Has anyone else noticed that Mumsnet seems to be becoming more regressive on women’s rights?

[CurlewKate]

There are a lot of threads, on big issues and small, that seem to indicate a drift in that direction. Women shouldn’t be police officers. Marriage is wonderful. Changing your name on marriage is a good idea… And, most significantly, many conversational, this happened to me type pro life threads. Do we need to be even more vigilant, in the face of America’s lurch to the Right and the rise of Reform in this country?

It is as in the vast majority of cases its the male name thats used as the family name. Its a marker of ownership. Like a collar.

Can you expand on the marriage is wonderful part? Marriage is encouraged pre DC for lower earners on here as it gives them some protection if things go wrong.

I agree with this to a certain degree. SPL is a good example. I know lots of women that have really stressed themselves out trying to give up breastfeeding by six months so that they can return to work so their partner is equal. Women's biological experience of parenting is different to men's. Surely partners can parent well without women having to give up something to make it fair. I don't think that is really progress for women.

Remember that some of these threads will be from bots/people with an agenda/men...

Also I think as other people have already commented that young people are disenfranchised by politics, the cost of living and the fact that they are just expected to work for low wages after graduating with high student loans debts and that they will struggle to ever buy a house.

Basically capitalist society is failing all of us and also the fact that men still expect women to do most of the childcare and home admin even if they also work full time.

So no wonder that some young women ask themselves if they can really have everything.

I don't think though that there is nothing wrong with women wanting to get married and not making a big deal about changing their surname. That's entirely a personal choice and not 'regressive'.

I'm Gen X, we all married in our mid twenties. We are a broad generation. Teens in the 80's, so liberal and gender non conforming, pro womens rights, but as Thatchers children conservative in our politics.

People seek stability in times of instability and a lurch to the right in such times is a cycle. Even if the ‘stability’ peddled by it (conservative family values, etc) comes with fewer rights. Humans will brainwash themselves into anything that makes us feel ‘safe’ basically, no matter how regressive it is or how much of that safety is a lie.

But what if lots of rights is a bad thing? What if it’s better not to have ‘progress’?

There’s been a lot of anti-choice stuff.

It will be orchestrated.

I would say a desire to see equal rights and opportunities for men and women; a belief in the right to bodily autonomy; a rejection of rape culture and patriarchal social norms etc.

How would you define it?

Can you elaborate on why having "lots of rights" might be a bad thing? Do you think it's a bad thing for men to have "lots of rights" as well?

As in “yeah I’m not anti abortion but I don’t think that aborting healthy babies at 30+ weeks is ok tbh, our existing quite liberal laws are fine”. Truly shocking normie opinions being exposed.

Definitely, quite noticeably lately, still doing way better than animal rights though. Still get laughed or scorned at for that.

Because rights ossify our laws according to what was thought convenient at the time, and stops us from reacting properly when things change. See the Second Amendment in the US for probably the most obvious example.

There’s also a hugely disproportionate and virulent anti-Israel lobby on here that doesn’t reflect majority opinion, as I’ve experienced it.

@Lookingforwardto2025 I agree with you, I think a lot of it is a reaction to not wanting to have the exhausting looking life our mothers led (as well as a shift to the right in times of uncertainty being a thing generally, plus there is always a “backlash” any time women make progress with feminism which we should probably be more prepared for/less surprised by).

I am late gen X (technically a Xennial) and my parents were baby boomers, my mum definitely broke through the glass ceiling and felt that doing that was a super important principle for her. Partly as she was really keen to contribute to change so that women in the generations coming after her would have equal pay and career opportunities to men and not feel there was a glass ceiling at all. She was a doctor (now retired) as am I. I know she feels a bit frustrated that many women in my generation and after are choosing to work part-time or not to work at all as she sees it as undoing all of their generation’s hard work for feminism. I get where she is coming from but I see it differently to be honest, for me true feminism is about women having choices in life.

My mum never had the option to work part-time, it wasn’t seen as necessary in the man’s world she worked in, and would have been seen as a sign of weakness/a reason for her work to be taken less seriously. But women like her in medicine paved the way for women like me to have the option to work part-time and not be taken less seriously as a result. I don’t blame my mum for making the choices she did, in fact I’m proud of her. However I definitely saw the compromises and sacrifices she made in terms of family life to be able to achieve what she did, and how hard it was for her to juggle both work and home responsibilities (my dad was quite good at taking more than the average men’s share of the household responsibilities compared with other men of his generation, but it was still far from half, which to be fair he has realised more and more as he has got older and tried to make amends!). And I grew up as a child/teen feeling that I wished my parents, but especially my mum, were around more and was secretly kind of jealous of my friends with stay at home mums. So I decided that I wasn’t even going to try to “have it all” like my mum did, and aim for part time work, even if it meant career and financial sacrifices, partly for my own sake and partly for my future children’s sake.

That doesn’t apply in the UK. Any and all laws can be modified, updated or outright overturned.

There are plenty more men's rights activists on here than there were a few years ago. A lot of it is blatant.

What sort of rights do you mean?

I agree that MN seems to be a targetted by men with an agenda.

It’s funny how many trad wives change their tunes when their husbands leave. In the US premarital assets are often not up for grabs in a divorce so women can find themselves quickly kicked out of their home. There’s good reasons why our grandmothers fought for women to enter the workplace.

It shocks me how many have bought into the narrative that real women stay at home and do childcare and housework when SAHM is something that didn’t happen before the 1940s. Before that the women worked with their baby in a sling or the kids went off to their jobs.

Tbvh i get fed up of reading about women's rights.
I love the fact we have come so far and the world has changed for the better.
But i dont need to read about it every day.

We have those rights because some women have talked, and continue to talk, about them every single day.

To be bored of reading about them just shows what an incredibly privileged position you are in.

It's the rise that is of note. We all know that populists are absolutely brilliant it using social media and they will definitely be targeting MN. It's important to be vigilant about this sort of content as they are following a dangerous agenda. See Russia and the US for examples.

Im far from privileged im dirt poor on a housing estate.
Like i said im all for it but sometimes its like every conversation its brought up.
I cant be the only one that thinks it.

Privilege isn’t just wealth.

You have clicked on a thread about women’s rights…to moan about having to read about women’s rights. Personally I just scroll past threads which don’t interest me.

I understand what privilege means.
I also know what the thread is about.
But i am also allowed to post a comment.