To wonder if feminism fucked us over

[splendidisolation]

Looking around at lots of relationships -

Women got the right to work and make money.

In many cases this seems to mean that they now have the right to pay bills, rents and mortgages as well as doing the lions share of cooking, household chores and childcare whilst feeling under intense pressure to engage in hardcore grooming and be sex goddesses.

In the 60s many women didnt work and let their lady gardens grow free - it was all men really knew or wanted.

Fast forward 50 years and they're expected to have careers and strip it all off.

Im muddling loads of points here but does anyone see what I mean?

My DP is pretty good but I still pull more weight than him. The other evening I got home late and started to get up to make dinner. He was like "dont bother yourself making dinner, lets just make sandwiches".

Sandwiches? Bother? I mean, I appreciate the gesture mate but its like...why not just make fucking dinner yourself?

Sorry for this rambling, ranting and general mish mash of thoughts.

Feel free to muse!

Women worked a long time before the 60s. Women working isnt a product of feminism

True. For one thing, we often forget that up until very recent times most of the population supported themselves through agriculture. Women would, of course, have been every bit as involved as men.

The whole concept of "housewife" is probably very modern.

Housewifery was a big thing post WW2 I believe- they wanted married women out of jobs (so the men could have them) plus middle class families could no longer get domestic help, shopping was needed pretty much daily and gadgets were rare, so the women ended up stuck with all that. (But they got valium to help them through the drudgery )

Obviously the working class women carried on juggling everything as they couldn't afford not to work. Also not all men behaved like a lord and master even back then- my grandad used to insist he did the mangling part of the laundry as he thought it was too hard work for my gran

I would say that probably the biggest downside socially is that it has reinforced social position. Most entrepreneurs and professionals i know have married someone equally as talented as themselves, usually both high income earners. Because disposable income is what is left after you have paid for the basics, these couple are probably 4-8x better off than they low income counterparts in terms of disposable income.

The upside is of course is that we effectively have doubled the pool of labour which means we can produce a lot more output. There is a reason why asset prices have skyrocketed at the same time as manufactured goods have plummeted.

"But, as I've felt here today, there is a huge divide and what feels like blame and judgement for anyone who happens not to share the exact same views, despite that being the very definition of feminism."

Well, it's not actually a definition of feminism. Of course there are differences of views and feminism is a broad church. But just because a woman does something doesn't make it a feminist thing to do.

And at the risk of putting tens of women (I was going to say hundreds, but I decided that was wildly egotistical) off feminism forever, I think not being concerned about whether children are being brought up to adopt traditional gender stereotypes is practically a definition of anti- feminism.

It is a fallacy that women have only just entered the workplace.

This!

Women have always worked, pre-feminism that work was the shittier jobs with less pay and zero recognition. (Still sadly frequently true now, but there are a lot more women with well paid and respected jobs).

My great-grandfather worked in the iron foundries his whole life. So did my great-grandmother, from the age of 9 til her death, for less than quarter of the wages of the male workers, whilst also raising a family of 15 children... And on her death certificate her occupation is listed as just 'wife of [grandfather's name]' !.

What Slightly said.

Housewifery was a big thing post WW2 I believe- they wanted married women out of jobs (so the men could have them) plus middle class families could no longer get domestic help, shopping was needed pretty much daily and gadgets were rare, so the women ended up stuck with all that. (But they got valium to help them through the drudgery hmm)

Women have only relatively recently been able to do professional jobs that required a degree (other than teaching/governess/nurse).

Women could study at universities long before they were actually allowed to get a degree - 1920 and 1947 in the case of Oxford and Cambridge.

Women have been grafting, however since the dawn of time.

Even in the 1960s at a girls grammar school my mum said she was asked if she wanted to be a teacher, nurse or secretary. No other options were available apparently.

Housewifery was a big thing post WW2 I believe- they wanted married women out of jobs (so the men could have them)

Seems so odd given that so much of that generation of men had been lost to war, and women had been working for the war effort in the WAC, the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and so on. What were all the war widows supposed to do?

There's loads of really interesting books about this. Many of them tried to carry on working but were often struggling when the war time Nurserys closed. It seems the government was happy to force women to work when it suited them but were quick to discourage it when the men got demobbed. Obviously there was always low paid cleaning work etc to do.

I think the massive expectation/assumption that women to not want to be separated from their new born baby has also contributed. Whilst baby is with mum it makes sense for her crack on with housework, she is at home.
If she admits actually I don't want to be at home with my baby she is vilified. If more men stayed home, but they don't, they would soon get sick of the mess and crap that accumulates during the day and do the housework themselves.
Maybe we need to reconsider the assumption that the newborn's primary caregiver is going to be the mother.

Feminism hasn't fucked us over - but there is a long way to go re maternity/paternity and equality in the workplace. Also women should stop accepting shit partners to mate with. All these threads on here with people having yet ANOTHER baby with a useless man.

Their is HUGE ingrained misogynistic views in society and harmful gender stereotypes that severely limit children even they know what is happening. Bossy is bad in a girl but revered (leadership) in a boy. Girls shooed be nice and polite and compliant and caring.

Then that continues and women set asside their own carears and stay at home / reduce working hours etc whilst their husbands push on wiht their carears.

When I am supreme leader of the world I will say EVERY adult male and female gets 2x one year sabbaticals (at 6 months full pay, 3 months half pay and 3 months unpaid) to use as they wish - to have children, to go traveling, whatever.

I would also mandate that at least 2x 6 months HAVE to be used from the ages of 30 to 50.

This would put males and females on an equal footing with tie out of the workplace.

What were all the war widows supposed to do?

Stand aside and let the war heroes come back and take their rightful places in the workplace, obviously... Or go into the usually acceptable roles of secretary, nurse etc etc

The word "Secretary" is interesting: we still use the title for senior government ministers, dating back to when all government bods were men, but now the role of secretary is more commonly thought of as a woman sat behind a typewriter.

My A-Level French taught me that the word "femme" means both "woman" and "wife" (because obviously one cannot be a grown adult female and not also be married....)

@Slightlyperturbedowlagain that was my mums experience in the 60s - she went to teaching training college (university was too big a step for a girl).

My mum then persuaded her younger sister to apply for medical school rather than to be a nurse - that was quite a big deal back in the 60s and my mum really helped support her sister with going against the view (at her school and at home with her mum) that being a doctor was not for women.

I am certainly a feminist but also, sadly, saddled with a domestic nature. I hate work and love being at home and taking care of my family, cooking, baking, keeping the house nice. Unfortunately I'm divorced so have to work and I'm exhausted all the time and it's a grind.

If I'd been divorced (in my class) in the 60's I likely would not be working or at least would have gotten the house (as exh did not want to share custody).

I'm not sure I blame feminism, but I do struggle with the idea that all women should want "fulfilling" careers. I feel fulfilled at home, not when entering data into spreadsheets. Over the course of my lifetime what's expected of women has done a 180 and for me, I would have preferred it the other way. I dealt with loads of sexism as a young woman, I do recall how unpleasant that was. But I do think the whole "you can have it all" wasn't thought out as it should have been obvious we'd just end up knackered.

@missiondecision as long as not making the assumption that all women want to be primary caregivers doesn't become pressure and expectation to return to work as soon as possible. Also, why does it have to be one or the other? If fathers got the same pay and leave as mothers, to be taken at the same time then that gives true flexibility. Both parents can be at home, or one or neither if they choose. Caregiving would be seen as a role for both parents without having to take it away from women to give to men.

"Maybe we need to reconsider the assumption that the newborn's primary caregiver is going to be the mother?"

To me that's an anti- feminist statement because I don't accept that feminism and equality means treating men and women as the same. The situation of rigid maternity leave and women being effectively forced back to work, sometimes after a few months, is deeply anti-feminist imo. Women are the childbearing sex and what is the point in pretending otherwise. It's a denial of what makes us female. Why measure equality in the terms established by the "patriarchy" - i.e. money and career progression is more valued than anything else?

I don't think feminism's fucked us over, I think it's just not done yet. Women have always worked in at least some capacity in some parts of society but it's now a widespread expectation that women will have a proper career in a way it certainly wasn't in the relatively recent past.

We've got to a stage where we've won a lot of rights we didn't used to have and we're now allowed to do a lot of things which were previously seen as being mainly for men (including many professions) but we've still got a lot further to go, and the next stage isn't about women stepping up and taking on more, it's about men doing so.

It's a bit like we've had a promotion to a great new job in the same workplace with lots of extra responsibility, but the old job still needs done and it's taken a while to recruit a replacement and the replacement is an apprentice who needs a lot of training which we also have to do

In the west, I think going forward we're reaching the limit of what law can do for women (certainly not there yet on equal pay), now men and women have to change their attitudes from within.

MN is an eye opener in terms of the volume of women who are not only doing way more than their fair share but believe it's their due. Until women and men across the board shift their understanding on this - the current issues will continue.

I'd be quite happy to be a doctor on 40k but I couldn't afford to study

In my DH's culture (Middle-Eastern and not exactly famous for its women's rights), there is a totally different level of respect given to the idea of giving birth and raising children. Having a baby is not just something you "fit in" until you can get them into a nursery. At least women don't feel as pressured to be doing it all as soon as possible, as if they are machines.

Why equate dropping the assumption that women will be primary caregivers to babies with "forcing women back to work"? What about individual choices for couples / families, unconstrained by gender stereotypes?

Yes I think in the west, feminists are needed to speak up for the value of birth and childrearing.

We're getting more in ingrained in a sort of patriarchal work-obsessed culture which simply doesn't understand what it is women do when they bring up children (others have made the same point).

I'm shocked on here to see some working mothers hostile to SAHMs. Particularly in scenarios when a husband is putting pressure on a young mother to return to work. There's so much value to nurturing with your kids if that's what you want to do. I can understand why some men don't get it, but I am surprised that some women don't get it either.

That was to SilverStorm.