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

Capitalism is an insatiable monster that will utilise any system to feed it. So while I agree it has made use of the changes brought about by feminism, it also made use of the patriarchy. In WC homes the woman in the domestic sphere made it possible for the male worker to work harder and be more exploited than would have been the case without her.
My granddad would come home from his shift of work his body was too old and damaged for, and my grandmother would basically put him back together so he could go and do it again the next day. A clean and comfortable home where he didn't need to lift a finger, a meal, the ability to rest and recover. Her work was needed so he could do his, so the boss got two for the price of one. And because the boss didn't even want to pay properly for one, my grandmother had to clean other people's houses and take in sewing to make ends meet.
Capitalism is very taxing on women's time, health and energy levels, irrespective of feminism.

@PomegranateVase do the husbands of your exhausted working-5-days-a-week friends also work 5 days a week? Are they equally exhausted?

If the answer is yes to both of those, the problem isn't feminism. If it's no to one or both, the problem is not enough feminism.

Too true.

Many families live on less than that!!! I've never earned anywhere near as much as that

I agree, and isn't that ironic that feminism advocates on this thread shout at other women "it's all your fault!"

Women aren’t prohibited from being stay at home parents because of feminism it is because of capitalism and the economy.

in the OP you talk about men in the 1950’s choosing to spend their money on their families. Well that is great if that was what their husbands chose to do but it left women very vulnerable.

quite frankly I like being able to have my own bank account, the right to say no to sex with my husband and my education and all the other benefits of feminism. Yes I work full time, run the house, do all the kids stuff and I am tired. Do you know who else was tired, my mother, grandmother and great grandmother.

You are your colleagues are unreasonable and so very very ignorant.

You enjoy:

• maternity leave
• legal rights to equal pay
• legal rights to a workplace free from sex-based hostility
• not being raped within marriage
• not being physically abused in marriage
• not being put under coercive control
• the vote
• the ability to open your own bank account

and so many many more things. Within living memory. You are so ignorant of all this.

All because of feminism.

But you know what - go back to the 1970s, and see what you'd like about that. And then fuck off some more.

Ignorant women like you @ConservativeC2 make me very angry - you like the freedom, without knowing who fought for you.

Also @GagMeWithASpoon excellent post xxx

You think women in the 50's-70's had choices?

Wasn't abortion illegal, unmarried mother and baby units were still floating around, women couldn't get mortgages or access their husbands bank account without permission, domestic abuse was rife and accepted.

Yes I think as a millennial I definitely have more going for me than my grandmother's did. I'm more than happy to work than have to deal with the things that they did.

😂 me neither to be fair x it only goes on if I'm going out out these days! There's freedom in a nutshell. Tomorrow i will be wearing a corset by choice for Halloween dressing up purposes though.... well, if i can be arsed to try it on to check it still fits later 😁

Not even wearing mine! Now that’s a protest.

The real issue is that society hasn’t caught up. Not sure whether deliberately or not, or worse maliciously (this is what you wanted, you must suffer for it!).Women are expected to work as they don’t have children, and raise children as if they don’t work. And it is women .

From the stupidity of schools always ringing mum (despite dad having his number on file), to the pure bullshit of “the man is a woman’s mirror”, to having a show home, to having kids with 17 clubs and extracurricular and talents, to OTT Christmases and being responsible for every fucker (and their grandmother) that ever crosses our paths.

Fuck that shit.

So many expectations put on women , often propagated by other women. So many excuses awarded to men, often propagated by other women. So many precious and hard won rights freely given away or threatened, often by other women as well as men.

Fuck that shit.

I get why men do it. The status quo suits them, the status quo is easy and convenient, but why the fuck do some of these women do it?

We didn’t get sold a lie. We were given a rope. We (or more like the women before us) just never expected to have patriarchy repeatedly trying to cut it at the top end , while other women would grab our kicking, dangling feet trying to bring us back down. So we precariously dangle in the middle. If you find it easier to do so, then let go.

@Ubertomusic - women were not “brainwashed into the absolutely unrealistic idea of "having it all"”. What - all working mothers are incapable of thinking for themselves and making their own judgments as to what is right for them? Instead we have been brainwashed? That’s a pretty insulting and misogynistic attitude you’ve got there.

Feminism is about equality of women. It’s about women being taken as seriously as men, having the same rights, choices and freedoms. Feminism is about women being able to be mothers and have paid employment - just like fathers do. No-one suggests men are “having it all” because they work and have children. No-one suggests men need to choose between the two.

Some younger posters here seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that women historically didn’t work but just led some kind of “ladies who lunch” type existence bankrolled by men. This is all bollocks (sounds bloody dull in any case and leaves you entirely financially dependent on someone else). Women have worked outside the home for centuries. I’m in my mid-50s. My grandmothers worked. My mother worked. My friends’ mothers worked.

Women who were prevented from working were often at the mercy of feckless or brutish men, desperately trying to scrape by. As PPs have mentioned upthread, housewives in the US and the UK in the 20th century were often hugely depressed - there are people for whom home-making is a vocation which continues to fulfil them after DCs are in school but for a great many women it felt like a huge waste of their full potential.

Don’t drink the tradwife Kool Aid. Things were far worse for women before feminism started demanding equality for women. Of course, you can still make the choice to be an SAHM if your partner agrees (and many do). But don’t argue against other women’s rights to make different choices to yours based on the rights hard won for them by feminism or insult those women by suggesting we have been brainwashed.

Oh no, not a whole 5 days a week!

Try 6 days a week, 14 hours a day, being paid half what a man gets for the same hours, and still having to do all the shopping, laundry, housework and childcare.

No right to keep the money you earn, no possibility of higher education to get out of the drudgery.

No right to refuse sex to your husband, no right to divorce, no right to your children if your husband divorces you. No rape crisis centres or domestic violence shelters. If you run away from your husband you can be forcibly returned and legally required to live with him. No contraception, no safe abortion.

If you can find time and money to go out you can't go to a pub, or a restaurant, or the theatre without a male chaperone (or even with one, for many pubs). There are no women's loos, so you can't stay out more than a couple of hours.

If you leave the house without a man - especially after dark - any policeman has the right to subject you to a forcible virginity check in case you're a prostitute.

Your chances of conviction if accused of any crime are high, because your testimony is worth half that of a man and considered on a par with the testimony of a child. If you are jailed you are kept in a communal cell with violent men, who will almost certainly rape you.

But sure, feminism's a problem and life would be all butterflies and rainbows without it.

I reckon there are alot of smouldering bras at the moment thanks to this thread.....

This type of rhetoric is the lie that today's conservatives want us to swallow. Yes life is hard. It's always been hard. I had my first child at 19 and the only thing I've known all my adult life is work, work and more work.
On the other hand, I am an actual adult with the same responsibilities and freedoms as anyone else. I don't need a man's approval to go to work and dispose of my own money. To get an education (which was denied to my own mother in law, not in this country I might add). Society is no longer forcing me to be married. It used to, in the bad old days. Now marriage is a choice I can freely make. There are laws in place to protect me if my husband turns abusive. No system is perfect and the economy is fucked, which is in fact the real problem. To lay that at the door of feminism really makes me angry. Finally, we are fully fledged members of society and you'd have us believe women want to throw that away? To think that given the chance, we can't head back to where we were, which was at the mercy of males? I don't want to be subjected to anyone's good will. I want to be accountable for my own actions and set my own course. I'm not demonising men of the past, by the way. My grandfathers were both excellent men. They treated my grandmothers with kindness and respect. They had a sense of duty. And they also could see that women needed to be treated more equally in society. Most men aren't monsters but the vulnerability that comes with having no rights (which was the case prior to feminism) is just unacceptable. Considering that thanks to social media, many of today's 'men' are more like entitled little boys with zero sense of duty, backtracking on feminism right now would be a disaster too great to even describe.

Right. Off to burn my bra. Again.

As someone born in 1952 i can categorically say that it isnt the changes in womens freedom and choices that are to blame for the very real problems for everyone you are. talking about! Neither is the Equal Pay Act to blame, or the fact that women can enter all the professions, or women no longer having to leave work when they married...i could go on.

The old style would only work if you had the perfect husband, earning lots of money who ensured you were well cared for pension wise, and who never let you down in any way. They are pretty thin on the ground so in the meantime it’s very important women are not left helpless when the nowhere near perfect husband lets her down (and they are not thin on the ground).

This is so well articulated - and i very much agree with you about the dangers of Jordan Peterson.

He is Andrew Tate (the wolf) dressed up in the clothing of a middle-class, middle-aged pseudo-intellectual professional (the sheep). Some of his videos focussing on (for example) the psychological benefits of a routine and self-discipline are innocuous and serve as a gateway to his darker materials.

I remember reading a quote from 18th century that for women with any kind of money that marriage was worth it for the widowhood.

They were not really moneyed, the business was just a bakery, nothing posh, and GGM had to work in it so not insulated either. But she was certainly not "owned" or controlled by her husband (in fact, it was probably the other way round 😂 )

As I said, I agree it's late stage capitalism but it is also a fact that all strong and long standing ideologies are developed and sustained by the elites. Feminism is no exception but the masses just don't or can't reflect on this.

@arcticpandas not to diminish the value to a family unit of a caring role it is not the same, as money buys freedom. That is it really. If you don't have your own money you will never be truely free.

Your ancestors were lucky then. They were insulated from the realities of most women by money. If you are less well off than them that is down to politics and economics. In 1976 you would have had to have a male guarantor to get a mortgage but you can do that now. If you cant afford a house it's not due to the failure of feminism it's capitalism.

If women stop having children, they will simply vanish…

Thank you so much. [performs wobbly curtsy]