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).

The revelations of the last few days of how men with power and money and no break on their behaviour treat young women is surely all the argument we need for emancipation from men’s control 😢

Both my grandmothers worked anyway. One upper middle class was a senior teacher and actually the main earner. My other granny was a nurse. Born 1909 and 1915. So when this time was that women didn’t work not sure when that was!

My dd is a millennial. She is happily single, she has travelled solo around the world, she has a good job and has bought her own home, things she would not have been able to do without feminism. Back when it was basically only men in white collar jobs she would not have a decent career, and she would likely be shamed for not having a husband and dc.

My granny was a nurse too in around the same era. When she got married she had to leave her job, but she still worked (informally) as a midwife, she also ran a small dairy with my grandfather, and took in foster children to supplement their income. She didn't have a career, and on paper she didn't have a job, but she worked bloody hard!

I think you’re absolutely right. Not many households can do well on one income only -so women HAVE TO work.
it’s also true that despite working outside they home they still do most of the childcare and housekeeping aswell.
it’s an abomination!

As do I.

Of course you have a choice. I was a STAM for 10 years.

We still paid our mortgage, went on holiday and ran two cars albeit older ones. We bought a caravan and used that for holidays. You just need to cut your cloth accordingly.

As do most of us.

Of course women aren't worse off because of feminism. Only if you wanted nothing other than a SAHM life is it possibly harder to manage that. If you want almost anything else, feminism has done you huge favours. A lot of men haven't caught up yet, that's the real problem.

I also don’t know when this magical time was that every single family had a three bedroom semi and two cars! Certainly my family didn’t, and my gran, mum and aunts all worked. Maybe working class people don’t count?

My life is considerably better than my Mothers.

She was a SAHM with 4 children. Aged 8, 4, 1 and 1 month. My shit of a Father just couldn’t wait for sex and got my Mum pregnant again within a month of having the 3rd child. He refused to get the snip, so my Mum had to get her tubes tied. Literally out of hospital within 2 days and my DF just carried on as normal and she had 4 kids and a house to look after.

She used to stuff the bottom of her shoes with cardboard as they had holes in them. There was no spare money for shoes for her out of the pittance my DF gave her for housekeeping.

She was always skint, never went out, had clothes from charity shops and had no say in how the household finances. Her name wasn’t on the house and she had no pension.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers. I always said that I would never be put in the same position as my poor Mum.

I own my own house, have a car, well paid job, pension and savings. Complete control over my own life and finances.

I have been a single Mum since DS was 2.5, but always worked and pushed on for promotions so I could ensure DS had a decent roof over his head, food on the table and I never had to stiff card board in my shoes.

I have not had to worry about being paid less than a man for the same job. I didn’t have to give up my job when I got married and my ex-H didn’t have the right to have sex with me (rape) when he felt like it.

Not saying it’s really easy, but my life has been considerably easier and better than my Mums. I have so many more choices and rights.

Women couldn’t get a mortgage in their own names until 1975. Women could study degree courses at Cambridge and could sit the exams, but wouldn’t actually be awarded a degree qualification until 1948.

It’s easy to forget how far we’ve come - and given what’s happening in America and elsewhere, we could end up going backwards rather than further forwards towards equality.

This.

As a poster said on here some months ago (on another thread,) 'women aren't having it all, they're doing it all.'

Me too. I own my own home, am educated to PhD level, have a fulfilling job and am married to a woman. None of the above would have been possible without feminism. I am in control of my own destiny in a way that was unthinkable for my mum never mind the women that came before her.

Women are not owed a certain standard of living by feminism. Feminism simply fights for women to have the freedom to make choices. The fact that so many women still make terrible choices is not the fault of feminism.

The idea that women never worked prior to the 20th century is nonsense perpetuated by the Victorian ideal of the family. Women have always worked. The idea of the sweet SAHM waiting for everybody to get home for hot chocolates or whatever is utter fiction that gained traction as a direct result of the new conservatism that arose in the 19th century.

The idea of the sweet SAHM waiting for everybody to get home for hot chocolates or whatever is utter fiction

It was closest to being true for a segment of the middle classes in the 1950s and 60s. Certainly not universally true. And that 'waiting for everybody to get home' didn't involve a lot of actual.leisure, as labour-saving devices were still scarce and women were doing an average of about 8-9 hours housework a day (down from 14 hours at the start of the century).

For most of modern history, upper class women (with a few exceptions) haven't done paid work. They generally had considerable unpaid duties expected of them, though - both within and beyond the household.

In the later part of the 19th century and a little over half the 20th century this extended to middle class women, and for a few decades a little way into the upper end the working class.

But not having to do paid work was certainly not a bonus - it often came with not being allowed to do paid work.

My grandmother trained as a nurse. A job she loved, and she remained fascinated by medical developments and advances her whole life. In more recent times she'd probably have gone to university and been a medical researcher. As it was, as soon as she married she was both dismissed by the hospital and forbidden to work by her husband, because it would reflect badly on him if he weren't supporting the family alone. So they struggled financially until he died, by which point she was too deskilled to return and too old to retrain. And her widow's pension was too small to allow both children to go to university - so my uncle got priority and my mother was packed off to secretarial college instead of her planned degree.

Exactly. I get why people are citing examples of women working in the past but it is true that through 19th, some of 20th century most middle & upper classes women were not in paid work. This does not negate unpaid, informal & voluntary work at all. But it is true that most women being in paid work is a more recent thing - which obviously doesn't mean it's bad.

I'm not sure upper and upper-middle class women constituted 'most' women. How many female servants did each of those ladies have? Who made the dresses they changed in and out of five times a day? Where did their servants buy the groceries, and who made the cheeses, etc, they purchased?

Most of the 19th century = Dickens. He wasn't writing about a minority.

I get that, and it was a lot, but maybe not quite most. This article had around 43%

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/08/08/women-have-always-worked/&ved=2ahUKEwikiPbh1MGSAxUHVUEAHZ96GsIQFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1YGqt8V_oPegq02ouOzDTO

As do men in comparison to their ancestors

My mother, her sisters and her sils all worked.
We still did without lots of things.
Our house was cold and I mean seriously cold, condensation dripping down the windows cold. The first house I bought didn’t have central heating, infact it didn’t have a connection for a telephone!
It was so cold that I would lie in bed and not go to the toilet as I couldn’t face getting out of bed and going into the cold, unheated bathroom.
Work colleagues I had told how when they got married, they had to wear a different uniform, one which singled them out as a married woman. They were then put on a short term contract, a contract which stated they could be sacked at any time and were not eligible to join the company pension scheme. The same did not apply to married men. Infact married men were promoted above everyone else including single men. They were given advantages as they now ‘had to provide for a family.’
When I was in my 20s the company I worked for had only men as senior manages. Some of the lower level managers were women but without exception they were older and did not have children. They were also long time married. In other words the company thought it safe that they were well past the age of getting pregnant as they had been married a fair few years. Pregnant women were told in no uncertain terms that if they did come back to work it would be on a part time basis. Mothers were never, ever promoted.
Young women today should thank their foremothers for the hard work they have done in changing things for the better.

They weren’t paying for two cars and the holiday was in the UK. I was at school in the 70s and practically no one I knew went abroad or stayed in UK hotels.

One car was the norm. Most DCs’ activities happened within walking distance. Once teens were used the bus and went on our own if not. I was 16 when we got a second car and that was only when one of my parents got a new job further away.

There was only the landline and a TV licence to pay for. We had far fewer clothes, toys and books than my two. We had a fridge with a freezer compartment, a cooker, a washing machine, a record player and one TV.

There was much less to pay for. Most people decorated occasionally. Home decor remained the same for years. Most years the Christmas decorations were entirely the same as last year’s. DCs’ parties were mostly party games and a simple tea with cake - at home.

My DM mostly worked part time, as did most mums I knew. A few DC had SAHMs. Either way, families paid a lot less out on an annual basis.

Society and the economy have changed enormously you can’t pin everything you don’t like on feminism. Totally agree with Maray that was my experience growing up. We lived far more modestly.

How many children grew up with absent fathers in those days compared to now?

How are these broader economic changes the result of, or fault of feminism?