Are women interested in current affairs? (And why I hate Woman's Hour)

[BrummieOnTheRun]

I spent the last few days ranting to DH about the fact that certain stories that primarily affect women don't appear in the media.
Like the nationwide policy of downgrading local maternity services (only reported locally, ignored by national media) putting 1,000s of women and babies' lives at risk each year. Or is that each month?
Like loans to women entrepreneurs being at higher interest rates than those to men as we are perceived to be higher risk.
Like the cost of childcare and impact on (primarily women's) employment being treated as a minority issue. We're 50% of the population and most of us have/will have children.
Blah, blah, blah.
Have always been pissed off that Woman's Hour, instead of having the political and intellectual clout of the Today programme, has spent approx 6 minutes superficially covering important issues to cut them off to discuss bloody borsch recipes. Or drama 'that women might enjoy'.
Then a depressing thought occurred to me...maybe it isn't that most 'current affairs' isn't interested in women, maybe most women just AREN'T INTERESTED in current affairs and that's why women-centric issues aren't widely covered?

Xenia, you are preeching on the wrong site. Get thee to Netmums!

Now, it's going to be all your fault when Xenia decends on Netmums.

...

"I wonder what any of us really truly choose ..." is a very Calvinistic thing for a Catholic girl to say, Xenia. I don't think you have the right to dismiss my preference out of hand. I have just as much ability as you to see how my opinions may have been influenced, and to adjust accordingly. Of course I abhor female circumcision and am in favour of equal opportunities and pay for women, like every one else posting here. By saying that I prefer to be a SAHM at the moment, I'm not saying that every one else should prefer that too. I'm glad you feel you made the right choice for you, Xenia. I'm happy in my choice too. Why are you so keen to tell other women what to do?

Uwila, Im a UMTS and sat nav engineer. There is something completely fascinating about telecoms protocols....
I was looking up pg courses in the oil industry recently for a relative, and thought it looked interesting.

WhenSanta....I also read Engineering at Oxford. It has got to be the most mindblowingly boring course ever offered to undergraduates. Not just you, in my day that course turned more students off engineering than it produced engineers. I am not kidding, I only knew one person in my year who actually became an engineer, most of us were just dying to escape. I went away and did something non-engineering for about 10 years.

Not sure any of really make choices was my point. Most of you lot haven't truly chosen to be at home. If it were free choice stuff your hgusbands would be as equally likely to be home but they aren't. It's all conditioning and female subservience to men and keeping women out of power and making money so they continue to be done down in the world. Women own 1% of the world's wealth. I don't think SAHMs really are doing their bit to right that wrong.

net mums... ah I did read something about a Minister who handled well approaches from people from various of these sites and the Government's plan to do it better....

Not sure I should post on any site which uses that disgusting word "mum" which shall never be uttered in my home. It's dumbing down at its worst. We need a mummy site or even a sexually neutral one. I remember when the Working Mothers Association became Parents at Work a long time ago because of course children have two parents.

he he Xenia as a single mum/breadwinner I can see exactly where you are coming from. hope you've got your tin hat on though.

Sweeping generalisations Xenia and guesswork about other people's lives. Also v poor deduction: if it were free choice husbands would be home too - bollocks.

If you're working and looking after several children how do you get so much time to come pontificating on this site?

Elasticwoman, its because we dont have husbands to take up our spare time!

Xenia, what is wrong with "mum", and why is "netmums" so different from "mumsnet"?

Xenia, I'm not having a go because I actually like reading and understanding your pov.

I made the active choice to be the one at home with my twins and eventually work part-time. I discussed it with DH and he agreed. It was nothing to do with pre-conditioning. I just knew that is what I wanted to do. Contrary to what you may believe and what you always seem to be implying, most of us (men and women) are not mindless, unthinking drones and we are fully capable of making decisions that we think are best for our family, just like you .

Also, I love it when my boys call me Mummy. How any sane person can find that disgusting is beyond me. As you have rightly asserted in the past and on previous threads, women in years gone by were economically active as many were mothers and had to work and with extended family to support them, no-one gave it a second thought. However, guess what Xenia, the children of these women called them...............

Mummy or Mum or Mother or Ma!

And I tell you something else, children will call their mothers these names in all cultures all over the world.

I think she prefers her progency to use the moniker 'Mother' exclusively.

Diminutives like Mummy, Mum, Mama or Ma are indicators of one's baseness and smack of peasantry.

Message withdrawn

'Not sure I should post on any site which uses that disgusting word "mum" which shall never be uttered in my home.'

Whit? I have heard some extreme views on mumsnet but surely someone did not just call the word 'mum' disgusting?!

?If it were free choice stuff your hgusbands would be as equally likely to be home but they aren't.?

Sorry, but this simply isn?t true; it?s your opinion, but it isn?t factually correct. Most women give the choice do choose to stay at home ? not, however for the rest of their lives or forsaking any life outside of the home.

Why on earth is owning ?wealth? the job of SAHM?s (again a complete misnomer anyway) and why do you imagine the all these men collect wealth for? When SAHM?s go out to work there are many other Jeremiah?s who say they aren?t doing their bit to fight social disharmony, caring more about money than their children ? another meaningless rhetorical rant that provides zero insight.

Peachy mentioned compromise in a really good post below, I could also add to that the idea of cooperation , between sexes, partners, families and friends. The blind accumulation of wealth is meaningless; it is driven by a cause ? I?m speaking of human nature scientifically. What do you imagine that is?

Women are done down in the world, around the world much worse than we are here, primarily because they are not in control of their fertility via birth control. Their fates are at the mercy of their wombs, and of course policy that denies them equal rights in the law, in access to education and so many other things. Women can be forced into roles they don?t want, the role of mother on it?s own is very rarely one they don?t want ? it?s the role of domestic slave that they tend to object to. There is s difference and we in the west have done a lot to sort out the difference ? to begin to see the wood from the trees.

?Mum?? Disgusting? LOL. Now, this is just plain weird. I?m beginning to think you aren?t a woman at all, or have twins?What do they call you at home? Kaiser?

Your Highness!

Xenia from reading your last post I take it yhat you don't object to Mummy just to the word Mum. So it isn't just an objection to using the diminutive forms of Mother or is it?

Xenia - you're also making a mass assumption about WHY women give up work once they have kids.

I'm a useless SAHM and won't inflict myself on my kids for longer than necessary. But I got pissed off with handing over about 80% of my salary in tax, NICs and childcare. And dealing with wankers day in day out. I've withdrawn myself from the labour market in protest. (unfortunately noone seems to have noticed yet!)

lol Brummie. I'm sure they will soon - just keep up the protest.

I'm just a tourist at the SAHM thing anyway, being on mat leave. I haven't dropped out of work yet, and can't really see any good reason to.

I will only be part time for 5 years, and then I will get back into the loop. Out of a 40 year career that is hardly a crime. Some people spend longer than that studying postgrad or in redundant patches.

thanks whatwouldjesusdo. You have no idea how welcome your words were. Even though I have a good career now, I am always thinking "what if". I sometimes laugh at the innocence of youth that i could just throw such a good opportunity away!

Having said that, I have two colleagues at work who have Cambridge Maths degrees, so that is a consolation that I could have still ended up where I am today.

whatwouldjesusdo: I can't remember what finished me off, the thousands of hours in the lab trying to build a radio from first principles, or the page long quadratic equations working out the strength of a bridge?

arghhh dont remind me! The worst years of my life, beyond doubt.

I think that we are in danger of marginalising society even further by treating men and women differently when it comes to the things that matter. I am far more worried about the trend at the moment that seems to believe that all young women aspire to look (and act) like footballers wives or lap dancers; unbothered by events or decisions that will affect their lives at some time, so long as they fit the steroeotype that makes them appealing to men. Forget 'girl power', all we seem to have done is to empower this generation of women to be sexually liberated, drink alot and be appealing to men (and who does that benefit??!!) Why is it so hard to acknowledge the fact that there are still women (in vast numbers) who would like to be treated as though they had a brain, and not just as an aspirational blow-up-doll? I'm sure many of us still enjoy a bit of the superficial, but not all the time?

Agree HoHo. But isn't this WAG/celeb thing all just part of the more widespread anti-education culture we seem to have at the moment, whether you're male or female.

The message from much of the mainstream media these days is "look, you don't need an education or be intelligent to be rich...just look good / hook a rich partner / appear on reality TV [delete as applicable]".

Hence even smart kids have to pretend to be stupid to avoid being beaten up.

And actually, they may have a point. We've slogged for 11 years on above average salaries and can't afford to pay into a pension. While single mothers on benefits are handed £500 'start up' grants when they get pregnant. Who's the mug?

Careful, I wouldn't like it to be inferred that some women get pregant for the start up grant, as it was with the shitty damp flats that no one else wanted.

But I agree that we need much more diverse role models for young people today. There's a push for the writers of soaps to open this up, have more people going to college and uni without it having negative effects on their lives, as though getting a good education is somehow betraying your working class routes.