Men, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Portofino, Iceland is the most advanced nation on earth in dealing with parental leave. 3 months leave for the mother, 3 months for the father and 3 months for either the father or the mother at their option. The mother cannot take a portion of the fathers leave or visa versa. Its not the quantity of time at all its the breakdown. Allowing fathers to take at least one third of the time from work and up to two thirds, making some time available only to them, it forces men to think about the issue and, once entrenched, it changes culture so that your husbands style of thinking evaporates.

Yes it is all about how women with children adapt to the workplace. As opposed to now men with children adapt to the workplace, or how people with other caring responsibilities adapt. I was chatting to a work colleague today whose wife is having an op on her spine tomorrow. She needs to lay flat in bed for 6 weeks. He is fretting as to how he is going to cope. Everyone, not just women/mothers have times when a bit of flexibility is needed.

Dreaming, but the point I made to him is, he can't help women until he understands what the problem is. Flora - quite right. Men see children as the woman's problem. Still. My employer is very good at family friendly ironically. It means Dh and his diversity committee get away with changing nothing.

porto this is typical of my experience of workplace iniatives. They are generally about how women can adapt themselves to the workplace. Any suggestion that men may need to change the way they work so that childcare is not solely a woman's issue is met either with a blank look or mumblings about special treatment.

Buffy I'm sure we could get ESRC to fund it, those lushes

Portofino I'm sorry, that sounds rotten

Does he think he's part of the solution then, because ostensibly he's helping women?

What do you think it would take to change his mindset? I'm sorry, you don't have to answer, just wondering what your take on this whole issue is given your situation.

The obstacle is the patriarchy

It's the same obstacle that stops the men I know who say "oh it's so cool that your DH and you both work part time" from following through with anything other than an "um, yeah" when I point out that flexible working is a parental right not a maternal one so they could do it too...

Buffy that would be lovely

I'm actually working on a pet theory that drunk people are naturally constructivist

(Sorry, I seem to be setting some kind of epic record for derailing on this thread...)

Dreaming. He just doesn't. His job is to help the "minorities" as part of he diversity committee. He sees it as a women's issue. And he is not BAD generally. He cleans, cooks, does child care. It horrifies me that when he switches to his professional capacity, he becomes so sexist. And the more aware I am the more I notice him doing it to me.

Portofino -- why do you think he doesn't get it? I mean, even after you've argued the point, what is the obstacle to him getting it?

I hate the academic type arguments over terminology. It just derails the argument. I had a huge argument with Dh when he took over the running of the diversity committee at work. He was focussing on why so many Mothers only come back part time, or leave. They were suggesting all kinds of touchy feely crap to make mothers feel more welcome. He thought he was doing a good thing.

I said "what are you doing about the fathers? Are you encouraging them to work part time, or leave earlier to do the school run? How is the diversity policy helping them?"

He just could NOT make the connection that having company policies which aid men to take family responsibilities would actually help women. To this day he does not get it. Men and their jobs are more important than women and their jobs. I haven't left him yet. I am sure half the school run and organising half the holidays might give him a different view.

Ah Buffy, I so wish we were at a pub right now and could have a tedious academic fascinating discussion about the constructivist implications

That's a very good point, about trivialisation. Like I said, I don't really have an answer.

I do think Martin Luther King thought about how white people would respond to what he said -- not that that determined what he said, but I think for example he was savvy enough to know that nonviolence and civil disobedience would garner more support than violence. You can see that as letting white people control things (as other black activists said) or as being strategic. I can see both arguments (did I mention I'm an academic?)

An example from my own work... being a bit vague... I guess I would say that there are times when you could tell people that their way of doing things amounts to war crimes, but you know that if you say that then they will completely disengage from the discussions you are having, through which you hope to have even a tiny influence on actually reducing war crimes. So you use slightly less incendiary language. It's not ideal, but a "less bad" option. If people stay engaged, you still have hope; if they disengage, you have no hope.

What is the actual goal? Is it getting men to recognise oppression, or getting them to be less oppressive?

Can you end oppression without the oppressors admitting they're wrong? I think perhaps you can, looking at history.

So feminism sort of has a marketing problem. The objective is to convince as many men as possible to speak up, but in order to get them on board, the problem can't be presented as so enormous that it seems to lack credibility. This seems to be the issue with the word 'oppression'. But we must also be careful that the problem isn't trivialised, otherwise why should anyone bother to give it any attention at all.

Buffy, I think you've got it absolutely right. To me this is exactly the conundrum.

I guess I would say it's only a problem to the extent you want to translate theory into activism, but I think most feminists do.

Trouble is, we're allowing the sensitivities of the dominant group to control the terms of the debate.

In a way, I think this is another conundrum. I don't think men should control the terms of the debate. But if the onus is on men to change the system well, that's not going to happen of its own accord. It's going to be women pushing that change and slowly convincing more and more men it's the right thing to do. Does calling it oppression help or hurt this cause? Should we be more flexible on this point if it means getting more men on board after all, it's men who have the power to change things. I don't have an answer to this question but this is something I wrestle with a lot, in my work actually.

women in the UK are systematically disadvantaged on the basis of their sex. how this plays out depends on a variety of factors. i am made redundant. your rape complaint is no crimed. she is passed over for promotion. they are groomed by paedophiles, and this is dismissed/ignored by authorities.

is the phrase 'systematically disadvantaged' more palatable?

we could always go with 'men have a whole shitload of unearned privileges which advantage them over women'

I used to think that way Kim. I thought if we could just modify the way we talk about feminism, if we could open the debate and make men feel included instead of attacked, then maybe we would get somewhere.

The problem is that it simply doesn't work. Feminism is attacked by people who choose to misunderstand it, by those who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. And I say that as a liberal feminist who believes generally that the softly, softly approach works. Yes, we're chipping away but any advances are simply met with increasing resistance and now we're to believe that the problem is how we project feminism.

Screw that. The problem is that privileged people have a huge degree of self interest in ensuring that feminism doesn't achieve it's aims. Could feminism engage a few more women if the language was more flowery and less extreme ? No, not when feminism involves examining the spectrum of the inequality of women from crude jokes to infanticide, from inappropriate groping to rape and murder. There is no nice way of saying that some men do these things therefore all men need to change. There is no way of saying to someone that all of your advantages have come at my cost without them feeling attacked.

The fact that some men and women find the use of the term oppression shocking is entirely correct, because it IS shocking.

kim that happens a lot. "I don't believe there is a patriarchal society because I love me mum" is another response that often goes along side "you should go and live in Saudi Arabia if you want to see oppression".

I agree with chibi that your view of oppression is very narrow. For example, I understand that prenatal scans to determine sex are prohibited in India as are abortions based on sex but this occurs in high numbers. Female genital mutilation is illegal in many counties where it is commonly inflicted on girls. Are those things not part of the oppression of women?

it is a profoundly narrow view that assumes that if there is no law against something, there are no problems/issues.

i wonder, even in those places, are there actual laws which state things like, 'if you see a woman on her own, it is your duty as a citizen to set her on fire/assault her'