I consider myself a feminist...and a housewife.

But we don't need to worry about Japan because if this attitude continues much longer, the entire race will die out. Women are looking at this sort of thing and refusing to have children in protest (0.4% fertility rate and dropping). The only people left will be the grey-headed males at the top discussing whether to what extent they should "allow" women represent themselves.

Ryoko (are you Japanese by the way?)
Without positive discrimination we'll be waiting forever.
In Japan they let the odd woman into politics but they make sure she's as thick as shit and doesn't know what she's doing to reinforce the notion that women are thick and can't handle politics. If 50% of MPs were women that attitude would change pretty swiftly because it would be clear then that women are just as intelligent, if not moreseo, than men.

We need to look at why more women don't become Mps and tackle it that way too though.

(sorry, that was in reply to Ryoko)

I completely disagree. Fewer than 20% of our MPs are women. This is a problem and needs to be solved as soon as possible. That's not going to happen on its own: positive action is needed.

I am a SAHM and often describe myself as a neo-feminist. We are told that e can have the perfect career and the perfect family but for many woman this is a myth. Lots of women find they work ful time and still do the majority of the childcare and housework. How is this equality? I believe we need a new type of feminism to reflect this, hence the neo in my self description.
I do the majority of housework and cildcare whilst my husband does paid work to ay the bills but this is what works for us. TBH he would love to be a SAHD, and we would ideally do half each but a she earns 3 times what I would financially it is not viable. He is more jealous of my time at home than I am of his time at work.
However I would strogly support anyone who wanted to be at work. We have the right to choose. Surely that is feminism and nbot being forced to fit someone else's definition of what you should be.

Sakura

I think positive discrimination and the like, makes things worse, no one likes to think someone is getting preferential treatment and it makes things harder for those that got somewhere due to merit.

like MPs for example and this all female shortlist thing, makes people think they are where they are simply because of sex and people will think less of them, if I was an MP who'd worked hard to get where I was I would be very annoyed.

Of course feminism is about choice. In the past, women had little respectable choice but to marry and produce a lot of children, or else to enter a nunnery. These days, women have more life choices than men, thanks to feminism. And if they wish to use their skills and education to be great mothers and wives/partners, why not?

Ryoko,

"2. Feminism is not the right to be given preferential treatment, so called positive discrimination and giving women more rights then men, is a backwards step IMO. "

Lots and lots of back-history though isn't there... We still live in a patriarchical society, so that has to be taken into consideration when you discuss these things...there are also social and cultural issues that disadvantage women, feminization of poverty, women being objectified etc etc. All else being equal I completely agree with your second point. Society as it stands right now...Completely disagree. We need moves such as positive disgrimination in business and politics to help enfranchise women IMO. IN the future I hope to see a society where men and women can be treated equally.

My two pence.

1. Feminism, womens rights is the right to be treated equally, both men and women should have the same rights in everything, men should be entitled to exactly the same maternity laws as what women are, it should be the families choice who is the Housewife/husband etc.

1. Feminism is not the right to be given preferential treatment, so called positive discrimination and giving women more rights then men, is a backwards step IMO.

So IMO being happy to be a feminist housewife is a perfectly fine and normal thing as long as it's your choice to be a housewife.

Yes it shouldn't be seen as being 'on benefits' because it's a job. I always find it shocking that in the UK a teenage mother with a baby is sort of lumped into the same group as an unemployed male. She's already got a full-time job, I think.

I agree that they probably want people to have more kids. Same in Japan- your benefits go up the more kids you have (still a measly amount though).

The main problem I have with staying home and looking after my babies is being dependant on DH financially. So if a woman (or man) stays at home to raise kids its either a) be dependant on someone or b) poverty trap
I just don't think those two options are good enough really for what the job is.

For me the main flaw in this system is that the leave is only available for families with two or more children. I forgot to say that it is not just available for the second but also for subsequent children. A parent with 3 children may have taken 6 years leave for example.

I think it is unfair that it is not available for the first and don't really understand why this is the case although I suspect it is part of French social policy to encourage people to have children.

Interestingly this leave is very much seen as 'leave' and not 'being on benefits'.

Beachcomber, that sounds really good. That's the kind of thing I'd be happy with.

Thats great that people can go back in to the job they left. I think thats a huge problem in the UK, if you take a 3 year career break you're pretty much at the bottom of the list for re-employment. Thus, women are pushed further back down the career ladder, as its them usually left holding baby until it starts school. By which point confidence levels have also dropped and the two factors together often mean a woman will then 'choose' to just stay at home ongoing.

Does it also somewhat give preferencial treatment to lower earning women because women who are the bread winner of a couple would have higher outgoings than this scheme could support..

Still, an interesting concept, and more forward thinking than UK.

It is, as you say smallorange, very civilised!

No probs for the questions foureleven. IME it is nearly always the woman who takes the time off. Employers have a legal obligation to keep the person's job open for them or offer them a similar position with the same level of responsibility and pay on the worker's return. AFAIK it is up to the worker to keep themselves up to date with their industry as necessary. I think technically an employer can refuse to accept the request for leave but in practice this never actually happens.

I don't think employers love the scheme particularly, but it is so widely accepted as part of the benefit system that they have no choice but to go along with it. I know plenty of women who have taken their leave from all sorts of jobs and nobody has had a problem with their employer. Obviously a person will miss out on promotions/pay rises, etc. during their leave.

The leave is divided up into three one year stints. At the beginning of each year the worker decides if they want to work full time, part time or not at all. It is possible for example to not work at all the first year, part time the second and then go back full time or at 80% the third year. Again the employer has to agree to this and it isn't always possible for them to be fully flexible.

I suspect that it more acceptable (in employers' eyes) for women to take parental leave than men. I don't know any men that have done it so don't have any experience of this.

I think this scheme is excellent and very fair but I don't think it has changed the male/female dynamic of childcare. It does however open up choices for working mothers and places value on the role of childcaring.

I know women who have never worked and therefore do not fill the criteria for the leave, they tend to think that this is fair enough. Mostly these women are either from households which do not need the extra money or they are on benefits which they continue to receive after having children.

Wow beachcomber that sounds so civilised.

Beachcomber- When you say that either parent can take the three years, can I ask is it usually the woman who does this, or the man or is it an even split would you say?
What is the general attitude in the work place to this arrangement i.e. is it frowned upon for the man to take the three years?

Also, are there arrangements made to keep which ever parent takes the three years in the loop industry wise, so their career isnt effected?

Sorry to bombard you but Im intrigued!

Sakura's idea about people who care for children being paid out of taxes is pretty much the way the French system works and nobody bats an eyelid at it here.

As I said before, in France when the second child is born the family gets 3 years paid parental leave. Either parent can take the leave. In order to qualify for this the person must have contributed to the national insurance system for a minimum of two years in the last 4 years before the birth of the child. I happen to think this is pretty fair and it stops too much abuse of the system.

The amount paid is not huge but added to child benefit it comes to nearly 600 Euros a month which I think is very generous when you think it is over a period of three years.

If neither parent chooses to SAH the family gets money towards childcare costs (you also get this with the first child).

The French system is of the view that if the tax system can pay for people who are out of work or who cannot work for health reasons then it should also pay people who are not working in order to bring up children.

The cut off is three years old because all French children are offered a school place from 3 years old.

I think this is a very fair system which allows people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to to spend the early years with their children. I think it is important that parents who choose to work receive a similar sum towards childcare.

Also the money received is not taxed and the state contributes to the person's pension during the 3 year leave period. The leave period is flexible, the person can work part time if they choose and receive a reduced sum.

We studied scientific management the other day (I'm taking a leadership course), and no mention was made of the sex, age, class or otherwise of the workers involved, but the key point is that they were considered as essentially machines, and as entirely motivated by money. It's a very reductionist view, and having looked at American industrial history factory workers were all treated very harshly (lots of strike breaking, shipping in workers from other countries etc). The other thing to know is that as a movement it has been pretty much abandoned (now it is mainly taught as a how wrong they got that and how time has moved on type lesson). However the reason that it has moved on is that at least in the West, most companies rely on their workers as rather more than a pair of hands because of the complexity of work.

Ford is interesting because one of the things he did was to pay his workers more than the market to reduce high turnover. He did talk about them being men, so I don't know if he employed women.

I don't know why Demming was included in that list, he was all about systems, but also about how individuals at all levels play a very important role in learning an teaching and continuously improving systems (so pretty much the opposite of scientific management).

Walmart are of course well known for discriminatory practice as well as for lean supply chains and using their bargaining power.

But yes they were all about efficiency, and in work at least, there is nothing wrong with that. Working in inefficient systems and being able to do nothing about them is incredibly frustrating for everyone, empowering people to bring about positive change generally makes people happier.

For me the question for darcymum is why she dreads going back to work so, and how can she find something that she would enjoy, because life is long and whilst I think the orthodoxy that it's only babies who need a parent on tap is wrong, I don't think that making your entire life centre around house and home is very healthy.

For DeirdreB I'd ask whether she would give a son different advice from her daughter, and if so then I can't see that that is compatible with feminism.

I want to add to my point about the capitalist system only regarding paid work as work and other work (usually care-work) as being trivial.
Some people have been duped into believing their work is important because its paid, while a housewife's work is irrelevant.
Anyone who really thinks this should really reflect on an article I just read in Newsweek about American-stylee capitalism.

"Whether it was Frederick Taylor, the inventor of scientific management, walking around Victorian era factories with stop-watches, timing worker's motions; or Henry Ford perfecting the assembly line; or W Edwards Deming developing totally quality management; or Walmart's insanely effective supply chains--the pursuit of efficiency is as American as apple pie"

What's to bet that the workers in the victoria era factories were women? They timed their hand movements so they could calculate how much profit they could get out of each particular worker, and no doubt how little they could pay each worker per hand-movement.

THis is one, among a milion other reasons, why women's traditional work in the home has systematically been completely trivialised by the patriarchy.

I don't want women back in the home and kept out of the public sphere, but I want the women who are in the public sphere to realise the value of child-raising, because children are a feminist issue IMO

"Staying at home was the least ideal, though. My DH is a fabulous and fair man who was happy to take a 'what's mine is yours' approach, yet I still loathed the idea of being financially dependent on a man. How can anyone bear it in the long term? It is just anathaema to me as a feminist. That was the crux of the matter for me. Work = financial independence = being a truly free and adult in this big bad world. Anything else is misery to me. "

Totally agree. I'm financially dependant on my husband, even though I made a feminist choice to SAHM. I am arguing the case for paying mothers out of taxes here

There are definitely pros and cons to this and they're being discussed in detail

But we definitely should callenge the assumption that only paid work is work, paid work being defined as what a capitalist system can milk out of its labourers. We should also challenge the assumption that if a family prefers to have one person at home (father/mother whoever) because they may be non-materialistic and may feel that the person at home is making an economic contribution through cooking, making things, creativity rather than bought entertainment etc, and most importantly taking the job of child-rearing upon themselves, that they are taking the lazy option.

As an aspiring feminist, I have to confess to being a bit intimidated by all the academic views on this thread.

I work part time, which in my view, is a compromise (possibly in the pejorative sense) between my desire to continue my career and to care for my children. I have to say that working PT in a male dominated industry is crap, and the views of my employers are pretty questionable.

My DH would love to also work part-time, so we could share the childcare arrangements, however the sexism of his employer creates an obstacle. There is one woman who works PT in DH's work, and he can see that as a result, her career opportunities have been limited. If DH asked for PT hours (even by a reduction of 1 day a week) he is pretty certain he would be demoted.

Minipie, returning to my earlier point, I've heard a few times on here, and elsewhere that people often choose to bottle-feed (or are pressurised into stopping bf) so that the father can bond, and 'have a go'.
That it's selfish to breastfeed.
Sharing maternity leave would give another reason for men to feel jealous.
In order to be 'equal' couples would split the maternity leave.
It could be a disincentive for some women to bf.