What is the patriarchy?

Xenia -- "Choose to behave like men". That is a very sexist phrase. Who says only men can be those things? Plenty of women are. To suggest women are not ambitious, pleasing, delicate flowers, no interest in money but men are shows women have hardly got anywhere even amongst their own kind on a feminist thread never mind elsewhere in the wider world.'

No not sexist. It is what women feel pressured to do when they work in a no holds barred capitalist system in a field of work dominated by men at partner level. A lawyer in a major American city for instance, where there are virtually no laws to protect her employment -- she can be fired at will, there is no maternity pay, where a condition of her employment is that she bill 3,500 hours every year. Billing 3,500 hours every year means working approximately 70 hours every week. A friend of mine returned with her baby to her office two weeks after a CS. She had been working from home from the day she got out of the hospital.

She really loved the freedom. And the choice. It was actually physically painful for her to get from her home to her office, by car and train, often standing in the train. Then dealing with the jostling as she hauled herself out of the subway and along the sidewalk to the building. And the rush for the lift. And the squeeze in the lift. Carrying her baby with her because no nursery would take him at that age, and her briefcase and the changing bag..

Really Xenia, you are deluding yourself if you think women would like money enough to go through that. This particular woman did it because if she didn't then nobody would pay her rent for her. Or her law school loans. Or her car payment, her utility bill, her part of the medical bills from the CS -- remember no NHS in the US so she was stuck with 20% of a bill over $50,000 just for her doctor and the hospital. She hadn't had a bill from the anesthetist yet at that point. Her husband was also a lawyer and took no paternity leave just in order to keep up the cashflow. I did not know any male lawyers under the level of partner who took time off for paternity leave (or their full one or two weeks vacation leave or their quota of sick days or personal days every year) because as long as there were others brown nosing in any given office it was not a good idea to do so. This is capitalism in the raw and you are welcome to it.

Of course she could have done what another lawyer friend of mine did and have an abortion because having a baby in her second year put of law school would have been financial insanity. She eventually left law and became a teacher. Choice again. Freedom. Women can do everything men can. Huzzah.

They were no delicate, pleasing flowers either, those two women. Rather sexist of you to assume that about women who don't feel completely gung ho after giving birth.

It is hopeful that women are doing better than they were, but IMO it's not enough.

I don't agree with you childcare shouldn't be well paid. But I do accept I'm not a mum so my opinion doesn't count for much. When I do bits, I don't find it either boring or easy to do - or not to do successfully. It is true anyone can put a row of children into playpens, feed them on a timetable and leave them to scream/stare at nothing, but that's neglect.

I don't see how it's like cleaning, either. My kitchen floor doesn't have a brain or anything interesting about it.

But, even if you do believe childcare should never be well paid - what is the answer to this central question of who you think will do it? If all the women are out being well paid workers and so are all the men?

Women are doing better than they were . They now out earn men up to the point when they have babies in the UK. More women are millionaires under 40 than men in the UK. They do better in exams and mroe go to university. By 15 years' time I think most women will earn more than most men in the UK.

I do think some of them are silly enough to accept seixst men. Why over 20 years ago could I ensrue we both did as much as each other at home but today some women cannot achieve that? Why if you both work full time would a woman take on the whole of the "second shift"? I don't understand that.

I don't accept chidlrecare should ever be well paid. it's boring and anyone can do it just like cleaning where as most of us could not do brain surgery. Of course men will subcontract cleaning their houses and minding screaming babies for 12 hours a day to women. So do women when they have decent jobs and enough money to do that.

The interesting thing about capitalism is that, under it, different jobs quite frequently and easily shift up or down the scale in terms of how well respected they are and how much money they bring in. For example, doing work to do with computers was once considered very feminine (women have such good attention to little details, it's a bit like being a secretary, it's not very inventive), and wasn't well paid. Now it is massively male-dominated and much better paid. It's not always about gender - being a vicar used to be a plush job, but had stopped being so long before women vicars came into the C of E.

So it should really not be implausible to imagine childcare becoming one of those jobs that is well respected and well paid. But for most of us it seems like a castle in the air, doesn't it?

Xenia I am broadly pro-capitalism. But I don't understand your statement that capitalism is supporting women being the main earner. In what way?

Xenia, with respect, research shows that women still do more housework/childcare even when they earn more (while men do less the more they earn). Plus, tasks at home are often gendered, so men do the gardening (nice, peaceful and quiet outside) while women scrub the loo and referee the children. (Society Now, spring 2012)

I do agree that the problem with SAHMing is the financial dependency - but not the role in itself. The fact that the earning man can up and off and leave you up sh*t creek without a paddle, when you have sacrificed your career to make a nice home for him, you and your children.

That said, I am increasingly coming to the view that working full-time with children for most women means doing two jobs, unless you have one of these (almost mythical??) fair and feminist men. If a man is not going to pull his weight in the home, it is more honest of him to take the role of breadwinner, rather than in the guise of equality, expect his wife to earn a salary and do the lion's share of the child-rearing/domestic work. But then of course, that leaves her financially vulnerable.

So, I think the only unproblematic scenario is 50/50 work outside the home/work inside the home by both partners (which for all sorts of societal reasons is hard to achieve - ranks up there with the mythical fair and feminist man?).

While I don't like the term 'housewife', in the UK, they are not servants of a family. Plenty of people have a joint account that both partners use. You must be well aware of this.

You must also be well aware that plenty of people who take a few years out staying at home with their children go back to work for more than minimum wage. If you're not qualified to do this, that is very sad for you, but it is quite possible and if you put your mind to it, I think you can often do it, even in the current situation, which is very bad for women and for career breaks.

Capitalism is a pretty lousy system, IMO, and works very badly for women.

You still haven't considered who will look after children if not one or other parent, or how that work should be paid and valued. Under capitalism, it is valued very badly, and mostly done by women. Why is this ok with you?

Housewives are servants of a family. Thei whole role is to clean the house and mind children. Usually they go back to work later of course but only in a pin many minimum wage sense. They have no economic status in the home. It is appalling.

Capitalism is the best system we have and is working very well in ensuring more women are the main wage earners and men do their share of the cleaning.

Btw, please, knock off the straw man.

It is utter bollocks to pretend I was citing Genesis or any such thing.

How do you propose that happens under a capitalist system? That's what I wonder about.

I do take your point about women as servants in many places in the world, but I think there is an issue that you come across as if you think SAHMs in the UK are also in this boat, which it seems exceedingly obvious they are not.

The point is that men as much as women should look after chidlren and do the dull stuff, cleaning, washing children's clothes. The housewife issue, the woman as servant to man with no economic power is at the heart of feminism the world over.

It is not male to want interesting work and a few hours a day with the children and someone else to clean up. It is human.

The fact women give birth does not mean they are left to life of hard labour as in the book of Genesis. They can leave men to do dull stuff and grasp a balanced life with a fair and feminist man.

Xenia, I think you've cut off that quotation in the critical place, so it doesn't mean what she said at all any more.

Men can't give birth. Some women, for the species as we know it to continue, have to give birth.

I don't think that is to do with being a 'delicate flower', is it? But it does have an impact on how the working world is set up, and IMO it shouldn't.

I think continuing to prop up and glorify a system that discriminates against women and was never designed to serve their interests (or those of a lot of men, either), is what happens when women pretend 'everyone' can and should aim to be a CEO.

If women do all do as you say, and we all sneer at 'housewives', who is going to look after the children? Another low-paid woman (or possibly man), who will then read the same sort of stuff we're reading now, and feel shit that she's being told she's letting down feminism by not getting out there and being a lawyer or a banker?

What's the point of that?

"£Choose to behave like men". That is a very sexist phrase. Who says only men can be those things? Plenty of women are. To suggest women are not ambitious, pleasing, delicate flowers, no interest in money but men are shows women have hardly got anywhere even amongst their own kind on a feminist thread never mind elsewhere in the wider world.

It si not being like a man to want moeny and power and to lead. Those can be human characteristics just as men can serve, please and clean the loo. I claim no monopoly over the wiping of babies bottoms.

excellent post mathanxiety.

Xenia -- 'I would rather have the freedom to be exploited by capitalist bosses on the same terms as men just as I wanted and used the freedom to work until I went into labour and return full time to work after 2 weeks. These are freedoms. Now most women might not want to exercise them but we need that freedom.'

You are absolutely wrong to think this is freedom, or a choice we need. When individual women choose to behave like men who have not given birth after giving birth it pressurises others to do the same and employers assume if one can do it everyone can.
And bear in mind how lovely it is to live in the US where women get 6 weeks of unpaid maternity leave and no guarantee of getting their own individual job back upon return.

Choice? Freedom?

For the great majority of people (women and men alike) in the workplace, employment is not an element of their lives where they are afforded much choice. It would be lovely if everyone was in the position to dictate their terms of employment, but that is not the reality for most men or women.

I agree, Xenia, women providing these vital services of homemaking and child-rearing should not be financially dependent on a man as a result. So what should feminism be campaiging for to alter this? State funding for stay at home parents? Or legislation to ensure that the working parent's wages are divided equally with the stay at home parent under such circumstances?

Really?

How so.

I mean, that statement sounds nice, but when I think about it, I'm not quite sure a) that it remotely describes most SAHMs I know or b) that it means anything much.

Almost nothing is as pernicious an illustration of the patriachy in charge as women who rely on men for money in return for provision of sex, cleaning and childcare services in marriage.

Xenia, you have such an old-fashioned view of SAHMs. Possibly, as you've never been one, you might want to entertain the idea that you don't know what they're really like.....

Whoever said that, Xenia?

I see little evidence that 'housewives' as somehow shrinking violets who never say a nasty word.

Ah but rosabud I said it deliberately.I will not be part of a female imposed group which says all women are smiling and nice and real women don't have strong views. I will not accept that women have to tell their friends their bum does not look too big in the skirt. I will not be part of a simpering socialised to be nice group of women. I am a human being and I am entitled to be as forceful, aggressive and loving of debate and power as any man.And I rather ilked my line

"In Saudi at the moment - 2012 - there is a new trend of not naming women in public in documents and the like so they become as hidden as a Surrey housewife even if they are a leading doctor. "

We learned very sadly the other week that some place in Surrey has 64% housewives and that was somehow feted in the press as a huge triumph - a man keeps them and they spend their days on dresses and making cup cakes.

I do think 'housewife' is a deeply dubious term though. My mum (who is one of those 'I'd never call myself a feminist' people) used to get so fed up with the census options and I know people who put 'other' and described what they did instead of using it as an option.

So in terms of word choice I do get angry about it, but in terms of the actual job, well, someone has to do it, it doesn't happen by magic.

I agree Rosa and LRD. I think that when certain posters urge women to drop their "housewife" lives they are buying into the rules of the patriarchy by equating trad masculine with superiority and trad feminine with inferiority.
I like to think women should have the choice and that choosing to look after their children shouldn't have to lead to invisibility in the public sphere, the media or politics or indeed poverty.

Me too rosa. I think capitalism is a nasty, oppressive system and I would rather not see anyone oppressed under it, rather than men and women equally oppressed under it.

I'd rather see work such as childcare, that's traditionally seen as being a 'housewife' and sneered at as 'woman's work' properly valued. But I also think that it is appalling to decide you're going to refer to all women as housewives because you wish to pretend they don't have any other job.