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).

Yes, it was never about helping people to buy houses, it was always about offloading a cumbersome responsibility. I'm always baffled by people surprised more council housing wasn't built after the sell-off. Of course it wasn't, the point was to get rid of the burden of maintaining social housing.

In the short term, though, people did benefit who wouldn't have been able to buy otherwise, and some of those people made a fortune selling up later.

We were a mining community so all had coal fires, long after there were other options. All the chimneys created a similar smoggy effect, and of course meant a lot of dirt inside too.

Why was wash day Monday? Because the air was cleaned then after the factories had shut on Sunday

I don’t. Some mothers would prefer it just for them, with their husband’s agreement, Like SPL- that’s optional, not enforced. Not every couple wants that.

So you had all week ahead to wash, dry, iron and air. When I was a child we had a twin tub fir washing, then clothes went outside or on the airer over the range. When the range was taken out we got this thing called a flatly, that was a metal box thing you put clothes in, plugged in and it heated them dry. There was always some stage of washing on the go, although probably not all week. So maybe that was just tradition.

My nannas stuff didn’t hang around all week - mangle and then Outside or by the fire ( ferocious )

very working class- twin tubs and heated boxes sound a step up !

My mum would have liked to think so. She loved 'mod cons' and was so pleased when the (beautiful) range was replaced with a fitted kitchen with orange formica cabinets.

Born in 1970s so a older than you.
My mum and her contemporaries definitely wore the trousers around the house the dad's usually deferred to their wives.
But the wives did all of the housework and child rearing and often had part time jobs fitted around childcare.
They were financially dependant on their husbands and some were trapped in violent marriages.
Divorce and children out of wedlock were big taboos and it was the women that were blamed.
Sexism was rife.
So not at all all rosey.
As a young women at work I was constantly catcalled (worked in a male environment) and walking down the street.
We were expected to be the secretaries rather than the bosses.
However when I had my first DC the majority of the mums did give up work at least until the youngest started school so we did have those precious early years with DC and weren't torn between work and DC, most mums picked up and dropped off from school and DC had lots of play dates with friends after school too.
There was minimum help with childcare-12 hours term time only from age of 4 when eldest were at nursery then increased to16 hours term time at age of 3 by time my youngest went to nursery.
Those that did go back to work had a lot of help /free childcare usually from the maternal grandmother.
However some of my contemparies were badly burnt by divorce as they were had given up careers to look after DC making them financially vulnerable and their contribution to raising DC, whilst DH was mainly absent and pursuing their career, wasn't valued or acknowledged.
But it was more "acceptable" to be a SAHM and I do agree that women now still carry the majority of the mental load, planning, organising, child rearing and housework, all while working full time, it is exhausting and stressful. My observations are that younger men are definitely more involved than my dad or DH but I think its the women that still do the loins share at home.
I think being a SAHP is undervalued and always has been, but now there is a lot more expectation to return to work after having a baby.

I suppose one difference about the past, for good and ill, no doubt is that fathers/men were under more pressure to "do the right thing" wrt to their children and wife and were chastised more for not doing so.

“Doing the right thing” don’t mean very much

they could drink the wages and then rape the missus - doing the right thing seems to mean “keep it behind closed doors”

You’re joking right? 😂😂.

All the men drinking their wages, beating their wives and children, kicking them out in the middle of the night etc.?

@childofthe607080s
@GagMeWithASpoon

I didn't say they all did the right thing, but there was certainly more pressure on them than now.

But feminists consistently advocate for men to do more, for workplaces to be more accommodating of parents, and for the availability of affordable and high quality childcare! What are you talking about? I have not understood a single thing you've said on this thread, @PeonyPatch!

What exactly do you need explaining to you then?

The pressure was on them to be seen to be doing the right thing. It didn't matter what they actually did, as long as nobody saw it.

If you lived in a back to back you not only shared a toilet you also shared the "treehouse" where you did your washing. There was a rota so you knew when your day was. Started of with lighting a fire under the water tank, then hand washing, rinsing and then putting everything through the mangle to get things to as dry as possible before pegging them out. After drying and ironing there was the sewing session to replace the buttons that got broken in the mangle.

Gotta love autocorrect, should have been brewhouse not treehouse.

No there wasn’t. There was pressure to marry and stay married . Other than that? Cheating, abuse , wasted money , drunkenness etc.? All the woman’s fault. She had to carry the burden of being married to him AND his shame.

😂I was just about to Google why was a wash house called a treehouse!

It's making me laugh but it wasn't really funny, women, well many women had a bloody awful life.

I think some of the problem here is that personal attitudes have changed and government policies have been updated but the corporate/capitalist world has not. If anything I see the world today as more capitalist than 40 years ago..
Whether male or female a company looks upon an employee as an asset and wants to squeeze as much productivity/profit out of the asset as possible. This is why so many companies want full time employees, quick returns from maternity leave, limited annual leave etc.

I think we would see such an improvement in quality of life for women if more companies were more open to part time roles, flexible working, enhanced maternity packages etc.

I am lucky to have a very flexible employer but when browsing vacancies I never come across a part time role in my area. I have heard so many women say that they had to find a new job after having children because their old job was too much travel/overtime/irregular shifts. There is so much that employers could offer to make life for working parents a lot easier and they don't do it because it will effect their profit margins. And the government won't write it in to law because they don't want to anger the big businesses and see them move elsewhere.

Most small family businesses that treated their employees like one of the family seem to be long absorbed in to larger corporations and those that have survived have to fight for every penny of profit. We need a world that out employee welfare above gross profit

I don't need you to explain anything to me, thanks, because it's not me who has spent the thread insisting that feminism is responsible for the effects of the patriarchal capitalism that it struggles against.

You are describing an upper middle class life that was rare in the 60s and 70s. Maybe some professional men could afford to support a family like that, but most could not.
The average working class or lower middle class man supported a wife at home for a short time until the children were in school, then the mother went back to work part time (which is how it is for many families today). Or she worked full time right after maternity leave and family members provided childcare.

The house was most often a council house, not owned on a mortgage.

There was one car, if they were lucky. Otherwise people used buses. Many women took the children on the bus to go shopping, and could only buy what they could carry back. Children walked to and from school from a young age.

The holiday may have been a week at a British seaside resort, but many families did not have a holiday, or not every year.

New clothes were rare.
Most houses did not have freezers.
And so on.

Overall, I am not sure if it is correct to blame feminism for the pressure on women today, or whether to blame capitalism. Maybe a deadly combination of both.
The solution is for men to step up and truly do 50/50 of all household tasks and childcare. But I wouldn't hold my breath for that.

I remember as a child going to visit my great aunt with my nan. We walked through the back into the kitchen, no sign of her.
My nan opened the door of the 'good front room' and my aunt was there. She jumped up and said "Don't tell Albert you've caught me sitting in here or I'll feel the back of his hand"
I remember thinking my aunt looked really tiny and old. And wondering why she'd have to touch my uncle's hand if she sat in the front room.
She was dead soon after, of something that had to be whispered, so I assume a woman's cancer. She'd only have been 57. I'm close to that now, and the difference in our lives 50 years apart is beyond belief.

Then don’t target me.