Feminist end game

then being out of the workplace even for a couple of months, means that child bearing women will lose out.

Why? I work with mostly men and many of them have, at one time or another, had a few months out of work (some to go travelling, some for have heart surgery, or orthopedic operations, one for paternity leave) and this hasn't impacted their career at all.

In a career spanning 45 years, what's a few months?

Evidence is emerging that big risk takers are not conducive to stability, which companies need, or necessarily the best thing for the company, industry or society.

Eg, banking - big risk taking was common, and while individual banks and bankers did very well out of it at the time, but then look what happened. And even before the crash when things were going well, the individual successes had a huge cost elsewhere in society.

So, maybe, even in a feminist-and-yet-capitalist world, we'd realise (in the words of Jeanette Winterson) we'd realise that there is a much better way than "winner takes all", and to hell with everyone else.

Collaboration would be better. Everyone getting ahead, not 95% getting left behind so a few can sweep up all the benefits themselves.

I breastfed round the feckin clock for my babies until they were 2 years old.
My third degree tear damaged me irrevocably.
And my PPH had repercussions that remain years later.
But tell me again about the two months thing?

If you're genuinely interested in whether men possess innate characteristics that uniquely make them better leaders, or whether we train them to believe this of themselves and of other men, then Prof Gina Rippon has a new book out that would interest you.

Just to pick up on one point:

Would senior management still be dominated by aggressive risk takers?

What you're assuming here is:
a) senior management is at the moment dominated by 'aggressive risk takers'
b) this might well be because it's the most effective personality type to have in senior management.

a) is not necessarily true. Some sectors it is; some sectors it isn't. There has if anything been a move away from filtering for that kind of personality in senior leadership positions, because...
b) it often isn't the most effective personality type you need. This is not radical feminism saying this, it's standard management studies. There has been a general move away from the idea of one firebrand pioneer who marches the organisation towards success, and towards the acknowledgement of more collaborative models of how organisations actually work. What you have now is a lot of different 'leadership models' outlining different approaches to leadership in organisations, with 'yell at people and take huge risks all off your own bat' not being considered a hugely successful one.

Again: not radical feminism. Boring management studies stuff.

If you're assuming that senior leaders must be aggressive risk-takers, and aggressive risk-takers will almost always be men (because of 'pregnancy hormones' ?!), you're missing the point. Feminism isn't about superficially rearranging the world we have to get a few more women into CEO roles. It's about challenging those deeper assumptions, and challenging what a world built around them looks like.

Midgebabe but you’re not envisaging a feminist world at all here. You’re assuming for instance that all the business and leadership structures would still be in place. That’s not what radical feminists envisage. Those structures were created by men for men so of course men will continue doing them.

I see a feminist society as involving much more collective responsibility for caregiving and with carers given a much higher social status than they currently had. Workplaces would have to adapt to that and offer flexibility. They would be geared to someone who had caregiving responsibility rather than someone who did not (as is the case today).

Boys and girls names are not really high on my list of priorities. Sex differences exist of course but theorising about personality types is unhelpful because so much of that is socialisation.

I don’t think a really feminist society can exist within capitalism. I also agree that the opppsite of patriarchy isn’t matriarchy but fraternity.

Good question!

5) universal affordable 24/7/365 childcare as needed, whether to cover working hours or for other reasons.

I wonder who (what sex) will be working in those childcare provisions?

Well.... this wouldn't be a bad place to start...

blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/patriarchy-blaming-the-twisty-way/consent-or-the-legalization-of-womens-humanity/

1. the end of male violence against women and girls so that women and girls are as free to move about in public space anywhere in the world as men are.

2. universal and affordable access to birth control and abortion because a woman who cannot control her fertility is not free in any meaningful sense of the world.

3. the end of male trafficking, trade, or purchase of female bodies because women are not commodities but are human beings and the trafficking, trade, and purchase of human beings is something we've regarded as odious since the early 19th century.

4. an end to men and the state relying on the unpaid labour of women, and the recognition of and accounting for female unpaid labour in national economics.

5. universal affordable 24/7/365 childcare as needed, whether to cover working hours or for other reasons.

None of these things can come about unless and until the men who control governments, media, finance capital, and damn near everything else regard female as humans in the same way they regard the humanity of men.

So when these things come about, it will mean something revolutionary has occurred.

As a pp said, an end game assumes a point at which the fight will be over. Now, personally, I'd like to hope, as a religious person, in a moment when everything is put right. But that's a metaphysical belief, not a plan.
While humans are the dominant species on the planet, and while the difference between the two sexes remains, I think it will always be necessary to keep pushing back against a tendency towards a society structure dominated by and advantageous to men primarily.

I guess it breaks down to four main areas (and how they interrelate): Biology, Culture, Economics & Politics. Without some serious science fictional intervention there will always be different biological pressures.

Until 50% of cultural space is taken up and influenced by women, 50% of resources are both generated and female owned and finally 50% of the executive, administrative and judicial posts are held by women there is always going to voices present to make the case in that direction.

A nuance and complexity comes in when we consider how biological factors influence the others. Just because there are biological differences does not mean we cannot innovate around them. We are after all the human race and innovation is kind of in our wheelhouse.

I recently read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Which chiefly (although not exclusively) concerns itself with making the case for women having equal access to education.

What was interesting about your question is that it made me ponder what the quantum leaps were for women throughout History, that we can see from the benefit of hindsight. They are all pretty clear, education, the right to own property, enfranchisement to name a few.

I further pondered what the “next” most important leap could be? What would the more (hopefully!) enlightened human society look back on and point at the 21st century and say “That right there is the biggest leap forward for women that century?”

Read Marge Piercy's novel "Woman on the Edge of Time."

It's from the 70s and probably contains elements that read as dated, but it might help you picture a different world.

JD Robb's futuristic novels have the profession of parent so her version of the future is a time when you get a salary for being a parent and it's just as much a career choice as any other as you are raising the future generation.

So it would be wonderful if any career choice was valued as much as any other and everybody was paid a really good wage no matter what profession they went into.

I do not think there is an end game, history has taught that what can be won can be taken away. Equality will always be needed to be championed.

I think this is a valid question.

I think queues for theatre toilets would be equal.
I think that whoever redesigned our local Waitrose wouldn't have made the top shelf so high (I was on tiptoes today and I am above average height for a female).
I think that female politicians would be commented on for their policies, not for their clothes or whether they have had children.
I think businesses would value collaborative working higher than at present.
I think I wouldn't be faced with Blue and Pink GCSE calculators in Smiths(!)

I think women's health problems (not just period pain but a whole slew of female related problems) would be given much more serious research and study and more prompt atention by doctors instead of having to find just the right way to approach your doctor, assertive but not aggressive, and repeatedly so, in order to avoid being told "it's nothing/all in your head/having pain is normal dear/it's just part of being a woman" only to find out too late you've been made in fertile or have cancer. This happens to women daily. Debilitating pain is bad enough and should be taken seriously even if it is "just" pain, but all too often it is a sign of a serious disorder for which, very often in "female" conditions, there is no cure. Why is there no cure for "female conditions"? "Oh they are so mysterious and difficult". Why is that? Is it because they haven't bothered with them?

As far as I am aware, you are the only one here making assumptions that we imagine we can get to an ‘assumption free world’. zzz.

No, really. Unless you are very young.

The end game would involve no assumptions about who is doing the emotional labour of any relationship, no assumptions about who is cleaning the toilets, who is the CEO, who gets to be a senior judge or an MP, whose bodies get used as norms for drug testing or crash test dummies; all employers would treat both sexes equally because there'd be no assumptions about who is doing the childcare. There'd be no sexual predator and no sexual prey.

Jog on.

Or it could be normal for men could take as much time off as women when they have a new baby, and so women are not automatically disadvantaged compared to men. Rather than expecting women to behave as men (only taking a short time off work) in order to avoid being disadvantaged.