"Women are stupid"

The assumptions you need to make to think it's right that a marketing consultant gets six figures while a sahm gets nothing are quite profound.

But the marketing consultant has an employment contract and is bringing his employer money in a straightforward, measurable, and non-convoluted manner.

In a way, is the husband who thrives through the support of his spouse not 'paying' by being the one who has to go to work and deal with corporate bullshit and office drudgery rather than spending time wirh his children as most fathers would probably do if they won the lottery?

Marilyn Frye. Thanks, I'll look it up.

Rather like the "both parents should be able to work but in our family it makes more sense for me to give up my job" myth, apparently a lot of people think that in general men and women are equally intelligent but their brother/dad is more intelligent than them/their mum.

@colafreezepop you are right. This is how it is. One assumption is that it is only those people who provide a direct service to capital who deserve to be paid and that this is fair. Of course, sustaining a population is a service to capital, but it is indirect.

Nobody wants the human race to die out. They may want population growth to slow, but most people don't want it to reach an abrupt stop. Therefore, we accept that reproduction is essential. The burdens of reproduction fall disproportionately on women.

All other labour that sustains society is paid except caring and reproductive labour.
Why should we just accept this as part of an inevitable structure? It's not fair and it cannot be fair because of our biology.

That's an interesting point.

To be fair, my views are probably fairly atypical as somebody who has no desire to have children.

Due to an undiagnosed (but easily treatable) medical issue I didn't really enjoy my teens and 20s. Now, in my 30s, I'm finally enjoying life and am not prepared to sacrifice it for the responsibility of children - my partner has never wanted kids either.

However, should we both change our mind, I'm prepared to accept that there will be sacrifice and I'd happily take paternity leave if that was the best option for us as a family.

But I still don't think you can be a CEO and full time parent at the same time in the large majority of cases. I also don't understand the fight to stay in the ratrace - I couldn't get out soon enough! Perhaps the solution is marriage so that the SAHP gets an equal share if things go tits up....?

Pfft. When my uncle was helping us renovated our house he kept using the phrase 'don't show a woman or an idiot an unfinished job' and was indignant when I pointed out that meant women were idiots

@sakura, yes, I meant past societies. Just against the argument that the current arrangement was somehow the product of evolution and therefore inevitable. It is not. Other arrangements are possible for sure.

@Meniak it is the social norm in Western societies for mothers to be the main carers of children particularly small ones. This means they have limited time to do anything else including in providing labour particularly free labour to employers.

While most women have children there is something like 20% of those born after 1970 who are never going to have children. These women are the ones employers will promote if they can.

Incidentally my DP has been struck by the motherhood penalty even though he is male as he was the main carer of his older daughter.

So what? People mostly don't become marketing consultants for altruistic reasons either and they still get paid.

The assumptions you need to make to think it's right that a marketing consultant gets six figures while a sahm gets nothing are quite profound.

I agree that the SAHM role is outside of the patriarchal male model, possibly something that evolved due to the physical difference between the sexes.

Um, not too sure that is supported by history. What we have at the moment is pretty much an industrial patriarchal model. Things are very different if you go back beyond that.

In many pre-industrial agricultural areas, everyone worked and gave value. I think about my great grandmother who spent her mornings milking cows, making cheese to sell and teaching at the local school, while my great grandfather dealt with the animal husbandry. Everyone's effort went into earning the household income.

Pre-industrial revolution in my area, children carded, women span and men weaved: the money making process for the family (cloth making) was a family exercise.

We have to be careful not to fall foul of false notions about history (Peter Hitchens is terrible for this). Just because a situation was apparent in the 1950s does not mean it dates back to the 1850s, iyswim.

And I don't believe most people truly have children for altruistic reasons.

We're already massively overpopulated.

Who says they're being channelled away?

You're less likely to be promoted if you're not there and you also miss out on job experience. It's unfair but it's nature.

Whether we need to compensate for that is the question I suppose. I can see both sides. I remember a senior exec posting on here a while back saying that in her experience you can't 'have it all' and that you must necessarily compromise either your career or your parenting due to finite hours in a day. She said she was stressed trying to balance it all.

But that's just one opinion (albeit from somebody who had walked the walk) and I don't pretend to know the answer. I suppose one option is to forego children.

Yeah but why should motherhood be a penalty? Given that most women become mothers, that reproduction is necessary for survival, that raising children is hard work and useful. Why should society's resources be channelled away from mothers?

Of course it still needs to.be looked at. Even If the majority of women are happy with the way things are, it can't hurt to increase options.

But when the economist did a study on this they found that women who didn't have children and continued to prioritise their career were promoted more aggressively thsnntheir male counterparts. Prior to the approximate age of motherhood, women outearn men and have for the last decade, so I think it's highly likely that the motherhood penalty is the cause and not solely discrimination/misogyny.

And no, the economic system did not "evolve due to physical differences". Our bodies evolved. Not every society has even had a market system.

Okay, so giving birth and caring for kids is actually work? It's quite hard work. It's just largely uncompensated. Women can work hard all their lives and end up poor. That is because the capitalist system privileges male work.

Packing.

I agree that the SAHM role is outside of the patriarchal male model, possibly something that evolved due to the physical difference between the sexes - men being more suited to physical work/hunting than a woman recovering from childbirth (or possibly always pregnant due to lack of contraception and the requirement to have more children due to many dying).

I do wonder whether most women actually want to work through their maternity leave though. Most of my former team were female and about half were on maternity leave at some point whilst I was there. The majority had higher-earning husbands and didn't seem too fussed about bringing in extra money. My brother in law now earns over £100k and my sister has pretty much given up on her career (she was the only woman in her team in a very technical military field - missile guidance etc). She says motherhood is much less stressful than her job was and she has four kids!

Yes, packingsoapandwater, this is so true! And where are the discussions about this? I feel so frustrated because I turn to radical feminism, which is supposed to be dismantling the patriarchy, and it's still banging on about bathrooms. We're being played, I think.