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).

I disagree. Partly, to be fair, because I'm child free and aside from incels and weirdo religious nuts, nobody has a problem with that these days whereas before, being child free wasn't a thing. I sometimes wonder why women are so keen to start families even when they are pretty sure their men won't be much use. Is motherhood really so fulfilling, or do they think that they must be a mother or they're not a proper person?

Yes this - my mother worked for the DSS, my grandmother worked in a shop, my great grandmother was in service.

OP obviously comes from a very wealthy background if none of the women in her family have ever had to work before!

He's the only earner of the house? Is the mortgage paid off?

Are you a 9 yr old?!

Women have always had to work. Not doing so was only ever a minority bourgeoisie option.

at least now you work and have mat leave and have a washing machine etc etc

This isn't new though OP. I had this conversation in the early 90s when I started work and was getting married/having babies. In fact I had to go back to work too but the difference between you and me is that I only got 5 months off work before I had to to go back. And for me there was no option of part time work.

But actually most women I knew in the 80s had to work. My mum in the 70s had to work. (My MIL had to work). I don't know where this utopia is of women staying at home while the Husband's salary alone paid for a lovely house and standard of living. This wasn't my reality growing up.

We can't have it all if you base "it all" on houses and jobs. But I'd still rather be where I am in terms of marital rape, property ownership, sex discrimination, maternity leave .

So feminism is having it all? Choices that men don't have themselves? Why should women have an entitlement to chose to work or be a sahm whilst still expecting men to continue to work hard and see all their money go to the family?

Women usually do the lion share of the work at home because they are more likely to work fewer hours so it balances out.

Women now have many choices if they want equality. They can opt for a career and marry a man happy to be a sahf. They are men who are fantastic with children and domestic duties. Or she can work like her husband and make it clear how the duties will be shared at home before going ahead and have children. They can up and leave if the husband don't hold up to the agreement.

Women have more choices than ever. The problem is when they don't want choices but to have it all. Very few, be there women or men get the option to have it all.

My friend did that with her husband, in Manchester and 2 daughters (10 years ago) on £32k a year.

They didn’t have the choice.

i’m working class.

every woman in my family going back 4 generations has worked. They couldn’t afford housing otherwise.

if you think about the legal framework in the 1950s, a married man could legally keep all his own income and give none whatsoever to his wife. She’d literally have to go out to work to get food for her and any kids.

there’s many such stories in memoirs of the 1950s - along the lines of my dad was unemployed/drank all the wages and my mum worked cleaning jobs so we didn’t starve.

that’s not a bloody choice.

Women now have to work but now

There isn't the same expectation to have a family
They cab choose to have a family with someone that does an equal share. Not all women have to take on more than their share of childcare and chores
They should be able to earn as much as men

No I don't think things are perfect. But we should also expect better for ourselves. Men do see mess, men can look after babies as well as women, men do hear children crying in the night, men can multi task, men can support their partners careers after children. But so often on here there are women who post as if it's fact that the above is not the case, and if they want children they will be accepting inequality in everything else. Men need to step up,yes, but we also need to expect better

Women will be fine so long as they stop having children.

Having and caring for children is unpaid labour and women need to stop all labour that is not properly compensated.

The most equal relationships are those where both partners work and there are no kids. Unsurprisingly, more women are working this out for themselves.

Yes, I’ve been a SAHM for 7 years. His salary covers all of our mortgage, bills, everything. We run 1 car & share it, other can walk everywhere when it’s not their day. We meal plan & cook from scratch. We live in an expensive part of the country.

I think you underestimate the importance of women having financial independence from men, because the world in which they didn’t (and suffered as a result) existed before your lifetime really (as mine).

I think the massive problem for today’s young women is that they’ve been brought up to expect equality, are expected to work full time and have parity in bringing in money to the household…

… but there has been less movement in getting men to share the domestic load. And many households seem to end up looking very uneven in terms of domestic burden once children arrive.

This means women are ‘doing it all’, a double shift of work and home - while men largely seem to think as they’re doing a bit more than their dads, things are very equal.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say every woman I know seems to be in this situation, and pretty resentful about it.

With respect, if you're a millennial woman, you can't possibly know what is was like 'back then'. I'm gen X and ever thankful that my millennial DD doesn't have to deal with some of the issues women of my generation did and that I didn't have to deal with those faced by my mother and grandmother. And that thanks to feminism each generation acquires a little more protection under law from the worst of it.
Your ideas of the lives of men and women in generations past might apply to some middle class privileged women with kind husbands, but WC women have always worked and not all men are kind. Harking back with rose tinted glasses to a time when men held even more power, and the quality of women's lives lay even more firmly in their gift is naive to say the least.

@JHound You don’t have to be with a top 1% earner to be a SAHM.

I think most people would not be happy though if all the pressure was on them to earn money and completely subsidise the other person.

The only people who are OK with that, generally speaking, are people who have so much money that it's no object for them.

You have the choice not to live with a man and have to clean up after him, not have kids if you don't want them. Yes there is still a way to go, but we do have a hell of a lot more choices than we used to!

For most of human existence, women have always worked alongside men.

The short period when some women were expected not to work (roughly the 19th to mid-20th century) was an exception, not the norm, and even then, it applied mostly to wealthier women. Working-class women still laboured in factories, fields, and homes.

So when people say feminism “ruined things” by making women work, they’re really referring to the end of a temporary and class-specific ideal - the idea that women shouldn’t work outside the home.

Feminism didn’t create the pressure of balancing work and childcare; it simply made women’s work visible, valued, and compensated, rather than unpaid and confined to the home.

In reality, feminism expanded choices. It didn’t take something away, it challenged a brief, unequal period in which women were expected to depend entirely on men, even though they’d always been workers and contributors throughout history.

@vivainsomnia ”Women usually do the lion share of the work at home because they are more likely to work fewer hours so it balances out.”

Incorrect - studies have shown that even when women outearn their partners by a significant margin, they do more of the domestic work.

I don't understand why you feel like the goal is to not work? Many women WANT to work. We find it fulfilling.

I can vote. I can buy my own house. I can control my own money and have a bank account. I can sign a contract. I can have contraception, I can get the morning after pill. I can have an abortion. I can consent to surgery. I can drive. I can choose to have children. If I am assaulted by my husband I can call the police and have it classed as rape. I am free to make whatever choice in life I choose, without needing permission from either a husband, my father or the government. Everything on my list was unavailable to women at some point in the recent history.

I don't know what rose tinted glasses you're looking through but my ancestors, even so recent as my grandmother, had much less choice and freedom in their day than I have in mine, my life is considerably easier than theirs was.

You think your predecessor women had two cars, a three bed semi and a holiday a year? More like a trip to Blackpool once a year, 3+ children in a 2 bed terrace and one car if they were high earners, no satellite or subscription TV and no mobile phone or internet. Could you afford that one on salary? I think you probably could…

I’m a top 1% earner with a job I thought enjoy who would make a terrible homemaker so married someone who does 75%+ of the housework. I’m happy with feminism, thanks.

I'm a sahm and my DH is not a top 1% earner (70 k/year). DS1 is autistic and it wouldn't work if I worked unless I made enough to pay for an assistant for him.

I agree with @ConservativeC2 that life is hard for most working women. Why? Because their men don't step up at home/with kids/mental loud. So women are being overworked and judged for whatever they do. I'm a sahm so completely useless to society. If I would work then I would be a shit mother since my dc, well especially dc1, really need me at home. To be honest I would have divorced if I hadn't been a sahm. This way it feels fair that I take care of the home and the children but if I worked I would feel resentful for DHs lack of implication (I noticed his laziness after having dc). So this way it works out for us.

There are some men who are feminists in action and not just verbally but unfortunately far from the majority.

2 cars was unusual when I was growing up (80s), most people I knew holidayed in the UK (and not every year), we had no mobile phones, TV subscriptions, Amazon prime, most houses had one bathroom.

I think it is a terrible thing that house prices have spiralled out of control, but to pretend that the lifestyle that the “average” Brit now has is anything like it was 40 years ago (let alone my mum’s generation!) is ridiculous.

I for one am glad that feminism gained me equal pay & career opportunities so I can be the higher earner and provide for my family (not that DH doesn’t, but I earn 3x what he does).

The reason men don't earn enough today to support a household on their income alone is not because of feminism.

Totally privileged point of view to to think women in the past had a choice not to work because the cost of living was lower.

yes, the cash payment cost of living may have been lower but that is because:

• people want more stuff, opportunities, experiences, now. We live in a very, very consumerist society
• the tax take is higher bevause we rightly expect decent public services

If people can’t manage then that isn’t a dilemma only for women and shouldn’t be presented as such.

Plus most women around me don’t want to be the default carer, only “forced” into the labour market because we can’t pay the broadband bill. You start from an equal position; “we are two people who choose to have kids and run a home. How are we going to pay for that?”.

I would hate to be financially dependent on a man and my kids don't get that concept at all. Thank god.

I mean how many men can singularly afford to pay the mortgage for a three bed semi detached, bills, 2 cars (one when he's at work, other needed for school drop/picks and clubs), at least one holiday a year and all the other things that just what an average brit does, I'm not talking about an excessive lifestyle

The “average” family were not doing any of that except the house in the 1970s or 1980s or whenever you are harking back to.

Cars were rare, and expensive. People didn’t have two. Foreign holidays were expensive, and people who did go abroad went on cheap package holidays to Spain or to a gite in France if they had aspirations. They weren’t doing a fortnight in Koh Samui or skiing in Utah. Kids walked to school by themselves, and there were no clubs except Brownies/Cubs (which the kids would also walk to). New clothes were a treat. You’d have one or maybe two pairs of shoes. Food was home cooked, and eating out of a takeaway were rare treats.

You can absolutely afford a 1970s lifestyle on one salary. Most people don’t want to these days, is the truth of it. Look how much money lots of people said they saved during lockdown when they didn’t have the option of spending it.

I'm in a much better position than my mother was. I disagree.