The majority of households didn't have two cars - many didn't have any car at all. Those that did go on holidays, the majority of them was a modest holiday in the UK, perhaps camping or in a static caravan. Generally speaking, the standard of living in the 1960s, 70s and 80s was very much lower than it is today. People's expectations were lower and there wasn't that generalised sense of "entitlement" that pervades modern UK society.

Phrases like 'men hold all the money and power' at the time were very emotive whilst not entirely true. The correct statement then (and still now) is some men hold all the money and power. Most men back in the 50s-70s worked very long hours and spent pretty much all their money on their family.

Out of interest, how many women have you spoken to about the power imbalance who were adults in the 50s to 70s? And why do you think it wasn’t true?

Because I’m thinking about women having to obtain their husband’s permission to open a bank account until 1975. Zero chance of getting a mortgage without a husband or father co signing. No credit prior to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, not being allowed to sue for sexual harassment in the workplace until 1977, they could get fired for getting pregnant. Until 1982, it was legal to refuse service to a woman in a pub, simply because they were a woman. Husbands were legally allowed to rape their wives until 1991. I very much remember the 80s when it was considered acceptable for a husband to beat his wife and ‘domestics’ weren’t attended even if the wife was screaming for help. Have you ever heard of the marriage bar? It was only in the 50s that nurses were allowed to keep their jobs after marriage. Even then, the practice of ‘encouraging’ married women to leave the profession didn’t end until the 70s. And you could forget about having any kind of job in the Foreign Service as a married woman before 1973. In 1963, women were earning about 60% less than men doing the same job. It wasn’t until 1975 that the Equal pay act of 1970 came into force and fifty years later, we’re still talking about the gender pay gap. Access to the pill was limited and unmarried mothers homes were very much a thing.

If you think that it was just some men who held all the money and power, then you probably need to brush up on your history. Men (not just powerful men, but husbands and fathers) controlled women’s access to money, employment, housing, education, birth control, the right to say no to sex, the right not to be beaten, as well as a million other things that may have been legally possible but if him indoors said no, that was that.

How did Feminism “force women into work”?

With knives and guns?

Men in the USA in the Madmen era had very tough lives and many died young.

I do remember my naturally emboldened mother telling her more passive sister to forge a document that needed her husband’s signature. ( And she meant it.)

Women who have the choice not to work are almost always in those categories, yes. Because the choice not to work is dependent on financial means.
Feminism hasnt caused wealth inequality and nor did it set out to resolve it, other than that between men and women for whom all other things were equal.
If you want a movement to address the fact that some women have more choices than others because they are richer, then it's Socialism you need.
Feminism is concerned with equalising your position in relation to the men from your own demographic, not to women wealthier than you. That's not to say wealth inequality shouldn't be addressed, just that it's seperate issue to sex based inequality.

It was not just for high earners, but people did make do with much less.

They didn't afford it though. My Grandparents in the 50s never had holidays - it was a day trip to the beach. A car was a luxury and they were extremely frugal.

Yes houses were cheap but they were extremely basic compared to now - tiny kitchen, outside loo, no central heating.

Oh and my Nan also worked outside the home once the kids were at school.

What you've described would only be for professionals and high earners.

I’m not brainwashed. Women want to work and earn and realise their potential . I agree they need more support when raising children but that should be the focus of change. Affordable childcare and decent maternity packages and maternity rights.

You can crack on with living like your ancestors if you like. I am sure it’s doable with benefits. You won’t need electricity or a car or appliances or holidays or TV so it should be cheap.

If you mean life was better in the good old days you’re just bemoaning modern life. It’s not feminists’ fault you don’t live in Milly Molly Mandy’s village.

I've said this before elsewhere but it's really making me question this current trend of TV and film where groups historically without any real political agency - women, people of colour, disabled people - are portrayed as if those things made no or little difference to their options. I see the value of making those groups visible given that they've been present throughout history and massively overlooked, but I am also wondering if people who don't have lived experience of how things actually were when you were part of those minorities are taking that as an accurate portrayal of how things actually were and just not grasping how terrible it was to be legally and socially subordinate.

Have to say that's mainly what I'm hearing. "How do we rage against the system" from the generation that's glued to social media! I'm glad there aren't any suffragettes alive today to hear all this bleating about having to work full-time instead of part-time and how wonderful it was when women just stayed at home and played with their babies whilst their self-sacrificing menfolk went out to work to meet all their needs without complaint.

No. Seriously, why would you, if you find yourself with a man who expects you to do most of the housework and cooking, further embed yourself in that situation and add to it by having a child?

It's not her fault he's an arse.

She doesn't have to tolerate it. If she does, then that is a choice.

You are talking absolute drivel. Before 1975 women could be and were denied mortgages without a male guarantor. How the heck is that having any power. You seem to be mixing power and being fortunate. Some women were fortunate that their husband or father didn't want to control their freedom, others were not but both sets of women had no power over their situation.

It isn't "all her fault", but it is ok to recognise that women have agency in these situations. Thanks to feminism, they do not have to stay married to shitty misogynistic men.

This is all your sister’s choice.

She could refuse to do full time or refuse to do the lion share of household labour.

Or leave him.

Did they have an equitable split before marriage / children?

But it sounds like she is still married to him?

I just wouldn't accept a situation in which my DH wasn't pulling his weight at home. I don't know why so many women seem willing to put up with this?

Reminds me of that thread ages ago where women were asked if they would remarry and a large majority said they would not be keen on it especially living with a man again.

"It's all her fault" all over again.