to think Mary Berry is at best naive, and at worst deluded, about feminism?

[MardyBraWouldDoEddieRedmayne]

Times link if you can get through the paywall
free Daily Mail link

Apparently feminists are shouty. We should enjoy being "looked after" and gently persuade our menfolk with our feminine wiles to do what we want. It's alright if you're surrounded by well-meaning malleable blokes.

No mention of equal pay, equal voting rights, equal employment opportunities, freedom from sexual discrimination or harrassment, etc. No - all you need to do, is "persuade them [men] gently to do things and, of course, when they come back they say, ?Oh, wasn?t that fun?? Try telling that to victims of domestic violence Mary...

[TheDoctrineOfSciAndNatureClub]

Good list, bochead.

[Xenia]

Yes, good list. I would probably add that to 8 that women who deny men contact with children after divorce are jailed - to make it more fair.

[ppeatfruit]

I watched Most of Mary Berry's life on T.V. Yes anyfucker odd or coincidental that there was the publicity JUST before that programme.

But if you call being in hospital (some of it in open air even in winter ) with polio for a long time at age 14 a "charmed life" then so be it. That's the reason for her misshapen hand and thin arm BTW.

Xenia I agree.

[Gigondas]

Agree with ppeat -my definition of a charmed life doesn't include having life altering illness at 14 or losing a
Child.

[kimorama]

Yes, the TV programme ahowed her as a lady of her time. A lot of women have moved on.

[monica77798]

"MoonLighter Tue 29-Jan-13 14:38:49
monica77798 - so do you mean feminists don't want to work alongside men as their equal, they want men to work for them as their underpin? Basically reverse the roles so men aren't charge, women are?"

Yes exactly that. Feminists will complain about inequality when women are worse off, but gloat about it or ignore it when men are worse off. As an example, about 60% of uni students are female and this majority has been increasing every year for the past two decades. Rather than debating this inequality, feminists will focus on the few subjects like engineering where female students are a minority.

[atthewelles]

Not only did Mary Berry suffer from polio and struggle academically at school. She also suffered the appalling tragedy of losing her teenage son in a car accident. How on earth can anyone say she's led a 'charmed life'?

[ppeatfruit]

One interesting point about why some older women are not keen to be called feminists (even though they are in their lives) is that in the 70s some women were SO extreme and anti male in their feminism that they set up communes and forbade the member's baby sons being part of them.

It was given a lot of publicity at that time (probably too much) but I remember feeling very shocked by that.

[MoonLighter]

ppeatfruit - that is a cop out, Thatcher isn't to blame for todays recession. Sure, she did deregulate the banks but that doesn't mean she made it ok or legal for the things that went on within the banking industry years after. You should be blaming the FSA for it's failure to regulate effectively and nip any corrsive culture in the bud. They had all the powers they needed to do the job properly, they just failed to do it. But then what do you expect when the majority of staff come from banking backgrounds.

The state of the Country and the world recession is bad, but if Blair and Brown hadn't screwed up the finances so badly and made alot of people very dependant (with a belief that they can have a middle class lifestyle doing 20 hours a week) then we may have been in a better position to fight the recession than we are now. Helping people isn't to throw money at them (which we cannot afford to sustane), it's to help them stand on their own two feet and help themselves (Thatchers message.)

[Susan2kids]

She (berry) comes over as confused. I do feel the need to point out to Mardy shes hardly likely to mention equal voting rights since im pretty sure we already have those and it would be a leetle irrelevant.... sigh

[MoonLighter]

monica77798 - i have to agree with you there. It's along the same lines as men looking at young, fit girls naked or going to a strip club are called dirty old pervs who are degrading women. But women looking at a young, fit guy or having a male stripper at a hen party is deamed as "a bit of fun" and "a bit of laugh." Both principles are the same but one is ok and the other is "wrong".

I think with Mary Berry, she did ok because the career she chose was classed as "womans" work anyway. Cooking and baking were what women did in those days, no self respecting man would have been seen holding a cake tin! So she wasn't really challenged in what she did because it wasn't threatening to men and she wasn't trying to compete with men. I do like Marys attitude towards men actually - she doesn't want to compete against them or "beat" them at anything, she just respects them and gets along with them and i think because of this she is repected and they get along with her back.

Is that not what we are trying to do - not compete against men but merely work alongside with them?

[grovel]

I like that Moonlighter.

My MiL was just like Mary B. She would completely have agreed with the list above. She once told me that she was a feminist but not a Feminist. This distinction made perfect sense to her and I suspect MB would "get it" better than I did.

[MoonLighter]

Compare Mary Berry with someone like Janet Street Porter, one a full on feminist and the other not. Yet i see Mary Berry as someone who has achieved far more in terms of equality than Janet has from my view.

Mary has enjoyed a career she loves with much success, has a lovely family, has been married 46 years and is a happy, joyful person who respects men and works happily alongside them.

Then i look at Janet who has been married 3 times, is always moaning about something or some unfairness she has come across, doesn't appear to actually like men and never seems happy about anything.

I know if i was on my death bed which one i would want to be.

[Blistory]

Maybe MB is happier because she's only had to concern herself with her and her family. She enjoys the results of feminism but doesn't seem to have contributed much to women's rights. So she enjoys the advantages but won't recognise those advantages for being just that. Hmmmm.

Not a fan of JSP but at least she sees some of the issues and raises awareness.

It certainly makes for a harder life when you decide to speak out. I wouldn't condemn someone for staying quiet but I wouldn't praise them for it either.

[MoonLighter]

Mary Berry has done plenty for women by just getting on with things. To me it is a far more powerful message to go out, get on with the job in hand and work alongside men happily than it is to constantly moan about how unfair everything is. There are the complainers then there are the doers who are the ones who actually get things done.

Thatcher was a doer not a complainer and look how much she got done. She didn't complain about how unfair men were, she showed them what she could do and did it.

[expatinscotland]

Maybe Mary was too busy living, you know, that thing called working FT, which she has all her adult life, and raising a family and such likes to become politically active.

[Blistory]

So because some women have advantages that allow them to benefit from the system, we should hold them up as examples ? And ignore that the system is broken and only able to be worked by a very few select women.

Do you know what ? I would have bothered be less if she'd said nothing. It's the fact that she implied that maternity leave is a negative. It happens to be a really huge area in terms of fixing the system and ensuring equality for women but when you get public personas voicing that it's somehow wrong, it reinforces the attitudes of those who don't want change.

[TheDoctrineOfSciAndNatureClub]

Compare one person with another person and one seems happier than the other and even though they are totally different people with different lives and different personalities, the happiness differential is down to their outspokenness or not about feminism.

What the actual what?

[MoonLighter]

There is nothing wrong with fighting for equal pay in a job where both genders do the same work equally, there is nothing wrong with women going into roles that have been traditionally for men either. But the amount of complaining and whining that goes on when it would be more productive to just get on with the job. No man is going to complain if a woman is just getting on with the job in hand.

Maternity leave is going too far the other way. Six months was perfect, now it's turning into a whole year and you don't even have to tell your employer if you are coming back. That is hard on business, especially small ones. It seems some women don't want equality, they want the whole workforce to evolve around them and their choices.

[TheDoctrineOfSciAndNatureClub]

I get on with my job. In my spare time I advocate women's rights and I also call sexism at work if I see it, just as I would with any other ism.

The two aren't mutually exclusive, you know.

Incidentally, "maternity" leave can now be shared by both parents and the majority of children are born after a joint choice, rather than because of "women and their choices"

[Xenia]

I have always thought that long maternity leaves are a tool to keep women down, ensure sexism in a marriage and destroy female careers. I am sure the fact I have had such a wonderful family life and career is because I chose to take 2 weeks of holiday and return full time to work. Best of all worlds. I agree with Moonlighter.

I don't think we need be too concerned about more women graduating than men as by the time women hit the age of having babies they marry men who force them to stay home or put their career on a second track or who were brought up by housewives so they expect not to work much so that despite being 60% of graduates by the time they get to their thirties and 40s women make up about 15 - 20% of very senior roles. The 60% graduate rate and 50% in my day 30 years ago has not filtered through. If it had worked then 50% the cabinet, boards and the like would be female as women may age made up about 50% of graduates. In other words women doing better at university has not stopped them choosing to go part time, work for pin money and devote their lives to housework, keeping a man happy and doing most of the cleaning and childcare whilst he goes out into the big world and earns the real money.

We do have the nice recent statistic though that women like I am who set up their own businesses and do well now out earn men who do that. That does give me some comfort and in those cases you can simply be the best int h e Uk at what you do which is what I try to be and it does not matter if a male or female colleague promotes you or whatever as you own, rather than are a paye slave.

[TheDoctrineOfSciAndNatureClub]

How do you feel about shared post-baby leave, Xenia?

[merrymouse]

To be fair to Janet and Mary, one is a journalist and going on about stuff is her job. The other is a cookery writer and presenter and that is her job.

They both just do the work for which they are paid.

[MoonLighter]

xenia You have made some good points although on some parts, do you think some of those women who didn't filter through maybe chose to stay with their children out of choice? I mean lots of women in careers don't feel the same about their career after they have their babies because they have a mind shift and feel their priorities are different? Not all women of course but alot do feel different about life, jobs and priorities after children.

[MerlotAndMe]

Enjoy being looked after?!

EVEN supposing everybody wanted that and only that, it does smack of 'I'm alright jack'. I wouldn't mind being 'looked after' occasionally but things like equal pay and tougher sentences for sexual offenders and more women in the cabinet and various other things matter a bit more. God love her. She can roll a roulade though, I'll give her that.