Feminism sold a lie - Women, today, are worse off than ever

[ConservativeC2]

Listening to the women I work with, it's been interesting to hear their views about feminism and they are not happy. We are all millennial age so not too young, not too old and I keep hearing that it's the millennial generation of women that have absolutely lost out the most.

I think feminism initially promoted some idea of independence, equality and choice. Phrases like 'men hold all the money and power' at the time were very emotive whilst not entirely true. The correct statement then (and still now) is some men hold all the money and power. Most men back in the 50s-70s worked very long hours and spent pretty much all their money on their family. It was hard for everyone, but I think women were more empowered then than now.

In contrast to today, most of the women my age have to work. Whilst feminism promotes choice, most of them do not actually have a choice today. Most men today do not earn enough to run a household which means most women have to work. The worst part is they still do a larger share of the domestic work and childcare. So I think women now have it worse than ever - it's not just me, my female colleagues feel the same way. They've come to point in life where they want to start a family but they know they will have to come back to work.

Now it's all to do with feminism. There are other factors which has driven up the cost of living (inflation, property prices, profit extraction from multinational corporates etc).

Women who have the choice not to work are almost always in those categories, yes. Because the choice not to work is dependent on financial means.
Feminism hasnt caused wealth inequality and nor did it set out to resolve it, other than that between men and women for whom all other things were equal.
If you want a movement to address the fact that some women have more choices than others because they are richer, then it's Socialism you need.
Feminism is concerned with equalising your position in relation to the men from your own demographic, not to women wealthier than you. That's not to say wealth inequality shouldn't be addressed, just that it's seperate issue to sex based inequality.

I do remember my naturally emboldened mother telling her more passive sister to forge a document that needed her husband’s signature. ( And she meant it.)

Men in the USA in the Madmen era had very tough lives and many died young.

How did Feminism “force women into work”?

With knives and guns?

Phrases like 'men hold all the money and power' at the time were very emotive whilst not entirely true. The correct statement then (and still now) is some men hold all the money and power. Most men back in the 50s-70s worked very long hours and spent pretty much all their money on their family.

Out of interest, how many women have you spoken to about the power imbalance who were adults in the 50s to 70s? And why do you think it wasn’t true?

Because I’m thinking about women having to obtain their husband’s permission to open a bank account until 1975. Zero chance of getting a mortgage without a husband or father co signing. No credit prior to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, not being allowed to sue for sexual harassment in the workplace until 1977, they could get fired for getting pregnant. Until 1982, it was legal to refuse service to a woman in a pub, simply because they were a woman. Husbands were legally allowed to rape their wives until 1991. I very much remember the 80s when it was considered acceptable for a husband to beat his wife and ‘domestics’ weren’t attended even if the wife was screaming for help. Have you ever heard of the marriage bar? It was only in the 50s that nurses were allowed to keep their jobs after marriage. Even then, the practice of ‘encouraging’ married women to leave the profession didn’t end until the 70s. And you could forget about having any kind of job in the Foreign Service as a married woman before 1973. In 1963, women were earning about 60% less than men doing the same job. It wasn’t until 1975 that the Equal pay act of 1970 came into force and fifty years later, we’re still talking about the gender pay gap. Access to the pill was limited and unmarried mothers homes were very much a thing.

If you think that it was just some men who held all the money and power, then you probably need to brush up on your history. Men (not just powerful men, but husbands and fathers) controlled women’s access to money, employment, housing, education, birth control, the right to say no to sex, the right not to be beaten, as well as a million other things that may have been legally possible but if him indoors said no, that was that.

Well, yes, married men could afford to run a household a long time ago, but it wasn't the type of household that you're describing, OP.

The majority of households didn't have two cars - many didn't have any car at all. Those that did go on holidays, the majority of them was a modest holiday in the UK, perhaps camping or in a static caravan. Generally speaking, the standard of living in the 1960s, 70s and 80s was very much lower than it is today. People's expectations were lower and there wasn't that generalised sense of "entitlement" that pervades modern UK society.

Yes, I was there then. This is true.
Even the professional classes lived more simply than now: things like darned towels, socks and sweaters; sheets cut down the worn out middle and sewn back with the old edge in the middle; washing up and even washing by hand, sewing clothes, far fewer clothes, simple or no holidays, one or no car etc.

I have a different experience, I watched my boomer DM work full time earning more than my DF, commuting into London and also doing everything at home. I am gen X and thought what a stitch. I married a poor man who got rich and had the SAHM life with the two cars, five bedroom detached house, multiple foreign holidays each year, hobbies, clubs for the DC etc etc.

I think alot of people who weren't born yet in the 70s or 80s find it difficult to believe that even the "educated and genteel" poor didn't necessarily have all mod cons. Until we moved in with my Grandmother in the 80s, she had a boiler with a mangle, hand-washed a lot of her clothing, a meat safe as opposed to a fridge, no landline, and she rented a TV from Radio Rentals. It was an old Victorian rented flat above shops with sash windows until the 90s, and an open fire in the kitchen. It was big, yes, but a bastard to heat.

It was only the fact that my step-father worked in a warehouse attached to a big department store and could access "special deals" on ex display stock etc that elevated us into a semblance of a relatively decent standard of living.

Both my Nana and my Mum worked whatever jobs they could get, because people also forget that University was out of reach for the majority until grants were introduced.

In addition my Nana returned from Belgium, her then husbands home country a couple of years after the war after he fucked off to the Belgian Congo for a pilot job and never came back, leaving her stranded with three young children. When she hit the UK her only option was to put them in foster care until their teens because she had to work and no-one would rent to her. She had some live in domestic jobs, and her children would alternate seeing her at the weekend with one staying over on a Saturday night, the other two visiting on a Sunday as her quarters were one room.

The knock on effects of this means my family completely fractured after her death, as my Aunt couldn't forgive her for her childhood trauma.

My Mum was fortunately more pragmatic and realistic in realusing that women's options were very limited in the years in question, and maintained a good relationship with Nana till her death, including caring for her.

It's mind boggling how people forget that for many of us, though relatively young Gen X in our 50s, this is our lived experience, it's not dim and distant history, and we had first hand accounts of being disadvantaged purely because of sex coming from our relatives.

Also, Nana was a lapsed Catholic, and the stigma of her divorce was projected hard onto her children, when both her daughters went the same route, for various reasons. It caused alot of tension at the time, but she "came round" in due course.

Nothing is ever going to be perfect but thank Goddess and the tenacious women who helped things improve as much as they have.

Bravo. And to cap it all if you were a woman in work in the 70s, 80s and beyond, you had to put with posters in virtually every workplace showng a woman with naked blow-up boobs, and have a "sense of humour" about it and about being groped and nothing ever done about it. Such disrespect for women generally. Millenials seem to have no idea how primitive it was.

I didn't say feminism forced them, capitalism did. Feminism was one of the means to that, other being economic deprivation and erosion of workers rights.

In socialist countries women were "emancipated" much earlier, just because they were needed in the workforce. And those countries had their own ideologies to coerce women into hard work and working full time despite having children, similar to feminism but not exactly equivalent. We have friends in Scandi countries, guys are in fintech and earning more than enough to provide for big families, but women are socially pressured to work anyway and take up meaningless menial jobs. In Soviet bloc work was mandatory for everyone, irrespective of sex, and women worked in really hard jobs think roadworks or construction so absolutely equal with men but I would never call this a social achievement. Socialism provides childcare and social security though, capitalism does not so women are even more overworked and stressed out. There are other variations of ideologies and social and legal pressure on women to exploit them when they needed in a struggling economy, not one of them is beneficial to women.

I can see why a lot of millennial women feel frustrated balancing work, childcare, and household responsibilities is exhausting. I don’t think feminism sold a “lie,” but society and the economy have changed in ways that make achieving real equality much harder. It’s less about feminism failing and more about structural issues like pay gaps, housing costs, and workplace flexibility not keeping up with modern life

Yes. I think at least some of the problem is people don't really understand how much more time consuming it was to do things .

When my Dad wanted a bath in the early 50s, my Grandmother couldn't just turn the hot tap on, she had to get the tin bath out and boil three kettles of water.

She didn't have a vacuum, she had a carpet sweeper. TBF, in the 90s I had a 1950s hoover that was left in the flat I rented and that wasn't a lot better.

She DID have a twin tub, but still used the old mangle as well. No disposable nappies, or modern machine washable cloth ones. Nappies were soaked in a big bucket. My own mother did the same in the 60s and 70s with my sibling and me. She said she thought disposable nappies were wonderful when my sister used them for her children.

And all this whilst quite a few of these women still had to work. Oh, and my mum used to have to do the weekly shop in her lunch break because the shops shut at 5:30, even the big supermarkets, and weekend opening was limited.

I really don't agree that "real equality" is harder now. We haven't quite got there yet, but we're closer than we've ever been!

Millennial women really aren't the first ones to have juggled work, childcare and household responsibilities - women have been doing this for years. I genuinely don't understand why some younger women seem so oblivious to this?

Women working doesn’t make life shit today compared to the past

it gives us freedoms that previous generations did die for

that you feel you have to have two incomes to make life what you want - gosh even in my lifetime holidays, cars , central heating, eating out, double glazing , multiple pairs of shoes , and oh the variety of food - we didnt need two incomes because we only had basic food and a very basic home - you want a LOT more than the average family had in the 1970s

I saved pocket money for weeks to buy an album

average means that you might have had foreign holidays I am not denying that , just that living standards have soared

Another feminism bashing thread what joy! You’re chatting shit for the reasons mentioned by PPs.

Same experience, my DM worked in the same STEM job as DF and has been overworked all her life. I'd rather she had more joy than just work work work with no end.

I agree agree entirely that everything took longer and housework was certainly much more physically demanding and arduous. No washing machines/tumble dryers/freezers/robot hoovers, etc.

However, I think modern mums, whether working or not, have increased demands in the form of:

• Not feeling they can let their children out to play freely in the street/local parks/drop them off at birthday parties, etc. Either because they don’t feel safe to due to increased traffic/less closely knit communities, or because others disapprove.
• Constant school emails and increasingly complex homework for increasingly younger children, which really does rely on some level of parental overseeing.
• Pressure to book multiple clubs and transport children to and from these. Again, often pressure to stay at them. More different clothing required to buy, maintain at the correct size and wash.
• Way more party invitations at weekends. So way more presents to buy, outfits to sort, etc.
• Screen time to manage/worry about/argue about.
• More pressure to organise ‘big’ days out for every occasion.

Of course, you can opt out of a great deal of this, but the pressure is undeniably there, and tends to be more keenly felt by mums.

Most men back in the 50s-70s worked very long hours and spent pretty much all their money on their family. It was hard for everyone, but I think women were more empowered then than now.

We're too busy doing half the work and all the childcare and all the housework to worry about fixing your issues.

I agree. This isn't new! Millennial women aren't the first to experience this - it's just that they're the ones with babies and young children right now.

nor is the struggle to get men to do at least half of the wife work new, or to get society and the government to recognise caring as a valuable part of the economy. I remember reading Wife Work and Bitch in the House when I first had children.

I also agree with the points previous posters made if in the past (and this didn't happen in my family or in any family I knew in the 70s and 80s) the mother did stay at home, the lifestyle of the family was really basic - one car, no foreign holidays, hardly any new clothes, shoes. Certainly no constant trips to Ikea, no Farrow & Ball paint, no expensive clubs (I went to Brownies and went to a swimming club), or expensive children's parties (I had my friends to my house for a tea and games) , no soft play (I went to the park), hand me down bikes, no gadgets, phone contracts and the rest. It seems that Millennial women want to be able to give up work, but they want the lifestyle that they currently have. And you really can't have it all in that regard

@childofthe607080s i agree with you to some extent. However one earner in a household on minimum wage now actually can't afford a modest two up two down house in most areas of the country let alone live off basic food and the niceties of life. Whereas in the 70's things may have been tight but it would have been affordable with a little amount of saving for a deposit and pulling the purse strings tight for a few years.

All the women in my family worked. The men couldn't have managed without their wages but it was always disparagingly referred to as 'pin money'. They were responsible for childcare as well.

Is it? I disagree

So your sister has accepted this, and lives with it - thats as much on her if she wants to stay with him?

Indeed - there weren't magical mythical time when all men just earned enough money to keep a family. Read any history or fiction from before the 1950s and there is a lot of focus on whether a young man can afford to get married and young couples waiting, sometimes years, to get married until the man had got a promotion or more secure job (and waiting for the woman meant remaining living with her parents and have little or no sexual relationship with her fiancee)

As people have said those who didn't do that, or had husband who had little prospect of better wages relied on women's wages and in the earlier part of the 20th century children's wages too.