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).

What an odd, narrowly-focused reply. Social systems change when social values change. You don't think the policies were set up in a vacuum, do you? Had some welfare czar created the system according to his beliefs alone, with no reference to life as it was or the people's criteria?

Workhouses were instituted at public demand, and ended after public opinion changed. Also consider the Magdalen Laundries.

We can choose not to stay with a useless partner.

I think we could definitely do better on men taking responsibility for their children - but that isn't the fault of feminism, it's down to inadequate men not keeping up with societal change. I do not understand why anyone would want to go back to a time when women couldn't get an abortion, couldn't leave a relationship that wasn't working, were subject to enormous stigma if they did, couldn't have a bank account or mortage in their own name - the list is endless, the items on it hugely significant.

And circling back to men - the reason women end up doing it all is that too manhy men are still refusing to do their fair share in a relationship where both partners work.

I agree, and we can also choose to be more picky in the first place and not even get involved with potentially useless partners.

Thankfully, women don't "need" a man anymore in the same way they did "need" a man a few decades ago. A man these days really is an "optional extra" and should only be for where a man enhances and improves the woman's life. Otherwise, what's the point?

And these days, women who find themselves lumbered with a useless man have more choices as to how to plan to extricate themselves from him, i.e. have their own careers, their own savings, their own ability to rent/buy a house, able to take out loans, etc.

My mum and all my aunties worked full time, 1960s and 70s childhood, as did the mums of pretty much all of my primary school friends.

There may have been fewer children with a father divorced from.their mother. But that doesn't mean he was present.

Plenty of men absconded (and many then remarried bigamously). Far more than now died from wars, disease and industrial accidents. Women had little chance of contraception or abortion after rape by men they weren't married to, or consensual sex with a promise of marriage that was never fulfilled. Women had less ability to leave an abusive marriage - especially to do so an keep their children - but a few managed it, and if they did they had to completely disappear so they weren't forced back.

There have always been significant numbers of children growing up without fathers. At least now there's a greater chance the father will still have some contact and pay child support, and much less chance that the child will end up in the workhouse, or an orphanage, or starving to death on the street.

Yes absolutely. My MIL grew up in a Catholic home in the early 1950s. She's third of eight children and grew up in a little terrace house. Her father didn't live with them but would turn up periodically, steal cash from her mother and then there would sometimes be another baby 9 months later.

No divorce and he certainly wouldn't show up in any documents as an absent father.

And, until 1975, they had no right to be paid the same as men doing equal/equivalent work. Many women still weren't paid fairly after the law changed. Related issues, such as equal pension rights and maternity provisions, were not addressed by the 1970 law (the often misapplied 'married woman's stamp' persisted to 1977). It's a continuing problem, though steadily improving.

Is this a joke?
Seriously.

On the single parent issue, you do know that unmarried women were called whores until not so long ago don’t you?
That divorced women had even less rights than single and married women.
That a woman could not even open a bank account in her own name, never mind get a mortgage.
Yet when women tell you of their lived experience, you say well some things were better.
Precisely what was better for women?
The fact that they had to often stay in violent, abusive relationships? Or endure endless sexism in the workplace? Or there wasn’t reliable contraception? Or they were cold and hungry and so too were their children? Or women did all kinds of things to try and induce miscarriage?

Choice Feminism is just about the most dim-witted branch of feminist ‘theory’. The point of feminism is to liberate women from patriarchy. We haven’t achieved that yet, but getting back into the kitchen isn’t going to help.

I’d love to not have to work, but not so I can be subordinate to a man in my own home and up to my elbows in nappies all day.

It’s not feminism you dislike, it’s capitalism.

OP the things you feel are unfair are not feminism's fault. They are sexism's fault. The answer is MORE feminism.

Of course women shouldn't have to "do it all". But the answer isn't less feminism or going back to a time when women were treated vastly more as second class citizens than they are today.

The answer is the next wave of feminism that tells society that men need to do their share of household and family duties.

Read some women's history. And then direct your righteous anger in a useful direction, just as women have done for generations before you. You are part of a fight that is still ongoing and you will have to join the fight if you want things to continue to improve for women.

Yes, this piffle boils my piss, and it goes right through history.

The "angel of the home" eras have always ignored the fact that the majority of women have worked and men have worked for as long as there have been people.

See also, WFH - women worked from home, but so did men also, until there were industries to take them away from the home!

The normal way of life for the vast majority of history was living within a small network of villages with most of your family spread across them.

Fudging a bit to cover a lot of history here, but women would variably work as:

• domestic servants
• seamstresses
• brewers/innkeeps
• washerwomen
• small crafts/specific production (sail making)
• nursemaids, wet nurses

Children would often go where their mothers or grandparents went (and often worked themselves from a young age).

brewers/innkeeps

For a significant part of history brewing/alemaking was specifically a job for women.

And spinning, of course.

We can blame the Industrial Revolution for many things can’t we? People always seem to view these ideas through a middle class lens which is the issue as the very concept of the middle classes is such a recent phenomenon. Prior to the Industrial Revolution everybody worked and there wasn’t a middle class. You were either rich or poor.

When industries began to take men away from the home and families away from their support networks as they moved to cities then households began to be able to consider having a SAHM - that’s when it became a bit of a middle class status symbol to be able to demonstrate that you were such a successful man you could afford to have your wife at home. And it’s been perpetuated from there.

The vast, vast majority of women in human history have always and will always work. This work is often devalued but it is still work.

The above is a somewhat simplistic explanation but the key point is that the concept of a SAHM is a very recent one.

Lots of womens work on farms, too. Milking and dairy work was women's work. And while men reaped grain women raked, bundled and stacked it.

I'm not joking, no.

And skewed ideas of the roles of rich women too.

The idea that a medieval lady was married off at 13 to breed with no agency in the matter. Whilst it did definitely happen, it was far from the norm. A rich woman would also be educated in several languages, and responsible as head of the household when her husband was away (who had no more choice although some more power). She was also responsible for the management of the household income, keeper of the keys etc. It wasn't a trivial role at all - more like COO of a multimillion pound business.

This isn't to say that those women and rosy lives, but in the context of then vs now, there's definitely pros and cons on both sides.

Absolutely. My DH and I used to (not) do the housework equally as a working couple. Once I went on maternity leave (and was breastfeeding so made husband less immediately needed in babycare), our dynamic shifted. Now he went to work to " keep a road over our heads" (despite my full maternity pay) and I was at home so did childcare and housework.

We never really got equality back...

@ILikeKeirStarmer Have you returned to work yet? Hopefully the dynamic will change... 🙏

The issue is not feminism OP.

It is the fact that the world is still run by men for men..

This is why women end up doing the majority of the childcare, are penalised at work for having kids and struggle to get employers to accept that flexible working is a good thing.

Add to that the fact that we have an epidemic of violence against women and girls and societies and religions that still see women as inferior to men.

You should be asking why things are not changing faster, not blaming feminism for wanting things to change in the first place.

I have returned to work nearly fulltime but I would say no. DH counters that he does bins, cooks evening meals regularly, fixes things and does DIY, cars and finances.

He doesn't do as much child admin, laundry and cleaning as I would like but his contributions are important.

FWIW, watched an interesting documentary about the Irish author Edna O'Brien, called Blue Road. She was way ahead of her time. Really rammed home how life limiting it used to be for many women, plus she had the added pressure of having the Catholic Church on her back too.

I checked out The Country Girls trilogy from the library just this week! Must watch....

@Carla786 yes, next time I'm in the library I'm going to see what's available by her. I might be mature enough to appreciate them now 😊.