to be a bit sickened by the apparent 'feminism' under study in the Women documentary?

[mrsbean78]

Dad staying at home to care for kids = househusband
Mum staying at home to care for kids =
full time mum

Each man challenged about how much housework he does, yet "househusband" also challenged about how well he does the housework by a wife who is irritated that he shrinks her cashmere jumpers and doesn't clean the bins, when clearly, as she says, she couldn't be expected to work and do housework.

All participants apparently comfortably well off enough to make the 'choice' about who works and who doesn't, living in beautiful leafy-suburb/rural pad type homes.

I don't feel it is at all representative of my life and am finding it terribly patronising to the men, don't know how others feel?

I'd only add that while capitalism is gender blind and is not the cause of gender inequality, it does provide fertile soil for gender inequality to thrive.

I think equality of opportunity is the best system to aim for. But I think capitalism purports to offer to this while loading the system to benefit those with the power already.

Sadly I think the problem is not with any system in particular but with those who run them. Power corrupts and all that.

capitalism is certainly not a perfect system, but I think it is better than the alternative. peppamum is right that it all boils down to power.

In capitalism power is spread amongst many competing entities, and power can be challenged and toppled, companies can flourish or perish. In capitalism there is the possibility of a balance of power.

Democracy, also has its flaws, but it is similar to capitalism, in that power can be challenged and there is the possibility of change. Commumism is the concentration of power in the hands of a small elite. Their word is sacrosanct and the punishment for going against it is severe. Communism is a trick on the public, it really concentrates power in the hands of the elite.

Sorry for the pedantry, but what you're calling communism here is not communism. You're describing the totalitarian regimes which went under the label 'communism' in the USSR and China etc. Just pointing this out, not suggesting that communism is a system which could work in practice. The experiments of the 20th century suggest not.

See I think capitalism is inherently sexist because it 'commodofies' women, women's bodies and their sexuality. Capitalism is what allows sexual tourism to prolifer and is part of the problems of pornography and prostitution.

Marketing and advertising are also hugely sexist as is much popular culture.

I think feminism has taken a right knocking from capitalism and capitalism is the reason why we have the pornification of popular culture and so much of our media.

I don't see capitalism as some sort of neutral force in sexual politics. Rather I think capitalism has cynically exploited the pre existing inequality for financial gain.

I also think capitalism has cynically exploited/hijacked feminism for financial gain and this is why pole dancing and shaking one's booty in pop videos is represented as 'empowering'.

Well I am man who is about to test some of the things said on here to the limit in RL.

Interesting posts from mrsbean78 and peppamumm about men asking for flexibility at work so they can fit in childcare.

I did ask for flexibility and got it from my old University employers but I did get quite a few snide sideways comments from men and women who found it odd that a man should ask for flexibility. One man actually asked "what is wrong with your wife, can't she look after children?".

Anyway, I eventually gave up work completley about 7 years ago to work part time with DW at home and we shared childcare. Now DSs are 8 and 10 years old we have a bit more time so we would both like to go back to do some lecturing and a bit of writing in the academic fields we are both trained in. I am just about to click the button to send off an applictaion for a University job which I have done before and more than fully qualified for so we shall see how they respond to my previous requests for flexibility and my career break.

In the past, I have always found it quite tricky explaining it to people. In fact I think if I was a woman it would be easier because that is what is expected of a woman.

My experience of this did come as quiet a shock that actually it is not the 'physical sex' of the childcarer asking for flexibility that matters. Once a man IME asks for flexibility he immediatley defines himself as a 'quasi woman' and all the assumptions about a woman not really being commited and that 'she is just going to go off and have kids' got applied to me.

Attitudes changed, literally overnight. The most surprising change was that women looked at me differently - they were actually quite unconciously sexist in their comments.

I have really enjoyed looking after DSs, it has hurt my career but most Dads will never spend the time I have with their children so that is good and not regretted. However, I do now suddenly feel the sorts of emotions that women feel when going back to work after a career break. TBH, I do not feel very confident. In fact I feel really quite shaky about it and I really do not want to have to sit there explaining to an interview panel that I took a career break for my DSs but that my brain is still OK really and yes I do really want the job.

yes agree, these utopian ideas are hijacked by people who use them for their own ends.
I thought the first programme in the series was very interesting and it taught me things that I didn't know, for instance how many of the leaders of the feminist movement at that time were committed radical communists. I think that one of the dangerous communist beliefs, that many of them shared, was the need for the destruction of the family. I don't think that this goal really helps the majority of women or children. Instead, I think this is always the goal of ruling elites, such as the Maoists, who wanted to restrict population growth.

Sometimes it makes you wonder whose interest the communists really serve. Their roots really lie in Plato's Republic with his society of philosopher kings and guardians who enforce control.

Gordon Bennett, communism couldn't be more different from Plato's republic ... in theory. What happened in practice was not communism; it was state capitalism. As I said before, the so-called communist experiments of the 20th century show that communism is a system that can't work. Marx himself said that capitalism would have to reach its end point before human beings would be capable of putting communism into practice. He thought it was reaching its end point in the mid 19th century, but he was wrong.

Sorry again for the pedantry - it isn't a central issue for this discussion, I know - but this misunderstanding always gets my back up.

you're probably right about Plato and Marx. I've never had the time to look into it in detail, so I am probably wrong on that. I was going on the basis of them both advocating the abolition of private property and their communal ethos. But I expect they probably differ in many ways.

Good luck with the job ABetaDad, interesting to hear from a male perspective.

On the capitalism/sexism thing I came across this article the other day which expresses a lot of what I think.

(BTW I have read nothing else from the website so am not informed of its political stance/bias, etc. I'm just linking to this one well expressed article.)

I just got my offer letter for nursery this morning.

It costs the same amount as my mortgage.

I am going back to work four days, in a role where I will care for other people's children to earn money in order to pay other women to take care of mine.

Abetadad - very interesting point regarding professional and social sidelining of men who are actively interested in caring for their children.

What is wrong with your wife, anyway?

abetadad EXACTLY...we are all victims of patriarchy, men and women alike. feminism is about questioning that patriarchal edifice and breaking free of it. men are as entitled and logically motivated to be feminists as women.

Thank you all for your best wishes on the job. Just penning the cover letter.

Interesting points about communism and the family. I have read that even its softer cousin called socialism aims to replace the family unit with the state.

I would say though that having worked in The City where capitalism is at its most naked - there too firms very openly say that your family comes second to the firm. Men are especially prone to being blackmailed into the long hours culture if they are the breadwinner and women of course suffer by often being excluded completely when they have children. People who work at senior level in business/finance all know and accept that it is the job or the family. There is no middle ground and it gets worse in a recession.

Perhaps we need to add a word like 'familism' to stand alongside 'feminism'. We need to think about familism because there is still a very big fight to be had with business and government and society to make it recognise that it needs the people (parents) who bring up the next generation and they need to be treated fairly. IME, businesses often prefer to ignore the fact that families exist at all unless they are customers.

The City's an interesting one isn't it. So much of this debate is to do with the balance between choice/constraint in people's lives. It sometimes seems to me that though it's really problematic that women are excluded from many City jobs, and that men are 'enslaved' by them, on the whole these people - even the breadwinners - have a greater element of choice than most. In other words, they could choose not to be 'enslaved' simply by voting with their feet and working elsewhere. Many do exactly that (and many women are forced to) but the reason many others don't is that they want the extremely financial high rewards that come with that 'enslavement.' I know that plenty of people physically working in the City and doing long hours aren't paid mega-bucks so I'm talking about the ones who are (accountants, lawyers, bankers etc). I do think this just reminds us that it's really important to remember that the precise meaning of equality and feminism is fairly dependent on you class position - just to bring this back in alongside capitalism and patriarchy.

if you look at Microsoft and Apple and see how they displaced IBM, and now Google and Yahoo etc. Capitalism allows all of these new entrants to displace the dinosaurs who don't keep up with the times. Communism can only maintain control by force. Democracies usually go together with some form of capitalism. Capitalism unleashes creative and competitive powers, whereas communism eventually stagnates.

Human beings are naturally acquisitive and competitive and they want to own things for themselves. Communism curtails human beings and doesn't incentivise them to try harder. It is anti-religion, anti-property, anti-family. It is against all human nature and the only way it can be maintained is with a fist of iron.

"Human beings are naturally acquisitive and competitive"

This isn't true either Claig. Cooperation is what builds societies and wealth. It's just a shame that there are always rapacious greedy people who want more than their fair share.

what drives co-operation is self-interest. believe you me, i don't go to work just to be part of a team - i do it to get paid. People have a certain altristic drive - some more than others....

yet look at any country that has denied that people need the incentive of individual gain, and you'll see a catastrophe (russia being a case in point, as Khrushchev allowed traditional farms to run having seen the failure of collectivised farming..he was no 'philosopher king' either.)

dear old Hobbes actually disproved communism before Marx even thought of it ('of why men are not like bees', Leviathan..)

Capitalism allows you to become wealthy if you can come up with a good idea such as the next Dyson vacuum cleaner etc. It doesn't matter what gender you are. There are female CEOs of powerful corporations, such as Carly Fiorina the ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard. There are not currently as many as men, but this will probably change over time. Girls are doing better at school than boys and this will eventually be reflected in the workplace as well. Two hundred years ago, women like Madonnna or Beyonce would never have had the opportunity to earn their fortunes, but under capitalism it was possible.

"The vast majority of the world's poor are women."
This is true but it is due to patriarchal societies rather than capitalism. Also the majority of the world are not yet playing an active part in the capitalist system. It is only in the last 50 years that countries like Korea and China have joined in, and their per capita wealth has increased dramatically.

I think human beings are acquisitive and work harder for themselves than for others. People who run their own businesses often put more effort in.

Unchecked capitalism has many flaws, but it doesn't really care who you are or where you come from. Capitalism doesn't care about social issues etc., it only cares about profit. It can't solve all of societies problems, it can only offer opportunity to create wealth.

Just looked up Marilyn Waring

"As Waring observes, in this accounting system women are considered 'non-producers' and as such they cannot expect to gain from the distribution of benefits that flow from production. Issues like nuclear warfare, environmental conservation, and poverty are likewise excluded from the calculation of value in traditional economic theory. As a result, public policy, determined by these same accounting processes, inevitably overlooks the importance of the environment and half the world's population."

Capitalism is not a charity, it only seeks to create wealth. Waring is right that if you are not producing items that generate wealth, then capitalism won't reward you. But it is really up to governments to take the tax generated by capitalism and use this to solve society's problems.

Agree with you 100% about this

"The vast majority of the world's wealth is held by a tiny number of people and they intend to keep it that way or grab even more of what they can."

but I disagree with you about how they manage to keep control. Capitalism and growth is a threat to their position. They don't want oiks like us joining them, and our kids sitting next to theirs in the top schools. They can't control capitalism and who will make it, it is too unpredictable. They are not as smart as the rest of humanity, they can't keep us in check. Capitalism is like a hydra, everytime they try to slow it down and chop one of its heads off, two more grow back.

They want to stop our growth, they want to limit our families. Capitalism is not working for them, because it is making us richer and more comfortable. So they run the green movement to stop our growth. Eton educated Jonathan Porritt tells us we should only have 2 kids, Eton educated Zac Goldsmith lectures us about cutting down. Stowe educated George Monbiot, whose father was deputy chairman of the Tory party, lectures us in the Guardian to make sure we get it.

They can't control us with capitalism, but they can with communism, that's guaranteed to slow us down and set us back.

The per capita income of a country like China has risen dramatically under capitalism. It has enriched countries like Japan.

I didn't say that rich people work harder, I meant that normal people work harder if it is for themselves rather than an employer.

Money is a means of exchange which we can use to buy cars and houses and land etc. The more we obtain of it, the more choice we have. The elite don't want us to get too much money, they don't want us to prosper. Growing potatos is not going to help us prosper. There was a time when we were all serfs in the fields, but we are slowly being liberated, in spite of the attempts that the elite is using to reimpose serfdom.

Money to pay for women's caring work can only come out of taxes, and it is only wealth generation that can provide this money. Women's caring work cannot be sold to someone else to generate profit, so capitalism can't value it as highly as other profit making activities. Governments need to take the fruits of capitalism and pay for women's caring work out of taxes.

Agree 100% with this

"Also if you have any understanding of capitalism you'll know that what we have at the moment is socialism for rich people, which was why the banks were given billions of our money (rather than being allowed to fail, as should have happened under "pure" capitalism), the bankers got their bonuses and have kept their jobs and stayed out of prison (where some of them belong), whilst ordinary people are now going to face cuts in services they need, loss of their jobs and more taxation because we helped this bunch of greedy bastards out."

that's what I am saying. The elite are not capitalists, because capitalism threatens their position. Behind the greens and the communists is where you will find the elite, pulling the strings. I agree we have "socialism for rich people", they have robbed us blind. They have fooled us, got us looking in the wrong place. They have sold us a pup, got us to be green and join in our own destruction like turkeys voting for Christmas.

claig, I'm sorry but I have read this bit of your post about ten times and still don't understand it:

"The elite are not capitalists, because capitalism threatens their position. Behind the greens and the communists is where you will find the elite, pulling the strings."

But capitalism only regards us as 'active economic units' if we're engaged in the marketplace. What if we're doing the important work of parenting at home? We don't count? We don't get a tax allowance? We're invisible. We're...invariably women, so this HAS to be tied up with feminism.