Proponents of 'equality feminism'- convince me that men will play fair!

Ok Milly

I am a SAHM and it ain't all cupcakes and bunting. It is about housework, wiping bottoms, ferrying to school, nursery, feeding and occasionally sitting in the park having a rueful chat with other women about lack of sleep, lack of money..and sometimes politics etc..

Some days I get out of bed and feel happy I am taking the kids to the park and we will have a nice day.

Other days I feel like screaming. It isn't all that different to the way I felt about work.

And it isn't fulfilling - which is why I am studying for a new career - but it is enough for our family right now, while the kids are little.

And DP does alot round the house. But is also knocked out by working long hours to pay the bills. And that's how it is. And is in many homes across Britain. It's not perfect, but we love and respect each other and frankly, if I didn't think I would be working in a few years, I would seriously hit the gin. And the valium.

Yes, of course I completely agree with your latter points Milly. Our choices are severely constrained and as far as I'm concerned feminism isn't about criticising other women's choices.

I prefer to think of this as 'debating' rather than 'fighting' though, because to call it 'fighting' makes it sound like the content of the discussion is trivial bickering when it isn't. Yes we all want to find solutions, but those solutions are going to depend on how you define the problems, and we don't all agree on the nature and the extent of those problems. My feeling about Sakura's OP is that she was raising this very issue, that 'equality feminists' have a particular understanding of the problems that in turn lead to certain kinds of solution which other 'types of feminist' might consider dangerous because their understanding of the problems is different.

I do think it's fairly simple. From about 1880 to abotu 1970 we were needing equal rights under the law and in the years since by and large there is nothing like the discrimination at work there was. Great. I'm pleased.

However women still take no the second shift at home too, many of them, not all. I would like to see that as a new battleground. I listened recently to a recording of myself on You and Yours about 20 years ago talking about these issues. If then men could pull their weight I don't see why so many years later you still get some women with men who don't. I am afraid I do think some of these women need to take some responsbility. We are not helpless things totally dependent on men for money surely. Why can some of us ensure we simply don't have pathetic men who do nothing and others enable that behaviour? I just don't understand some musmnetters. If their husband is going to disappear for 7 hours of golf on a Saturday why on earth doesn't she just leave the 4 children with him at 9am the next day and go out for a 6 hour hike? He's not going to kill them. Are these women scared of the men? I just don't understand why they let these things happen?

Molesworth, I don't mean to sound superior or accusatory. I am sure I have done plenty mud slinging on threads and I regret it. I don't know what the answers are and I really want people to come up with some good solutions.

I just get frustrated when it starts to feel as if we're all fighting each other when so many of our choices (whether we are in paid employment or not) about how we organise our lives are really a kind of 'choiceless choice' as talked about on other threads. And there isn't any getting away from imperfect choices in our current society, for most women. I hate it that we all pretend things are better than are if you stay at home or if you work, simply to justify the choice. Because it is not individual women who should be have to justify why these choices lead to so many difficulties - it is society as a whole.

HB, another way to get men to pull their weight is to make sure that they see real examples of SAHDs. There's nothing like seeing alternative set ups to make people realise that it is possible.

Think it was comix that said on the other thread that she has a friend who is a SAHD and it has inspired her to see that different approaches are possible.

MillyR, maybe it's because we are so rich as a society that we can pay for all the non jobs you talk of. Poorer societies aren't so much into the advertising executives or the pornographers either, same as they don't have the SAHMs.

MillyR, much food for thought in your posts and some interesting suggestions and ideas which I need to go away and digest.

Re: mud slinging, I daresay I'm one of the ones (or maybe the only one) who has slung mud on this thread. As a working class woman I don't take kindly to being told by Xenia that I'm lazy, stupid and the 'lowest of the low'. I've said that I don't recognise her idea of feminism, but that shouldn't be taken to read that I think women executives as a group are antifeminist: I certainly don't think that. I realise that reacting angrily isn't making a positive contribution to the thread. Am now ignoring any such posts.

'What we don't need is women retreating home saying male work is awful and exploitative and instead I will wash his socks and worship at his feet in my 100% female little ghetto because that's the only place where I can shine because I'm female. Horrendous thought.'

Xenia are you directing that comment at me? Try to answer a direct question with a direct answer.

ho hum more sneery-feminism from Xenia.

Being a good father is also something some men have lost but many still maintain. Where the mother is home and the father bears 100% the burden of supporting the family often the consequence is that he has to work late and over time because of the family's consumerism/desires for things. Where they both work both can be better parents and children benefit from having a man around too.

I was told I had not answered some questions. I think they were just that some of my posts were not understood. I was making a very clear point that women and men are competitive and the fittest survives and that working, capitalism and doing the best for our families can be fun as well as interesting.

The most common situation in the UK is a family where both parents work (more parents with children under 5 work and always have done than don't work) and as we all know the average wage is £20k a year. We hope most people pick work they enjoy. It is much better women take part in the economic part of society rather than being like Afghan or Taliban wives secreted at home allowed only to engaeg in domestic tasks. It is a wonderful thing that women can practise medicine, stand for parliament, join the army or whatever. Feminism has done so well for women. It was only in 1928 that in the UK they got the vote on equal terms with men. We just need to keep up the good work.

What we don't need is women retreating home saying male work is awful and exploitative and instead I will wash his socks and worship at his feet in my 100% female little ghetto because that's the only place where I can shine because I'm female. Horrendous thought.

Most women have always and will always work and the sensible ones know to avoid sexist men and ensure that having a penis doesn't mean they can argue they don't know how to work the washing machine.

HB, also think it helps that men are starting to see the benefits of doing things for their children. They are starting see being an active parent as fun, not a hardship or as mundane. That more than anything is why some men are starting to step up.

Also (and I am aware that I am moving into rant mode) as SAHMs are doing huge amounts of work other than mothering, why don't we reorganise society so that some of the more influential and stimulating parts of work in our society can be done with children around? That certainly is possible.

Rather than seeing this as mothers doing more work in addition to mothering, we should look at this as being about women doing different work in addition to mothering.

HB, I don't think there any easy answers. I think we do have to keep saying it, and saying it and saying it again, until we drive the message home.

Any maybe we hope that with the passage of time things will change. I know my DH does more at home than his father did. We nedd continue to tell our sons know it's not women's work and they need to contribute. I don't see any other way.

Blinder, people on this thread have said that they think the behaviour of executives is unfeminist. As, I have said, I don't agree with either side of this debate.

Yes, I am sure that those women out picking crops for us would like to be at home with their children, or they would like their children to be in school rather than out picking the coffee harvest for us.

I think this thread is about who does the work required to make life possible, and indeed pleasant, and what power those people have - in terms of economic power and influence. We need radical social change to resolve those issues.

I don't agree with Xenia that capitalism provides a long term solution to our unjust and unsustainable world, or that being an advertising executive or a pornographer is a justifiable societal contribution.

But neither do I believe that mothering as a full time occupation is a fair contribution either. But the truth is that most mothers who have no paid job don't just mother. Most mothers are also cooking, cleaning and washing for some lazy man. And huge numbers of mothers who do just mother do so because society has organised working patterns in such a way that it has made it impossible for the adults in the family to work and have children.

I think people need to think realistically about how much work is needed to have a reasonable quality of life. Imagine if there are 20 families, and you have to grow your own food, tend animals, make and repair your own buildings, learn and practise medicine, teach people, create art and culture, make clothes, get energy sources for heating and cooking, make furniture. Do you really think it is possible to have such a society if all the women with children, or even all the children with young children say that all they are going to do is mother? Now think of our society, and all the people (often men) paid to do non-jobs and all the unemployed people and all the SAHM who clean up for the lazy men with their non-job careers. Who do you think is doing all the work required to keep our society going?

We do need radical social change, and while being a mother is better than being someone who does a non-job, solely mothering has no place in a radically different, and more just and sustainable world.

But that is just my opinion. If anyone has an actual solution as to how we can organise a just society along such lines, I would really like to hear it, and I keep asking for people to suggest solutions. But they would rather sling mud.

And saying that you have chosen to solely mother does move this firmly back into the category of choice feminism, unless you can explain how solely mothering is advantageous to women as a group. I think possibly that can be explained, but you need to spell it out, because I feel I am missing your point (possibly my fault and lack of understanding).

No I accept that you're not blaming women, but I do think we need to be careful about how we phrase stuff so that it doesn't sound like yet another smug Xenia-ism (I'm as guilty of this as anyone).

And what are the tools? The rhetoric about making men do their fair share etc., has been around for 40 years and you're still getting women of twenty five taking it for granted that men who wipe down a surface are "helping" rather than just functioning as an adult.

HB, I'm not blaming women who put up with shit men at all. But I don't see any other way that we can deal with this other than to show women that there is another way, that they don't have to put up with it.

The problem is that we can't legislate against shit men in the same way as we legislate against shit employers.

Instead, we need to give women the tools to deal with men like this, to stand up to them and to leave them if they need to.

One of the things which always irritates me about these discussions, is the implication that women who put up with shit men are to blame for the fact that the men are shit.

"If we don't put up with it, blah di blah" utterly ignores the cultural context in which men and women live and blames women for the systemic sexism in our society. It's yet another reason why sneery feminism is so disliked by a)other feminists and b) women who don't define themselves as feminist - it looks down on other women as stupid, silly, doormats etc. I've read lots of comment on MN along those lines and it does get my goat.

blinder, it's not women like you that I worry about, I believe you when you say you made a genuine choice. I believe Sakura too. I don't worry about her either.

I do worry about many other women who don't see that they have a choice. I worry about my friend the hairdresser above, who I know would love to go back to work. Why doesn't her husband want to make any career sacrifices? Why must she bear the full burden?

Most of the men I know, talk a good game and yes, they do a good share of the nappy changing and the drudgery, but they don't do as much as their (usually) working wives. Most use their time with their kids to do the fun stuff (play, take them to the park, to the football, whatever) whereas the women do the dull stuff (dentists appointments, sorting out the packed lunches etc). It's not always the way, but often.

It's taken me a while as an educated woman, working in a male dominated environment and taking no shit from the men at work, to realise that I needed to let my husband do more at home. I needed to let him for my own sanity. And I say let, because as soon as I stepped out of the way, he just picked up the slack. No questions asked. No arguments. He just sorted out what needed to be done. Maybe not the way I would have done it, but he did it none the less.

Now, I'm lucky obviously. Many men won't do that. But we need to make them. We can't legislate for what goes on in the home, we have to do it ourselves individually. And as Xenia says, don't go near the men that won't with a bargepole. They'll soon learn that women aren't their just to pick up after them and their children.

To go back to this Germaine Greer quote that's been mentioned more than once now:

"If the future is men and women dwelling as images of each other in a world unchanged, it is a nightmare."

Yes, I agree. But that's precisely why I want to help to change our society (or the bits of it I can reach) into one where my male partner will want to share childcare equally, be able to do it in terms of his work, and be respected for that decision and not denigrated. And at the same time I want the same for me. That's changing the image of what is a male role or a female role, right there.

I have already seen this happen with friends of mine, and I want it not only for my own purposes but as part of modelling it for others. I don't want to (and will not) distrust my partner because men as a group act in their self-interest - he's not a generic man, he's himself. I don't want to lump all men together either - it's not like it's my saintly partner who is elevated beyond all others, or something. There are other such men out there, and not only do I want to believe this is the case, I think I have to believe it otherwise I'm never going to get stuck into trying to help things to change.

So is the situation of women in the developing world a feminist ideal? Because I am sure there are millions who would love to be with their children rather than hundreds of miles away working in a factory or nannying for some high flying executive.

I see that money buys you choice - in Britain money will buy you the chance to SAH or go to work.

But the decisions are still made within a capitalist, and essentially patriarchal, society.

Yes there are things you can do to mitigate your circumstances - try to share care with DP for example, but what it boils down to is that government and businesses are unwilling to finance family friendly policies such as they have in Sweden.

If I could have had a 5 year career break I would have snatched it with both hands. But it wasn't available.

Xenia's experience is fascinating and she is quite inspirational in some ways, but her circumstances are rare and therefore kind of skew the debate, I think.

MillyR I agree that it's an economic (mostly Western) privilege to mother full time but so is being an executive and no-one is complaining about that being unfeminist!

'If men did their fair share of domestic work, no woman would need to make mothering her sole occupation.'

Gah! You don't seem to be hearing the simple message that I don't have to do it: Iwant to do it. It has nothing to do with my DP not doing his fair share as you would know if you had bothered to read my post.

What is so hard to understand? Not everyone finds it boring to spend all day with a baby. I have waited for seven years to be able to play all day and I would do it all day every day for years if I could .

Thank you Milly, perfectly put.

Mothering has always been part of being a woman, but the idea that anyone other than the extremely wealthy can have mothering as their sole occupation does not exist outside of the 20th century developed world. But then I suppose now that we live in a global economy, most people in Britain are extremely rich, when compared to all the women growing our food for us, making our clothes and medicines for us and living on 2 dollars a day.

If men did their fair share of domestic work, no woman would need to make mothering her sole occupation.

Happysmiley I agree that household duties shouldn't be the preserve of one sex. I also know that you aren't proposing that we house children with violent men. I haven't accused you of that.

I was illustrating the point that if we devalue the unique contribution of mothering, we make it more easy for men to assume control of it, which they attempt to do on a daily basis. Historically, for example, obstetrics has managed to assume almost control of pregnant women's bodies and babies' births in the Western world, and only recently have we started to claw back our rights and wisdom regarding childbirth.

As I said earlier, I have been accused on this topic of being unfeminist, to want to take take time out to spend with my child. There is a patronising assumption that women who mostly child-rear are downtrodden saps. Actually, I supported my DP financially for a while and he is now supporting me (mostly) but he also did all the mopping and hoovering today while I played with the baby. He does significantly more housework than me.

There is also a jaw-droppingly crazy claim on some of these threads that women who 'stay at home' are somehow letting the side down. But mothering is and always will be a significant part of being female. Executive feminists don't have the monopoly on political activism and they don't speak for me.

This thread is simply a comment on the trend of devaluing mothering, and where that might lead. I still don't understand what you are arguing with?