to think the washing machine has liberated women more than the pill?

[bettybosseye]

I'm serious, think about it, there are alternatives to the pill but only one to hours spent every day hand scrubbing and wringing piles of washing.
The pill is held up as something that gave women control and this is undoubtedly true but the humble washing machine has emancipated us from hours of drudgery every day and like i say it is unrivaled. The washing machine rules!

Service wash at the launderette. Pill can only be done at home so pill for me although the long-term effects are still under discussion.

The women of Yemen are still having an awful lot of babies (though not an uncontrolled number, fertility rates have fallen noticeably in recent decades even there). But they are not representative of the developing world as a whole - it is wrong to imply that there is a division between Us, who have FP clinics on our doorstep and the choice of umpteen different contraceptive choices, and Them, who are doomed to give birth every 24 months until they drop dead.
The methods which our (great) grandmothers used to control their fertility are being used with considerable success all around the world, with the exception of a very few countries. It would be great to have more reliable and more woman-controlled contraception choices available worldwide of course, but bearing in mind HIV prevalence it might also be dangerous to replace barrier with hormonal contraception.
(oh, and before anyone asks, the answer to the question "if everything's so great why are we worrying about the population crisis?" is demographic bulge - not "Women having too many babies" but "too many women having babies")

I would choose my dishwasher and washing machine way above contraception. I realise that I have the choice over whether to have sex, but that doesn't make the pill liberating- it meant women could stop pregnancy, but not.say no to sex.

I could happily live without sex, but would hate spending my days washing and cleaning

I take the point about the 1960s-80s and not having washing machines (though I remember a lot of trips to the launderette, and my inlaws had some sort of twintub or something, so it wasn't exactly handwashing). But that era is a very small era in our very long history, and one in which clothes were far far cheaper than they had ever been, so it's not surprising there was a period when he had and wore more clothes and didn't all have the devices to wash them relatively labour-free.

I still think, for instance, that nowadays we pile pressure on ourselves to cook gourmet meals every night when both my grandmothers would quite happily serve dinners of pies picked up from the butchers with boiled veg, sausages and mash, ham and eggs, even bread and jam (not every day, of course!) and the Sunday roast was a Sunday roast because you couldn't afford (and didn't have time) to eat beautifully prepared meals every other night of the week.

Women in the 1960s-80s did work outside the home, though often in more menial and low-paid jobs than they do now, and women across the world who live without labour-saving devices do loads of work outside the home as well.

One thing I think we're assuming is that the washing machine was really important because women do all the washing. I think something more important than how long the washing takes is who does it - and sharing housework between men and women is as much of a leap forward as the device itself. (Not that all households are there yet!!)

More than half the 3.4 million annual pregnancies, in the Philippines are unwanted.

blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2010/10/01/president-aquinos-contraception-plan-angers-philippines-catholic-church/

That's obviously bad, and it would be great to improve that, but for context roughly 20% of conceptions in the UK result in abortion, so presumably at least that many are unwanted even here (even once you've allowed for the wanted but nonviable pregnancies).

But you can have an abortion here.

Lucky for you, not everyone has that option.

I had a (male) history teacher that had a theory that custard powder (and other packaged pre-prepared foods) liberated women more than any other invention in terms of time saved.

Launderettes didn't exist everywhere. My parents didn't have a launderette anywhere near them. I remember in late 70's everyone suddenly getting twin tubs. Before that my mum and other friends parents did wash everything by hand - sheets, nappies, clothes, etc.

I think people from middle class homes or who are too young to remember this, seriously underestimate the amount of labour involved in washing everything by hand in a sink or bath.

We've had periods without the pill and without the washing machine.

The washing machine wins the prize for liberation.

BeenBeta, I think pre-packaged and other factory-prepared food have actually just created lots of money for the men who owned and distributed the brands. Appropriating women's skills and selling them back to them, while all the time masking the fact that the burden of washing and cooking still falls to women.

Norman, that link to the Phillipines is shocking. I think we need a world education movement to teach men that sticking your pecker in a woman's vagina can result in pregnancy, because it seems to me that a lot of them don't know this, otherwise why would they do it to a woman who didn't want a baby. For their own pleasure, yes, but the risk falls entirely on the shoulders of the women. Is any man's orgasm worth that?

No

I used to do all my washing [for 4 people] by hand ,it isn't difficult with decent washing powder and hot water.
Being pregnant for 9 months, giving birth and being responsible for another human being is much more difficult, time consuming and restrictive.
Of course the pill [and it's derivatives] has liberated women far more than the washing machine.

well in that case, HopeForTheBest, it's just about your idea of risks vs. rewards

my reward = getting to see my little ones grow up, my risk = higher risk of DVT / weight gain (plus others)

(*if i ever used the pill, which i haven't, but i relied on the other blessings of modern contraception)

perhaps your reward = minor inconvenience of not having children spaced out as you'd prefer (so not that huge :)), whilst your risk = major theme of DVT running in your family, want to avoid at all costs

it swings in round-abouts whether people value one over the other. i do maintain that it's silly to go saying washing machines have done more to liberate women than the pill though, i still don't get this thread

If there had been no pill, the other forms of contraception wouldn't have come so quickly. A washing machine wouldn't have changed your life much if you had 9 children's clothes to wash in it, trust me.

You're missing out all of the history of the pill and what changed, its all too simplistic. And look at where this "news" came from....Vatican says washing machine more liberating than the pill. The effing Vatican!

The pill [and other hormonal contraceptives] also make periods lighter and more pleasant for many women.
practicallyimperfect I don't understand why you are unable to say 'no' to sex simply because you are on the pill? I was on it for years but I didn't realise that removed my right to consent.

fatlazy, I think you've probably hit the nail on the head for why the pill has been promoted so much by the pharmaceutical companies, the media and the government (even through the schools FFS)

It's so that men can stick their peckers in any woman and said woman longer has a reason to say no

Forget about saying no because she doesn't think it's worth having sex with a man who is clearly not interested in her body or her health

seriously, what are all these men thinking? Would you stick your dick in a woman if you weren't sure that she wanted a baby or not? WOuldn't you at least check with her first whether being impregnated was something that she wanted? ANd if she did mind, why not bring each other to orgasm in more "imaginative" way, or why not use withdrawal, or a condom, or or ...

oh, I see you were saying that women can still say no when they're on the pill.
Well, yes, that goes without saying, but I'm still confused as to why men simply do not care whether they impregnate their partner or not. THe mind boggles.

Some posters have said that the washing machine has meant that people now wear clean clothes every day, but still do the same amount of laundry overall - i.e. it's not labour saving but expectation raising.

That doesn't reflect my experience. My (WOHM) grandmother will always notice an unironed shirt. ( Always because my family's clothes are always unironed). Some people maybe do choose to iron their socks, but there is nowehere near the shame attached to not having impecable housekeeping. I recall sitting with my nan in her kitchen - she had two cast iron irons, one on the gas flame warming up and one ironing the clothes, then swap them round when the first cooled down too much. She'd have this little rag to hold onto it so her hand didn't burn.

Similarly with meals, I'll serve a minestrone with a slice of granary bread and a chunk of cheddar as a main weekday meal. My (also WOHM) mother (and presumably generations of women before her) don;t consider they've served a valid meal unless they have soup/meat/ starch/ side vegetable/ side salad/ desert.

And, yes, my mum recalls the boiling napies, the strange vinegar based concoctions, and the way that regardless of how hard she worked and how often she changed me, I had near permanent nappy rash. My mum fell in love with disposables when I had Dd1.

With regards to men taking their share - labour saving machines with buttons and lights are much more male-friendly than the routines and potions and long drawn out complicated processes that came before.

IMO, no question, housework takes up less of my time and defines less of my identity than would have been the case pre-washing machine pre-microwave etc.

With regards to the pill - what came first, improved contraception, or different expectations of women? 'Taking the pill in secret' is referring to a small subset of abused and coerced women. It is more common nowdays to not even be married before your 30s. Presumably, contraception - condom if pill is not available - goes without saying when sex is outside a marriage/marriage like long term cohabitaion.

To put it another way - I think I'm more likely to buy my daughter a washing machine than to take her to the GP to put her on the pill.

I assume she will need clean clothes. I don't assume that she is so certain to have non-barrier sex that it is a no-brainer that she should be on long-term hormonal treatment.

Maybe the washing machine would encourage an excessive level of cleanliness. However, the pill would put across that the side-effects of sex are 'dealt with'. IMO, preganancy is not nearly the most damaging side effect of sex. As a mother, I would fear emotional fall-out from 'over commiting' physically to an unsuitable partner, and health fall out (minor things like chlamydia and HPV, even before we talk about HIV), far more than ending up with an unexpected little baby.

but thats now. Thats not back then. NOW you have lots of contraceptive options, and your right to say no when you are married is actually a law.

The pill wasn't just a contraceptive, its was an ideal. It was a sea chabeg in sexual responsibility and relationships. I can't get over how narrow viewed people are about this issue, the bloody washing machine? Depressing.