To think a lot of women are worse off than 50 years ago?

[Tsort]

A certain type of person is nostalgic for the old days when ‘men were men, and women were women’. I am not. However, it must be noted that at the time when women were expected to be docile acquiescent homemakers, men were expected to foot the bill. They paid for dinner, sorted the mortgage and brought home the bacon. Not for me, but a fair division of labour.

Now, we have a generation of women who ‘pay their way’, go Dutch and refuse to let men pay for them as they don’t want to be indebted. Grand.

But, these same women also do the lion’s share of housework, because ‘men don’t see it’ and shoulder the emotional labour because ‘that’s just the way men are’.

So, women are now shouldering some of the traditionally male burdens while the traditional female burdens have remained firmly in place. How is this an improvement for women? And why do so many tolerate it? This is a profound misunderstanding of feminism and it hurts so many of us.

Yeah, sorry. Of course that's better. It's definitely better, it's the choice that matters. If I re-entered the workplace I could start on £40K no problem. That would be more than husband earns right now. But neither of us want that.

Lol. So all this boasting and your husband's job and that's it? Or did you miss off a zero?

It's still pretty horrific tbh, just slightly less overt.

Back then rape within marriage was not recognised , like wise most domestic violence ( she must have deserved it )
Most men expected dinner on the table when they got home from work .
You was given housekeeping money and the rent and all food came out of it.
Quite a few women put up with husbands going to the pub at lunchtime at the weekends and then they'd come home , sleep the afternoon and go back to the pub in the evening .
I'd rather my life now thanks.

"then when they have gone, it’s straight to the internet to dangle the sex carrot and find a new income and bedroom provider"

Er... ok?

MsPincher - "you know it’s unusual in the uK for a woman to automatically give up her job and “not even consider” childcare."

Millions of women take at least few years out after children - obviously with multiple children this may well be extended (sometimes indefinitely).

I admit we were probably in the minority these days where we didn't ever consider or discuss childcare. But childcare is not actually compulsory - you do realise that? Why WOULD we want some random woman looking after our kids, either in our home or elsewhere, unless it was absolutely necessary? What is the point if that?

@WrapAroundCover I can not get my head around what point you're trying to make with your last 2 posts at all? What the heck has cheating got to do with this discussion? And what exactly is a sex carrot?

@WrapAroundCover

it used to be … boy meets girl, they both fall in love, get married and live happily ever after … nowadays that seems to be the start of many problems and it’s easier to bail out rather than pull together to keep the family unit strong!

Sorry but this is a grotesquely rose-tinted perspective on what marriage was like.

It used to be boy meets girl, they get married because its the only way they can have regular sex without being thrown out of the family home. In a best case scenario this led to a happy marriage. In a worst case but not uncommon scenario it led to the woman being abused by her husband and having no rights. In probably a large majority of cases it led to a humdrum marriage with a woman financially trapped because of the difficulty of finding work, shackled for life to a bloke because she had wanted to shag him for a while at the age of 20 and unable to achieve any of her potential.

If the family unit was "strong" it was often at the expense of the woman's (and often the children's) wellbeing.

Well I'm not entirely sure what is your point either.

This notion that women didn't work in the 60s, 70s and before is simply not true - I can't remember an adult female from my childhood who didn't work and that is born out by ONS and Census stats from the era (try the 72 census). The idea that Father came home to an apron'd wifey was a sit com fantasy for the majority of families.

Nor is it true that there was no paid child care - it was just Pearl on the corner for cash instead of regulated.

DA was not even reported to anyone usually, not least becaue the boys in blue were more likely to tell the man to shut the woman up than do anything about it. Racism was still in the "rivers of blood" era and women had few if any rights in terms of money, work, bodily autonomy or finances.

I don't know if your post was triggered by the same surveys which drove Dorothy Byrne's piece but its far too simplistic to talk about women's progress as uniform and single factor.

Where we are at the moment I'd say there has been significant regressions for women after a period of some progress - there is absolutely an anti feminist push at the moment, facilitated significantly by part of the tech revolution just as the industrial revolution both offered opportunities and problems in the 19th century.

Western society at least has been aggressively pornified, sexual violence has gone backwards despite being more discussed - its effectively decriminalised and dismissed by a combo of NAMALT and funding.

The support for early years and new mothers and families in the UK has been largely scrapped. The cherry on the cake has been the attempts to redefine (or undefine) what is a woman - how the hell do women campaign for rights when we can't even state what we are without three lines of caveats?

WrapAroundCover - I'm sorry but you are talking nonsense. It's seems your wife has left you through someone she met on dating app, so sorry about that, but really.... what does this have to do with anything?

Today it’s much easier to walk away without responsibility - hence so many single families and married men taken to the cleaners by their bored/unhappy wives for no reason other than … “I can!”

Yes the real problem in society is silly women walking away from their families and then taking a man to the cleaners. That's the mens rights version of social history.

In real world, women stayed with abusive fuckers like your father because they had no choice. She would not have been able to kick him out and if she had left he could have prevented her having more than minimal access (a deserting mother was the ultimate failed woman).

Your mother found happiness outside the home whilst keeping the family together in that era She did exactly what most men did with impunity. The other option she would have had was to leave the family completely and take nothing with her.

I also disagree that arguments in the home blow over - they don't for most children who learn to live on eggshells and that ultimately the man always wins.

Once they've gotten to the weaning stage I'd say childcare among my friendhsip group is fairly even among the sexes. I can't speak for housework as I can't see behind closed doors, but for many millenial males and younger the image of the fun but lazy dad is definitly not an aspiration.

Nothing changes overnight but I think the direction of travel is a good one right now.

WrapAroundCover - so your argument is that because women used to stay with abusive men or in awful marriages, your wife should have just put up and shut up too? Did she "take
you to the cleaners by any chance?"

"But still my point, it's easier to duck out of marital responsibilities for fun and sex when the going gets tough"

Oh ok. Well you could have just said that, as opposed to the Ford Fiesta story.

No. This are still obviously not ideal, and there is a long way to go for gender equality. But at least now women have the option of choice. They can choose to work and be financially indepdent so they can kick their absive lazy husband to the curb, without social alienation. That is something many women didn't have before.

@WrapAroundCover

Does adulterous behaviour damage children? You bet!! Do parents arguing damage children? It blows over but at least the family home stayed together and their are good memories of both parents! Today it’s much easier to walk away without responsibility - hence so many single families and married men taken to the cleaners by their bored/unhappy wives for no reason other than … “I can!”

I'm really struggling to understand your argument: if I've got it correct you are saying

• that its better for men and women to remain together even if their marriage is awful and they are arguing all the time because the "family is together"?
• That women who leave controlling and unhappy marriages aren't entitled to a share of the marital assets?
• That marital breakdown is solely the fault of women having their heads turned (and presumably
• Women are obliged to put their "marital responsibilities" (whatever those may be) over their happiness and that of their children?

If this is what you prioritise in a marriage I'm scratching my head as to why its a bad idea that marriages can be ended more easily.

@TinaPoopsy52
^Pretty strong words considering you’ve never actually lived in those other times. Imo some things were better some worse. However there would also be plenty of women of times gone by horrified with today who wouldn’t want to live in this time - people usually think their own time is “the” time, because it’s what they’re conditioned to wanting.
When I was young and worked as a cashier I would have old women coming up to me in the store (this was late 60’s) and telling me how awful this or that that women did now was (one was steaming mad over miniskirts lol) and how much better things were in their day. I can’t see your attitude as much different to theirs^

I've lived in the 70s to now - ok I don't remember much about the 70s but I do well remember the last 45 or so out of the 50 years cited in the OP. Even as a little girl in the 1980s I was well aware of being discriminated against. I played football for one thing! Plus my remarks were all based on fact, not just opinion. 50 years ago so 1972 - before the Equal Pay Act and Sex Discrimination Act and long before the more recent equalities legislation and before rape in marriage was made a crime in the 1990s. It is a fact that women at that time could not get a mortgage or even enter into a HP arrangement without the permission of their father or husband. I've not even touched on social attitudes, I purposely focussed on the systematic discrimination against women by employers and institutions. I was born in 1975, my mum had to leave her job that she loved in the bank - it was expected that you would leave and not come back, and it was just before maternity leave legislation came in. When she and my dad got married it was my mum that had to leave where they were working as it wasn't allowed for married couples to work in the same place. In some places you had to leave when you got married regardless of whether your husband worked there.

My attitude on this is entirely opposite to the one you cite. We have to work with where we are today and move forward and not look at the past with rose tinted spectacles.

@WrapAroundCover so what I'm getting from you is that it was better when just men misbehaved because women were trapped which protected the "sanctity of marriage", now women are more independent to be able to walk away from such behaviour, or perhaps partake in it herself, it's not fair, poor menz, poor children? Have I interpreted that correctly? If so, I can see we're on the same page that life is much better for women today.

All I know is even if I had been born ten years earlier (which I could have been given my parents were married in 1964) I wouldn't have had the same opportunities as a working class girl to get into the legal profession. I'd have become a legal secretary if I was lucky- nothing wrong with that, but the expectations on what girls, particularly from my background could and should achieve were so much lower, it really started to change in the 80s and 90s and even when I started university in 1994 a lot more women were becoming solicitors - about 50/50 I think.

100 years earlier and pretty much the only options would have been to go into service or a cotton mill. Let's not forget how far we have come.

@WrapAroundCover - I’m so sorry about the difficulties your parents had.

I think now if I were in your mum’s position, I say: please don’t put me down like that again, otherwise I won’t stay with you. He would have a choice as to whether he continued this behaviour and I’d have more options to separate. Obviously it’s be far better to go to counselling and work together (I’m religious and would want to avoid divorce and life with separated parents is hard work). The threat of separation would be incentive for him to change his behaviour, and if it didn’t I could leave. I would hate for my kids (boys and girls) to feel they had to stay in a relationship with someone like that.

I hear you but at least there is some recourse now. It was pretty much legal to knock your wife around if she didn't tow the line and I'm pretty sure there was no such thing as rape in a marriage until the 80s (in the UK, that is)_

1990s @Annabel7