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

As pp have said, the problem isn't feminism. It's men. They haven't adapted to the way the world has changed. They aren't doing their share at home, they don't see housework as their job, they want a woman who works and brings in money, acts like his mum and has sex with him. No wonder that when menopause hits, many women walk.

And then men whinge about 'the male loneliness epidemic' - there's a cure: It's called 'dealing with the male inadequacy epidemic'.

A woman with no GCSEs can go and learn bricklaying or tiling.
My locksmith and mechanic are both women.
Nobody says you have to be a carer or a nail technician.
I am a woman who worked all her life as a gardener.

All my life I was paid the same as a male gardener. I thank feminism for that.

Wheres the irony?

A job has been created, money is paid in return for services like any other.

A skilled housekeeper or nanny can earn a very good wage.

Men aren’t made to feel guilty for hiring other men to do jobs around the house, yet when women are seen as doing it, it suddenly becomes a big deal.

Incorrect - studies have shown that even when women outearn their partners by a significant margin, they do more of the domestic work
Then more full them! My OH and I earn similar, working FT. All in all, I would have to agree that he does a bit more of the domestic duties. That comes with being nagged at times which is fair enough! I contribute more in other ways. I certainly would never have married a man expecting me to work as many hours (including commute) and do the lion share. Why would anyone?

Disagree - I think it’s the intersection of inequality and capitalism. It is harder being a woman in a capitalistic 2025 than it is being a man in my opinion. Men still out earn us. Men are not disadvantaged in the workplace as much as women are. So we now live in an age where the state of our economy means women have to work - there is an illusion of choice here. Yes, back in the day we didn’t have a choice either as we didn’t have the right to work.

Totally agree. I have a professional career and (try to) run a house. It’s the worst of both worlds and I miss so much of my kids stuff because I’m balancing the other two.

This.

I don’t know where this idea has come from that feminism has forced women into the workplace but I see it all the time online. For most of history, the average woman has always had to work. Because of feminism women who work now have more legal protections and more equal pay. You can’t get paid less just for being a woman now and you can’t get sacked because you’re pregnant.

Harking back to the 1950s where women stayed at home and men went to work is silly anyway. It couldn’t have been that good or feminism wouldn’t have happened! They’d have just kept it as it was. We’ve all seen the terrible adverts and magazine articles that show how restrictive and demeaning that kind of life was for women who existed solely to serve their husband and kids.

And the irony is they are paying other women. A lot less than they pay their plumbers or electricians etc.

The OP said
"I think feminism initially promoted some idea of independence, equality and choice. Phrases like 'men hold all the money and power' at the time were very emotive whilst not entirely true."

In what way did men the overwhelming majority of men not hold the money and power before feminism? Especially given that formal feminism began in the 19th Century

The OP is written from a position of almost wanton ignorance.

I know lots of women with top 1-2% incomes and they are still expected to pick up the slack with domestic duties and childcare.

Income level doesn’t seem to impact this - the only plus being they can afford to outsource some of it.

If I’m being honest I don’t think millennial women have it hardest, that’s such a millennial thing to say. I can’t take you seriously.

millennials, particularly those of you in your 40s etc have essentially been grandfathered into life. If you haven’t made a life for yourself by 35 onwards, that’s on you vs the state of feminism in society.

Beyond that, it’s the younger generations of women who have at a young age dealt with increased living costs, increased university costs, a worse nhs, low salaries/poor job market… compounded by the media pushing a certain aesthetic onto them where it’s considered normal for females to get filler/botox/surgery and look porny etc. You really don’t have it the hardest, given you had normal formative years in comparison.

I think your conflating feminism with ‘life will be easy for women’. And certainly, the version of feminism you have in mind is ‘Western’ and largely middle class feminism.

Life isn’t easy. It’s not because feminism sold anyone a lie. It’s simply because living means we have to do hard things. And a lot of those hard things have to do with our current economy and geopolitical situation and not a huge amount to do with feminism.

Personally, I feel like my life is much better than generations of women before me. My mum was of the generation who couldn’t get a credit card or a mortgage in her name during part of her adult life. My grandmother didn’t work, didn’t drive, was married at 16 to an abusive drunk. She did get out of that marriage safely eventually, but it would not have been an easy feat.

Meanwhile, I have a very comfortable life (because I’m white, middle class and highly educated). I don’t have to work FT but nor does Dh. We aren’t buckling under domestic duties. We have leisure time and hobbies. We’ve both done loads of travel. My solo traveling has been a huge part of my life and a great pleasure (and that would have been frowned upon in my mum’s and previous generations). We will be mortgage free in our 40s, if all continues to go to plan. I have a happy healthy marriage to a lovely Dh and my kids have happy well adjusted childhoods. Dh and I both do work we enjoy and I’m hoping to carve out time for more creative pursuits in the future.

Feminism has certainly helped and not hindered any of that. But so has hard work and choosing wisely when it came to a life partner and good fortune and the leg up that comes from having a comfortable upbringing and financial resources.

Women today definitely do not have it worse. We are not property. We can vote. We have reproductive rights. We have rights with respect to our children. We can work in a range of careers. We can own property. We can sign legal contracts. Only someone with no grasp of history could think we have it worse.

I honestly think that a lot of relationships look like this, until children arrive.

And you have no idea how they / you will react to that situation, until it happens.

I actually think maternity leave / lack of paternity leave is a huge factor, as it creates this sort of ‘1950s factory reset’ when you have a baby - which is then difficult to claw your way out of. The mum becomes the expert on the baby, dad is just there to assist and follow instructions.

My own DH said before the arrival of our second (so he knew the drill!) that I would need to tell him what I needed him to do. To him that seemed rational, let me give instruction. To me that was refusing to take responsibility - it was my problem, and I needed to provide guidance or he wouldnt take intitiative. Infuriating.

It's exhausting because the ultra-rich and capitalism have created a cost of living crisis. It's exhausting because most men don't do their share of domestic labour and childcare.

This is not happening because you have rights instead of being chained to unpaid domestic labour 24/7 without having a choice in the matter.

I think it’s because women are still not entirely equal earners across the board. A man with no GCSEs can go and learn bricklaying or tiling and outearn a lot of professionals. His female equivalent will be a carer or a nail technician on a low wage. Until we get the wage and wealth division right, we are still expected to pick up the slack with children and home because we earn less or because we have jobs more suited to part time etc. In a few more generations, we may well be there but in the meantime lots of working and lower middle class women are stuck in the in-between.

Those men supporting a household in those mythical times you refer to: expected their children to share bedrooms, (or perhaps benefitted from widely available, affordable, tenancy-for-life council homes which some of them then voted to be sold off), didn't run any car but cycled to work or took the bus, didn't regularly take holidays or buy massive amounts of consumer goods or takeaways or go out much, ate scrap ends the night before payday, went on the list for an allotment to grow what food they could, didn't have much in the way of savings and (if post-1948) blessed the lord for the NHS if a child got ill and the-then functioning social safety net if times got hard. And still, often their wives would also work. Through necessity.

Oh and "empowerment". You might want to look up the definition, and then think about why your opinion that women in the 50s/60s/70s were more empowered is wrong.

I'm old enough to remember when women couldn't have a bank account without their husbands permission (1970s), when a husband could legally rape his wife as it was his right (1990s), when men were legally allowed to be paid more than women for the exact same job (1975).
Women were nothing more than property 1st of their fathers then their husbands we have come a long way since then, but we have so much more to do and what has really set women's rights back is the trans movement as now we are having to fight those same battles again because men with special identities stole our rights and words for ourselves instead of moving forward by gaining true equality.
If you want to be angry at someone @ConservativeC2 try being angry at the men who stole our rights setting us back and those men and women who have cheered them on rather than those of us who have been fighting for our rights

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.

Women didn’t use to have the choice. Many jobs wouldn’t take women, certainly not married women. In The Rector’s Wife by Joanna Trollope, published in about 1989, the rector told his wife’s employer that she would no longer be working there- and that was realistic. Women might have had work but they rarely had careers and were legally second-class citizens. And women without their own money were incredibly vulnerable- that’s why child benefit was traditionally paid to the mother, to protect her and the baby a bit from husbands who would spend their wages on other things and not food, rent etc.

The problem is, as a pp has said, the men still think that women should be bearing the domestic load rather than sharing it equally, even though most couples are both in work.

I don’t agree with the points you’ve made so far. I do think there is an argument to make that socially, and in some countries, legally, women’s rights have gone backwards- but I don’t think that’s what you’re doing.

I think we have more work opportunities now and can have a better life. But some/most men haven’t stepped in to take on their share of domestic labour and that’s where the day to day struggles are. Homes need housework, children need care and someone on call for them when at childcare/school for sickness and emergency etc. if men were doing their share women would not be stretched so thin

What part of feminism is a lie?

Equal pay
Equal opportunity
Protection from rape in marriage
The ability to work even after marriage
The right to vote
Ability to buy and own property without having a male guarantor

Which of the above would you like to be without?

Where did they say their goal was to spend as little time as possible with their kids?

But noone forced you to have kids? Why gave them if the goal is to spend as little time as possible with them? And yes, I do think the mother is the most important person the first years because the baby has literally lived inside us.

People really don’t read enough history.

Good things to read include ‘Round About A Pound A Week’ by Maud Pember Reeves, ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, and ‘The Prospect Before Her’ by Olwen Hutton.

I think most women now if faced with the life my mother led, never mind my grandmother, and what it required of them, would run for the hills. And my family were and are extremely privileged.

Men, you mean?

Oh no - my bad. You’re referring to the other sex class of people who always cop it if they’re not maternal and self-sacrificing enough.