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

There was no age of consent until recently...!

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56413881&ved=2ahUKEwimvrGa68KSAxVKQUEAHS42KlIQFnoECFcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3CGAsKv3E9R00pAz86rvjr

And rape was defined as requiring 'violence, comstraint, threat or suprise' which is partly a difficulty Gisele Pelicot had in her case..

Do you think those rules were good, then? Or do you mean something else?

The laws allowing a man to rape his wife were not changed until the latter 1990s.

France is only changing it now.

Too late to amend the above - I misremembered my statistics on class. In 1900 only 1/5 of the population was middle class; 4/5 were either working or upper class. I'm not sure on the split of those 2 but would expect the working class to be the larger one by a considerable margin.

In 1900, 4/5 of the UK population was working class.

But Carla didn't claim that 'most women were upper or middle class'. She said that of those who were upper or middle class, most were not in paid employment.

I can't say I agree tbh.

We can choose how we best want to live our lives. Not get pregnant until/unless we want to. Choose to be childfree or have a kid. Get married, or don't, because we want to, or don't. Instead of being financially dependent on a man. We have so many choices.

When people say silly things like your thread title (not saying you're silly OP you're entitled to your opinion) I often think okay cool, let's go on a trip to Afghanistan shall we, and see what the lives of women there is like.

The irony of it is how feminism has revolutionised the lives of women to such an extent we barely even recognise what we have because we take it for granted.

The premise is false. Women worked, they always worked even where it was a patchwork of jobs. It was an essential contribution to feeding the family.

True SAHMs were always a luxury financially, even where the SAHM in question was forced into the situation.

Yes, this myth trotted out by people who read too much propaganda and not enough history gets tedious. I can see why women fall for the “oh you have it the hardest, “they” did it too you” - its always a seductive argument. However its bollocks and it would be better to invest time in the sources of some of the propaganda.

My DM like her DM and GDM always worked as well as being fully accountable for the home duties and being legally denied the right to their own financial privacy or bodies. They were sacked for being married or pregnant, paid less than men doing the same job and barred from most higher paying jobs.

The laws allowing a man to rape his wife were not changed until the latter 1990s. The laws requiring companies to give women equal access to pension schemes were not changed until the same era.

But yes, any woman born before 1975 lived a charmed life, carried on golden cushions from birth until death, paid for by grinding the bones of hard working men 🙄

These men can feel like they're 'doing it all' as much as they like.

Doesn't change the fact that they're not.

Well, very few people had domestic help. We don’t HAVE to subscribe to all the choices, no one died because they have to watch non streamed TV, they are a lifestyle choice.

We don’t have to subscribe to the incessant demands of our children - designer stuff, gaming machines, the latest smart phones, tablets etc - all choices.

I think men probably feel like they’re ’doing it all’ today too.

Rather than blaming feminism, much of our overwhelm is to do with family structures (lack of community help), the collapse of domestic help (even the middle classes had servants back in the day…), modern life bringing so much choice / opportunity which makes decision making harder (suddenly having to ‘manage’ all sorts of subscriptions, diets, financial planning etc).

There are many other probable factors.

Yep - It was a rhetorical question.

Yes, and young women today have more rights, in every way, than I ever had.

Plus, so many modern conveniences. Women used to do outside work, and very few mid cons.

Everyone (usually) goes through some hard times - it’s nothing to do with feminism.

I don’t think too many young women would want to go back to the “good old days”. 🙄

How are these broader economic changes the result of, or fault of feminism?

How many children grew up with absent fathers in those days compared to now?

Society and the economy have changed enormously you can’t pin everything you don’t like on feminism. Totally agree with Maray that was my experience growing up. We lived far more modestly.

They weren’t paying for two cars and the holiday was in the UK. I was at school in the 70s and practically no one I knew went abroad or stayed in UK hotels.

One car was the norm. Most DCs’ activities happened within walking distance. Once teens were used the bus and went on our own if not. I was 16 when we got a second car and that was only when one of my parents got a new job further away.

There was only the landline and a TV licence to pay for. We had far fewer clothes, toys and books than my two. We had a fridge with a freezer compartment, a cooker, a washing machine, a record player and one TV.

There was much less to pay for. Most people decorated occasionally. Home decor remained the same for years. Most years the Christmas decorations were entirely the same as last year’s. DCs’ parties were mostly party games and a simple tea with cake - at home.

My DM mostly worked part time, as did most mums I knew. A few DC had SAHMs. Either way, families paid a lot less out on an annual basis.

My mother, her sisters and her sils all worked.
We still did without lots of things.
Our house was cold and I mean seriously cold, condensation dripping down the windows cold. The first house I bought didn’t have central heating, infact it didn’t have a connection for a telephone!
It was so cold that I would lie in bed and not go to the toilet as I couldn’t face getting out of bed and going into the cold, unheated bathroom.
Work colleagues I had told how when they got married, they had to wear a different uniform, one which singled them out as a married woman. They 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. Infact married men were promoted above everyone else including single men. They were given advantages as they now ‘had to provide for a family.’
When I was in my 20s the company I worked for had only men as senior manages. Some of the lower level managers were women but without exception they were older and did not have children. They were also long time married. 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 in no uncertain terms that if they did come back to work it would be on a part time basis. Mothers were never, ever promoted.
Young women today should thank their foremothers for the hard work they have done in changing things for the better.

As do men in comparison to their ancestors

I get that, and it was a lot, but maybe not quite most. This article had around 43%

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/08/08/women-have-always-worked/&ved=2ahUKEwikiPbh1MGSAxUHVUEAHZ96GsIQFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1YGqt8V_oPegq02ouOzDTO

I'm not sure upper and upper-middle class women constituted 'most' women. How many female servants did each of those ladies have? Who made the dresses they changed in and out of five times a day? Where did their servants buy the groceries, and who made the cheeses, etc, they purchased?

Most of the 19th century = Dickens. He wasn't writing about a minority.

Exactly. I get why people are citing examples of women working in the past but it is true that through 19th, some of 20th century most middle & upper classes women were not in paid work. This does not negate unpaid, informal & voluntary work at all. But it is true that most women being in paid work is a more recent thing - which obviously doesn't mean it's bad.

The idea of the sweet SAHM waiting for everybody to get home for hot chocolates or whatever is utter fiction

It was closest to being true for a segment of the middle classes in the 1950s and 60s. Certainly not universally true. And that 'waiting for everybody to get home' didn't involve a lot of actual.leisure, as labour-saving devices were still scarce and women were doing an average of about 8-9 hours housework a day (down from 14 hours at the start of the century).

For most of modern history, upper class women (with a few exceptions) haven't done paid work. They generally had considerable unpaid duties expected of them, though - both within and beyond the household.

In the later part of the 19th century and a little over half the 20th century this extended to middle class women, and for a few decades a little way into the upper end the working class.

But not having to do paid work was certainly not a bonus - it often came with not being allowed to do paid work.

My grandmother trained as a nurse. A job she loved, and she remained fascinated by medical developments and advances her whole life. In more recent times she'd probably have gone to university and been a medical researcher. As it was, as soon as she married she was both dismissed by the hospital and forbidden to work by her husband, because it would reflect badly on him if he weren't supporting the family alone. So they struggled financially until he died, by which point she was too deskilled to return and too old to retrain. And her widow's pension was too small to allow both children to go to university - so my uncle got priority and my mother was packed off to secretarial college instead of her planned degree.

The idea that women never worked prior to the 20th century is nonsense perpetuated by the Victorian ideal of the family. Women have always worked. The idea of the sweet SAHM waiting for everybody to get home for hot chocolates or whatever is utter fiction that gained traction as a direct result of the new conservatism that arose in the 19th century.

Me too. I own my own home, am educated to PhD level, have a fulfilling job and am married to a woman. None of the above would have been possible without feminism. I am in control of my own destiny in a way that was unthinkable for my mum never mind the women that came before her.

Women are not owed a certain standard of living by feminism. Feminism simply fights for women to have the freedom to make choices. The fact that so many women still make terrible choices is not the fault of feminism.