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).

None of my ancestors was "owned" whether they worked or not 🤷‍♀️

Having listened to countless women's stories in care homes we definitely don't have it worse off today. It's horrific how common abuse was and feeling they had to accept it because of stigma about divorce and being financially dependent.
The stories of the men who left aren't much better, horribly struggling to raise families in poverty.
Sadly in the beginning stages of dementia it seems like some hard and distant memories become a clearer focus whilst recent memories slip away more.

I was fortunate to have a mum and grandmothers who were proud to give me the encouragement and opportunities they didn't have. We have it SO much easier than previous generations. We can own our own homes (without a husband let alone without the consent of one), we can have professional careers we enjoy, we can pay someone else to do the cleaning etc, we have so much freedom to go out and explore the world and enjoy life. We now live in a world where we can choose a man/woman/other because we want them, not because of financial necessity and that has got to be better for both parties.

In many ways, I think the OP's comments reflect the tremendous success of feminism. So many of the hard won rights and freedoms secured with such difficulty by earlier generations of women are now taken so much for granted that some younger women don't even have any idea what they owe to the feminist movement. So they are free to lament the fact that they no longer have the freedom to be ladies who lunch without having to give a second thought to what life was actually like for the majority of women before the advent of feminism. They look back on a bygone era with a rose-tinted perspective that makes them utterly oblivious to why women had to fight so hard to secure the rights that we consider to be normal and natural today.

Do you actually understand the difference between feminism and capitalism? Feminism gives women choice and equity. We don’t want to be treated the same as men but we do want our jobs to be protected while we are on maternity leave and to be paid the same as our male colleagues.

Capitalism means we all have to work to pay for ever more scarce resources owned by the ultra rich. Energy, water, food and housing have all gone up that’s not down to feminism but you can be sure it’s been exploited by the powers that be.

If you want to be angry at someone then be angry at the ultra rich. The CEO of Tesco has been paid over 9 million pounds last year. How does a CEO earn that much money while some
of his workers struggle to get by with minimum wages. It’s immoral and if any Tesco workers are on universal credit to get by then we as tax payers are subsidising those huge corporations. They get away with paying less because our tax money goes to supporting those workers make ends meet. Why can’t the workers be paid fairly in the first place and not exploited?

AI is another tool for capitalists. The huge investment from the US means we are about to have a large number of data centres being built in the UK with demand on U.K. energy and UK water. We don’t have enough water reservoirs in England and these data centres use drinking water to cool them. We’re a small country where are all these data centres going to go and we need housing more for our citizens. And those housing costs will continue to go up.

My point was you were wrong. You don’t have to be with the top 1% of men to be a SAHM. Many single income families are on far less than that.

And you are also incorrect about breadwinners. Plenty of families make the decision COLLECTIVELY to have one spouse focus on unpaid work and one paid because it suits the family better.

They are not “subsidising another person” only incels think that. They are collectively supporting the family.

I’m living a far better life than my grandmother who was married off at 13 years old and cannot read or write and has always been at the mercy of her husband for provision. In fact , she was the one who pushed me most to go to medical school and become a doctor so I wouldn’t have to live like her

I think the trad wife nonsense on social media contributes to this.

It is presented as a very pretty wife; with lovely clothes and a beautiful home and photogenic well behaved children. The wife drinks water, bakes and occasionally picks up a sock. The husband smiles indulgently while paying all the bills.

most sensible people realise life isn’t like that for 99% of people. And it wasn’t like that in the 1970s or 1950s.

Well said. Who wants to go back to that.

OP, it's just that some women are failing to see the real issue: to communicate very clearly to your husband/ male partner to get the finger out and do his part at home. It's non negotiable.

To me, feminism is about having the same choices and opportunities as men. So not about all women can choose if they want to be a SAHM or work but expect men to pay for everything. I am equally as much my little one's parent as is my husband, so just as much my responsibility to provide for her financially. Just as I expect my husband to do an equal share of housework and childcare.

This! When people say it’s not possible on one income they mean not possible with the specific lifestyle they want.

Cool sexism.

Yep. there is this trad wife push (coming from men and women who have unquestioningly swallowed it) who have invented a history where women were these little rarefied creatures who were looked after and they just HAD to go and get jobs and spoil it all.

Utter and total tosh.

There are dozens, hundreds probably, of history books detailing the fact that women have always worked for pay. The tiny minority lived like a sitcom mother, the rest got on with it in every stage of history, doing the majority of house work, child care AND working for pay.

Men throughout history have always had the option of beating, leaving or simply starving their families. Some didn't, many did, women always had to earn cold hard cash in the event he drank it, whored it, gambled it or just wouldn't hand it over.

The sort of work women have always done (for pay) changed region by region, culture by culture and era by era - just as it did for men.

And that's before you even start on the women who didn't get married, who were always a sizeable chunk of the population too.

@Bedheadbeachbum your mistake is thinking feminism only applies to females. Feminism also applies to males. In fact, that is surely the whole point??
The answer is males doing more of the child rearing and domestic drudgery, and women doing more of the self-interested socialising, career development and not-domestic-stuff.

It’s really that simple to me. And luckily also for my kids who are the next generation.

None of this has anything to do with feminism.

Oh and people might be interested to know that the reason the term "mother's ruin" became associated with gin is that women were making money making gin at home, and the men in charge did not like this class of women having more options than begging, prostitution, sewing, washing etc. It was giving women far too much independence and they were earning too much.

So they campaigned to make people believe that women were turning into drunkards who abused their children, and took the gin making enterprise away from them.

medium.com/lucid-nightmare/ a-brief-history-of-gin-feminism-and-despair-a47155e45168 (you have to open a free account to read this but it gives good info)

Look at the bigger picture.

Feminism has resulted over the last 150 or so years in huge benefits.

Married women no longer lost all rights to their property when they married.

Women got the right to vote.

Women could wear way more variety in clothing than men, pretty much still applies in everyday life.

Here, women can go out without a male supervisor, wearing what they like, faces out, drive cars, which are impossible in so many cultures, where feminism has had less effect.

Women can no longer be made to resign on marrying.

Businesses can't pay women less than men for the same job on the grounds of their sex.

Women can have bank accounts to put their wages in.

And can get themselves a mortgage without a man.

And can no longer be raped consequence-free by their husbands.

Feminism and the women who pioneered it means we live our lives on their shoulders.

Don't blame feminism for the economic climate.

Feminism wasn't sold a lie. It's just that the capitalist, patriarchal establishment used new ways to exploit where things were going to keep a strangle hold on all of us.

In a just world, the dawn of feminism should have meant women worked equally but men also worked less. So maybe working weeks for everyone went down to 25-30 hours so childcare could be distributed fairer.

What we have instead is that mortgages and rents are now based on 2x full time salaries instead of a single salary and stagnating wages. We should have all had so much more disposable income and time, but its just been eaten up so the 0.1% at the top can overstuff already heaving wallets and that's why there's more billionaires than ever.

Our labour has been massively stolen and we should be incredulous about it!

I agree with all of this.

OP you're not wrong - but if men did equal housework it'd be fine as both partners work full time & both contribute equally at home.

I actually think the “sold a lie” rhetoric is the early stage of feminist awakening before actual feminism takes a hold.

its what happens to the majority of working, otherwise intelligent women when they move in with a standard unreconstructed bloke. Or for the “luckier”/ slightly more discerning ones at the point kids come along.

There follows about 5 years of feeling really, really cross that you are doing everything and him not that much, whilst your career nosedives.

You might flirt with idea of being a perfect SAHM and wondering why you can’t.

And then something snaps and you realise there is just too much to do in running a house, having very young children, and having two working parents. But also, crucially, that you’re held to far higher standards and are generally working much harder than your partner.

There isn’t an easy way to come back from that unless your partner decides to also go part time and become a nurturing dad who also does the shopping and loads the dishwasher.

Luckily I know a fair few men now who have absolutely embraced that role.

That is what I feel really cross about - that I missed the boat!

Had I been born 15 years later maybe I might have met a man like that.

I really hope feminism raises the bar for males’ behaviour.

But feminism has been here for nearly a century yet they still don't do that 😂

They definitely managed to sell women a very convenient lie about rights and equality 😂

My husband does an equal share of both childcare and housework - as has always been the expectation. Just as it has always been the expectation that we both work.
Non-negotiables.

Feminism is about women being seen as equally important to men and having the same rights, the same choices, the same freedoms and the same opportunities. It is also about men properly sharing the family load. There are plenty of households where this is happening and working well. I was born in the late 1960s. My grandmothers worked. My mum worked. My friends’ mothers worked. My dad was an involved dad and family man as were my friends’ dads.

I really despair at the ignorance of people who don’t get that feminism is about equality of women and the appalling tradwife, woman-crushing bullshit that’s being pedalled by certain posters on this site.

OP - you can make whatever decision you want for yourself (one of the joys of feminism) but respect other women’s rights to make different decisions for themselves.

Indeed, I come from a family of working women who also then had to keep a home including the washing, cooking etc.

@ConservativeC2 I do think you are being unreasonable. We arent in this place because of feminism, it is because society still doesnt treat women equally.

I would argue that we need feminism more than ever.

I am not a millennial and I am concerned that younger generations of women are blaming feminists for the patriarchal society that still impacts the quality of our lives.

I really dont want to offend you but I have picked up a bit of a tradwives vibe?

Women have shown time and again that we are equal to men but it is the the patriarchal society that still exists that let’s women down.

YABU