Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

Women’s unpaid labour

30 replies

CatalogueUniverse · 15/09/2019 00:29

I’m still trying to put this together in a more coherent way but would appreciate thoughts on women’s unpaid labour.

School volunteering - trips/reading etc
Caring for relatives/neighbours
Brownies/Guides other community volunteering

I’m vaguely wondering how much of the crisis in healthcare/elderly care/school funding is driven by women who are now unavailable due to paid work.

I wondered what would happen if we all simply stopped doing it, and then I remembered the quote about Feminism, something like “we forgot about the children”. It’s a terrifyingly accurate example of how it is vastly different making a stand when you are the only one impacted to taking a position where someone vulnerable will be affected. How much of women’s responsibilities are forced upon them because men unconsciously or conspicuously know that women will not allow someone to suffer?

OP posts:
Inebriati · 15/09/2019 11:48

Its not a choice if you are a single parent.

DoctorAllcome · 15/09/2019 08:17

Meh. It’s all a choice. I’ve never conformed to gender stereotypes so do not do the bulk of unpaid labor or child caring stuff. DH and I both do our fair share.
Yes, there are social consequences of being looked down as a a “bad” mom or for my DH a “bad” provider. But we just ignored it.

Original poster
CatalogueUniverse · 15/09/2019 01:05

Even the fact that women have to arrange not to be present rankles. How often do the vast majority of men need to arrange cover for caring responsibilities?

OP posts:
Brassbedpost · 15/09/2019 00:45

That's fascinating about the strike in Iceland. When I read it I started thinking how great it would be to do it in the uk. The first thought I had was 'I'd have to arrange for dd's dad to have her for the day' . I wonder how much pre arranging women had to do for their 'day off'.

The original post is correct about children you simply can't just not care for them without making other arrangements- they'd die /get injured (well when they're young anyway).

I'm not sure what point I'm making it's just that you do become incredibly vulnerable after you have a child.

Superlooper · 15/09/2019 00:33

They did it in Iceland years ago - just stopped doing it for a day en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Icelandic_women%27s_strike