Do you expect other women to agree with you when you talk about the plight of women ?

[amijust]

And what do you think about the ones that just stay silent ? Every time it comes up ?

Just wondering, as I've noticed someone in my life is always entirely silent when these convos come up.

How would you feel about someone like that ?

A couple of examples that have come up :

• mental load being all on the woman a lot.

• housework being a woman's problem a lot to the time.

• at work, taking maternity leave and having kids often hurts a woman's career.

• working from home, isn't good for women as a whole because it means a lot to women pick up even more housework and tend to work from home more to ferry kids around, this in turn hurts their careers etc.

• being the default parent.

• workplaces not being set up for parents in general.

• women's health problems being largely ignored. Women being told to suck up extreme period pain for example.

• when women show emotion, being branded as hysterical etc etc

These are just some conversations that have come up around another woman I know ( no kids yet ). Other women have agreed / disagreed or engaged on the topics. This person stays entirely silent.

Before you started your list I thought you meant full on feminist ranting and she was maybe a bit bored/didn't see it as relevant/found it extreme. But your list is entirely reasonable. Maybe she's a trad wife type.

You can't expect anyone to agree with you about anything. If you want agreement, you should expect to argue your case.

Man, I mean, at the risk of betraying women, I'm quite fond of the 'mental load'. I like running things and making things nice for the people I love. I bet that would go down like a bucket of sick in your group, op.

Like others have said, in my experience it usually turns into a discussion about useless DH's which just doesn't apply to me. If I don't stay quiet, I'm called ''lucky'' for having a DH that isn't useless.

Staying quiet is the better option.

There are a lot of women who don't consider themselves feminists and therefore care little about many of these issues.

One of the school mums proudly declares herself not a feminist. She considers her husband head of the household and that it's right and proper that:
He pays for all the bills and date nights (she works PT but her money is just to treat herself).
She has zero interest in learning to drive. It's a husband's job to drive his wife around and deal with all car related stuff.

Thinks that mothers should stay home with their children until they go to school and then only work around school hours. Career women are weird and pitiable.
Wives and children should take the husband's name as the wife is the secondary adult and she should be proud that he chose her.
Husbands should not be troubled after work or at weekends with domestic duties, childcare or other mundane stuff.

(Ironically this has meant some very inconvenient disconnects. So her husband will not drive his children to parties and activities at the weekend as it's his leisure time, but as she won't learn to drive, she is constantly begging lifts ... from other mums!)

Are you quite dogmatic OP? If so, she may just wishing you would button it. Don't be surprised if she starts to back away from your friendship. I don't like people who constantly try to steer conversations onto political issues and then seem to get irate when I don't enthusiastically agree with them, because I must disagree, of course!

Politics for me, like money and my spiritual beliefs, is private and I only share with very close people.

@SouthLondonMum22 but it's so important to share stories about non useless DHs ! And people do and aren't shot down for it.

Women don’t have to agree with other women, just because they both have a vagina.

God how tedious, can women really only have conversations that involve slagging off particular men or the patriarchy in general? Otherwise in your opinion they are not womaning properly, you are lumping “all women” together just as much as the most misogynistic male. Why does it concern you so much that other women may do things differently to you?
Loosen up and ask about the last book someone read, what they watched on TV last night or if they have any holiday plans.
I do have personally strong options about some of the topics you mention and I’m a member of some related specific groups but I don’t feel the need to bang on about these topics constantly to family or work colleagues.

I don't expect any one to agree with me regardless of the topic nor to engage in a conversation at the time I raise it.

Everyone's experiences are different. Some will be more impacted than others. Some are too busy trying to cope with being impacted to have the headspace to engage in the conversation. Some are really not interested in things outside their day to day life.

It takes a lot of different people to build the world! It would be dull if we all had the same views and interest!

Maybe they aren't that bothered?

We all have things in our lives that motivate us to action. But luckily we all have different ones otherwise the world would get lopsided and other worthy causes would get overlooked.

This isn't her bag.

No it's not about all of us slagging off men. But showing an understanding and empathy about what some women go through and not staying silent about it.

' oh that must have been difficult when Jon at your last job told you that you were acting inappropriately because he clearly had a crush on you and didn't like you speaking with other male colleagues '.

' it must suck to feel like maternity leave is having a negative impact on the careers of some women. I'm sorry you experienced that '.

It's not that hard to just be a decent person.

Maybe she’s reading the room

”DH is so lazy, hasn’t helped with any of the childcare this week”

“oh well my DH is fantastic and helps out all the time!”

it’s a bit awkward isn’t it?

Or maybe she doesn’t put up with a lazy DH so when her friends moan about their useless DH she secretly thinks “well why marry and have a kid with him then”

As a childless woman, I've found it is often better to stay silent because if we dissent in any way the attitude is often "well, what do you know about it? You haven't got kids!" Childless women are viewed in a different way; the very fact that you say "no kids yet" bears this out. So it's easier not to get involved with conversations in the first place rather than be told your opinion doesn't count.

I know I'll be told it's different, but if someone talked about their dog all day but you have no dog, it wouldn't be that easy to make a valid contribution...

I try not to judge people on things they don’t say.

She might want to get on with her life and focus on the positives. I've stopped checking the news because it's always so negative and I don't want to hear it anymore. There are many reasons why she might not want to contribute to the conversation, it doesn't automatically mean she doesn't care.

Maybe your friend saying nothing is her being a decent person.

Evidently, she doesn't want to engage with the conversation; maybe she doesn't agree, maybe she does, maybe she's contemplating the conversation. Either way, not engaging says nothing about her character.

I think it's quite rude to repeatedly bring up a subject that clearly makes one of the group disinterested at best, or uncomfortable at worst.

There's several subjects I don't discuss with various friends (e.g. Badgers with farming friends) because it wouldn't be a pleasant conversation and no one wants that for a social occasion.

I like my friends, I respect their right to have different opinions to me, and understand they're affected by various issues differently to me. Whilst I may not agree, it doesn't mean they're wrong. I wouldn't want to make them uncomfortable by banging on about a subject I knew they didn't want to talk about - especially in a group where the majority agree with me, that would be horrible for them!

No it's not about all of us slagging off men. But showing an understanding and empathy about what some women go through and not staying silent about it.

So basically you just want an echo chamber to agree with your very narrow perspective about "women's plight" - which most people wouldn't consider a "plight" at all.

I would stay silent too because compared to women in countries like Afghanistan, your "plight" is just a spoilt Western woman moaning about a situation she made for herself.

I'm guessing that wouldn't go down well, so I'd stay quiet until a more interesting conversation started.

When you say "a woman in your life" how close are you?
There are loads of women in my life but lots of them are work colleagues / acquaintances/non-close family members and I have no interest in sharing my opinions or inner thoughts with any of them on any subject. I just don't want to open up to people who aren't my actual friends.

But how often do you talk about it? You keep mentioning that she's quiet "every time it's brought up". If it's something you keep banging on about, I'd probably stay quiet instead of shouting "Oh God, not this again!"

Tbf we don't have to acrape to under the bottom of the barrel. That's really quite ridiculous comparison. Strategy uses againat people to take things from them and ahush them.

To add, I am also finding this in similar vein to "finish your food there are kids in Africa starving". Bit offensive

Can we add to the list the way a lot of white women can be very dismissive of the particular struggles associated with being a black woman?