"It may be better news for women... to look after their own children and fit jobs into the child's day"

[SleepWhenImDead]

So says Jill Kirby, director of the Conservative think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies in this BBC article.

Seriously, what planet is this lady on? She makes out like it's a NEW idea for women to either not to work or to work hours to limit the amount of childcare that's needed. Well done Jill, we'd never thought of that before you suggested it!

I'm going to be hard hit from these cuts to public sector, I'm currently on maternity leave but due to be made redundant anyway. The public sector is the place I'd need to get a job, and get child-friendly hours. DOes this Jill think we get to CHOOSE these things, like a job is something you do for fun to avoid looking after your own children?! Think I might as well give up even hoping for a job and soon we'll lose our child benefit as well. I'm attacked on all directions!

you digress and dont address your vague non-specific plea to galvanise action from an unspecified many towards an unspecifed mass

having being to Uni many times i am equipped how to chose and pass a course.

whats with bold ug thingy?is that meant to be significant or are you marking your spot so we all all show due deference

Er, to the earlier posters, SamCam gave up her job when DC became PM. So she's now a SAHM.

jjkm perhaps it would have caused less outrage if she had suggested that one parent should stay at home and not just assume it would be the mother? Just a thought...

[hsad]

jjkm I don't think the outrage is anything to do with living off one wage or one parent staying at home. It is the fact that she condescendingly and specifically suggests that thi should be the woman!

Most woment prefer to work and always have worked and always will so it's a fairly irrelevant issue. Those of us who choose whether we are male or female to work when we have small babies tend to make thigns work well and end up with better lives than those who only have children in their lives and no career and our children do better. The TOry reforms are helping ensure women work, benefiting households with two workers and no housewife etc. Cameron the feminist is doing rather well.

If women earn very little they shoudl go forth and earn a fortune, rid their brains of the shackles of I am worthless and can only earn minimum wages and think laterally nad never ever accept any sexism in their relationships. Work smart, not hard. I probabaly earn in an hour what the minimum wage is in a week and there's nothing special about me. Anyone could do it.

The best indicator for childhood outcome is family income. Thus if the mother earns over say £100k a year that could be one of the best things she can do as well as be happy, be nice to her family and children and love them all of course which we can take as read I hope whether someone is a housewife or runs BP.
The more we can squeeze maternity benefits the better we will do in getting women to enjoy their work and work properly, not in part time pin money jobs which pushes them into a ghetto of home servant. The recession will do this for us. There is all to play for and much for women to win in this "Mancession"

simbacat, I agree with you. My "supplemental" ever changing "second income" had often been a lifeline for us, as my DP does rather sporadic building work, ups and downs (fits and starts), so my regular second salary is the one we've called upon the cover the mortgage. I like to think that I'm the one that keeps us firmly on the ground while DP "goes out to work".....these public sector jobs are essential for a happy, healthy society with often happier families. I understand though that economically speaking the govt is going to have to look at those jobs which drive the economy and if you can get women to stay at home and look after their kids for free then this makes economic sense, no. I do think sometimes things have swung too far the other way, leaving SAHMS feeling inadequate for not "having (more to the point) doing it all", maybe what we actually need is a society which values SAHM mums more and rewards women who do this in other ways. (tax breaks, pension rights etc.)

jjkm, peppapig pointed out the obvious: that in today's society there isn't a clear division between Men (earning Real Money but incapable of doing childcare) and Women (Nurturing and Caring, but of course quite incapable of doing a Real Job and supporting their families). SO if money should be saved by individual families, it is not necessarily going to be a case of sending the Little Woman back to the stove- it might equally well be the little man.

Besides, a lot of the flffy jobs Jilly Kriby wants to get rid of (because they are only done by women so can't be Real Jobs) are jobs that are going to save society a lot of money in the long run.

The TA who teaches my disabled son to touch type so that he can get an education and hopefully be able to work as an adult, rather than live on benefits. And who also finds time to support the autistic child in the class so that he gets an education- and the other 29 children do not get their education disrupted. And who reads with those children who do not have reading parents and who might well grow up semi-illiterate if they didn't get that extra bit of support- and illiteracy comes very expensive for society.

The Education Welfare Officer who works on keeping children in school and off the streets where they might otherwise be causing damage and become drawn into crime or preyed on by criminals. Crime is expensive.

And there are thousand others. Save money on them now and pay that money out later.

I am all in favour of women aiming high, Xenia. But I hope you then think that at least there should be men to take the low paid nurturing jobs. Or are you saying nobody should be doing them?

The truth is, there are only so many high paid jobs that need doing. You can't have a company with two thousands directors and no workers. Seriously, not everybody can become the managing director- though everybody can aim for it. And if everybody refused to settle for less, most companies could not function. You also cannot have a situation with no infra structure for those directors and workers to get to work, to stay healthy while at work, and to be supplied with food, water, electricity etc. Which means that the vast majority of the population has to do these relatively low paid jobs. Because otherwise the high paid people cannot function.

However - and here I am totally with Xenia!- there is nothing that says that women can't be at the top and men at the bottom. Nothing expect Jill Kirby, by the sounds of it.

In 'The Beauty Myth' Naomi Wolf says that government loves to encourage women to be homemakers.

She wasn't talking about the Tories, but I think it's relevant to them at this time.

A woman in the home serves as an important economic tool, as her main aim and purpose is to buy things for the home and to do jobs that she is fit for.

By that, she is targeted by advertising and responds to it, and she fulfils her feminine duty by caring for her partner and children.

(Naomi didn't say all that, I added my own paraphrase).

jjkm - you have made a very wise set of choices and built resiliance into your economic situation. Its a shame more people didnt do that.

Western countries borrowed their futures over the last 15 years and made themselves vulnerable. The economic damage will take a lot of time and hard work to repair.

TryLikingClarity - its fairly clear that left to its own devices society will and is already reverting to 1950s thinking to resolve the financial crisis.

For example, banks are informally reverting to lending only 3 x the main (read man) wage earners salary on mortgage lending as they did in the 1950s when few women were able to get loans.

This is the danger with what people like this are arguing.

It's 1992. Boff has just found out that in the school she is working in, she is being paid half of what the blokes and single women get. Boff is sitting in the Head's office, not at all happy about this.

Boff: "It seems that my salary is half of what these colleagues are earning, for more or less the same work, yet you told me this was a start up situation and money was tight and everybody' salaries would be low initially. Yet I find they are not and I have been misled".

Head: "Well you are paid less because you are a mother and mothers can't concentrate properly on their jobs, as they are thinking about the children a lot, so they are worth less."

Boff:

Head: "Anyway, I know you work less because when I come in every morning your car isn't in the car park and I don't see you in the staff room having coffee with the others."

Boff: "That is because I commute by train, I am usually first in, and I am in my office before work doing admin rather than drinking coffee".

Head: "Well there's no money in the budget for pay rises so I am afraid there is nothing that can be done."

The next thing he did was to slash my hours to 25% (i.e. something I could not live off) apperently in spite, and hire someone else to do my job so I would shuffle away from his school. Luckily the union and my (male and single) colleagues were disgusted and remonstrated with the school on my behalf, but I never did very well there and was more often than not sidelined.

This is not the only instance of sexism I have experienced in my working life, but it was one of the most ignorant. Yet this is the kind of dangerous territory we are starting to veer back into.

Bear in mind that what they actually want is not women shut up in their homes all day.
What they want is women doing the caring/cleaning/essential-but-low-status work for no pay. First get them back in the homes, then encourage them to 'contribute' to society even though they are unemployable becuase having a salary will make their fanjos fall off and encourage them to be disrespectful to their male owners...
Because the sort of 'big society' Cameron talks about needs aslave class. It's the understanding of the need for a slave class that is also behind all the benefit-recipient bashing: make the unemployed work for their benefits so you can then sack all the paid staff in low-level unskillled jobs and REHIRE them once they are being paid at half their previous rate by the Government.

"What they want is women doing the caring/cleaning/essential-but-low-status work for no pay."

I agree very much with this statement.

Boffin, someone did that for me and made a HUGE difference; it doesn;t take much in truth to jelp people out a little.

And just to notice- i've given up opn formal voluntary work for the moment but I am the one lurking at the back of the schoolyard, watching and sidling up to a[prents with long lists of SEN helpline numbers, contacts and legal guidelines. Take me maybe 5 minutes a week, but saves otehrs far more, and makes people feel tehre's someone out there. Whyen I was working it was different again; I was in the charity sector anyway so not billing my overtime, but also offering lifts to people who were older or whatever.

It doesn;t have to eman lots of ahrd things or even changing anything much about your life.

But it has to be a choice and nobody ahs aright to tell people to do it, esp. if the only option is vulnerable people losinmg their input- that's blackmail and even more so, a lot of things being debated on teh enws etc as repalceable are not: there's a lot of value in professionalism, accountability and experiecne that (and an ex volunteer manager) and simply not so gusranteed in that sector.

I;ve worked for charities facing closure unless they keep a minimum service level of X volunteers in aplce (withdrawal of funding etc)- if it cvomes down to one volunteer or bust, the standards for that one fall.

And yes Bonsoir / Solid: absolutely.

I am a carer, theya r emy kids, but should somene do it without pay? What, get ebaten / constant cleaning / verbal abuse / whatever?

No.

(someone else, BTW: wasnt talking about me)

ImGideonsMum - I agree that it is perfectly possible to "volunteer" help to others on an individual, rather than an institutional basis, and it is often much more effective. Though often invisible to the outside world - you need to be able to pat your own back and be satisfied with that.

'However - and here I am totally with Xenia!- there is nothing that says that women can't be at the top and men at the bottom. Nothing expect Jill Kirby, by the sounds of it.

Absolutely.

Our solution to threatened cuts? Dh's business passes half into my name; it's my job to make that pay- i'm no electrical engineer but I can wrote a good ad, netwrok and manage legalities a damned site better than DH tbh (who is the Mad Technology Geek by nature).

gender shoudlnt; come into it; any of it.

Quite Bonsoir

Though I find that self-pat makes me feel worthwhile anyway and learning to recognise your own value and not rely on others for approval is such a key skill.

(Is funn y though; can only do that in some things, professionally I am terrible at it. Hmm. Worth mulling over. )

Haven't got time to read all the posts - sorry if I'm just repeating stuff.

'Working class' women have always and will always work out of the home.

So it's the middle classes who are going to be affected most, plus it will make it more difficult for working class women to aspire to a salaried job with holiday pay, flexible hours etc.

It does look as if the government is trying to do a bit of social engineering here. What strikes me is how they think they can remove whole sections of the population from employment - and deal with the repercussions when?

How do they intend to cope with the stages in a modern (middle class) woman's career, which often follows this pattern: sahm with young children then part-time worker with school-age then full-time when the kids are older or leave school?

If you keep women out of the workforce when their kids are young, they might never get back in at a level appropriate to their qualifications, and will obviously have less experience to offer.

This has implications for education too - why bother to educate girls in nuclear physics if they are going to stay at home??

All we want - all we have ever wanted, and what we fought for - is a flexible working life with good, affordable childcare. This is something that benefits women, men, employers, families and society, and should be a right if we believe at all in equality of opportunity.

We can't let this be taken away if we want a healthy, fair society.

My knee has stopped jerking now.

Yes, Solid but shambling. Yes yes yes.

I'm a SAHM (at the moment, not planning to be one forever, although this govt might have other plans) and this has pissed me right off. It's insulting to all women, in paid employment or otherwise.

If i knew a feminist version of the Obama fist-bump or something I could do to show solidarity with all of you, I would.

For those of you who voted conservative, however... now do you see why we tried to persuade you not to? Do you?