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?

oops roots

So am I. Isn't it though part of the current conspiracy/mass hypnosis of whatever has shooed some of you lot back into the kitchen and thinking, wrongly, you've actually chosen that position? The women as sex objects, breast surgery, ironed hair with stuck on nails, heat magazine, woman as mother, but at any cost women not as worker, equal contributor, politician, businesswoman or whatever? Goes together - the women at home - just look at any other period - 1950s get them out of the jobs they love so the men can have the jobs, give them the New Look, heels, skirts. Same today.

I am sure the SAHMs would prefer to disassociate the two and refer me to their baby sick spattered clothes but I do see it as part of the same pattern.

Hmm, I think looking good and snagging a rick bloke isn't in anyway a new phenomenon is it?

had a shocking encounter with the current affairs ignorant at the school yeesterday, well DH did and said he'd wished I was there. A large group of yummy mummy types (there are many round this way- I am not one) were standinga round chatting. I'd already had an encounter with one that day (she had suggested my asd son needed to just 'get over it' ). Apparently the topic of discussion was there's no-one poor any mroe, what they mean is they can't afford enough Nikes.

I mean! I know we live in a posh bit but less than twenty minutes walk is a large council estate.... wonder if they even realise! And we live 40 minutes from Bristol, largest homeless population in the UK. Though no doubt these would say they were homeless by choice (as opposed, for example, to because they are mentally ill).

Sorry about this being dumped on here- so very that this si the crud being thrown at kids these days (they all ahd their kids present). hardly makes for good citizens does it?

are there really more homeless people in Bristol than in London?

According to the local news there is. Not sure why- maybe the large rural population of the surrounding areas? So nto much provision for homeless there, plus expensive housing, and actuallyt here are some bad areas there too.

It amy of course wbe incirredt, quoted in good faith. Possibly on a per head basis.

Bristol has some very very deprived areas. Bits of Oxfordshire does too. People don't realise. Is it the mothers who don't work, who probably never had very good jobs anyway and who never had much of a career who become the SAHMs and thus are the ones who will be the worst influences on their chidlren where as the clever more up to date with current affairs and even better at child psychology parents are probably the ones working and not influencing their children with banal chatter at the school gates? Mind you I doubt the chatter of nannies is any more useful to the child than that of the less clever mothers or fathers.

Or is my brother right that the symbol of choice that you've made it amongst his colleagues (male) are the ability to support a Cambridge educated ex wife who is prepared to "give it all up" to give the kudos to her man that he supports her?

No, I had a fantastic well paid job and we both chose for me to be a SAHM. My dh doesn't get any kudos from this and is certainly not the type of man to enjoy that kind of kudos There is no hidden agenda, there is no underlying cause it is pure and simple I stopped working because I wanted to bring up my children myself. Thats is, do really not think there are any SAHM's who aren't downtrodden or unintelligent?

I dunno Xenia. All I know is no matter how much I try to take this convo into deeper, more nuanced territory you seem to knock it back into the long grass of false dichotomies again. It's getting a bit tedious if I'm honest, soz.

I mean I/we..

GW, I think it's a difficult model for a couple to have, one earning and one at home in practice but I can see it works for some people and they may not feel they have sacrificed anything and may not feel they have taken on a kind of subservient service position to that of their husband. Yet how can it not be subservient - you're seeing to his needs, cleaning his house, doing his laundry, minding his children - you serve him really and in return he pays. I can't see how that is not downtrodden. You may think there's some kind of freedom in it, but ultimately it's freedom in invisible chains of economic dependence you are lucky enough not to see and thus are content.

As for intelligence there are people of all IQ levels at home and at work. Presumably more of those without much of a career are likely to give it up because the simple economics mean it makes sense for them to give it up and therefore I expect statistically the cleverer women tend to stay at work except for the blip of those who marry men rich enough to keep them at home and who can reconcile their brains to the day to day tedium and exploitation of home.

I think it's wrong to make this a SAHM vs working parent issue. I do work, and I work part-time because it makes my life easier and, whilst I enjoy what I do, to do it full-time would bore me- I like the diversity of working half the day, and then going home to my children (if I didn't want to spend any time with them, I wouldn't have had them in the first place) I am considerably better-educated than my DH, but he excels at what he does, and is recognised for it throughout his industry. I am not deferring to him to allow his job to take priority over mine, but it would be churlish to stamp my foot and insist that it was I who had the career (because of my superior education) when he does so well and I am not defined by the job I do. I find people whose interests do not extend beyond their own microcosm tedious, whether they are a high-powered executive or a SAHM. I much prefer the company of a well-rounded individual, and that is waht we are debating, is it not? You can stay at home and raise your own children and still keep a firm handle on the rest of the world, in the same way you can be the CEO of a multinational and not be able to hold a conversation with someone outside of your profession. I find it curious that in an era when we are told that girls are consistently outperforming boys at school there still seems to be such a huge bias in the other direction once they leave education. What happens? The fact that we have these debates on mumsnet is indication (if any were needed) that there is an abundance of intelligent, humorous, articulate women who are largely ignored by society (for that, read 'media') and pigeonholed into the 'celebrity gossip and not much else' category.

Xenia I've tried in the main to avoid you on mumsnet because I find your views so repellent, but just this once I'll make an exception.

My question is this: are your views the same where it's the man who stays at home and the woman who is the family breadwinner?

I'll answer that one dinosaur, because Ive done it. it is extremely difficult.

xenia does take a hard line about some things, but she also carries a lot of non-stop responsibility, which is hard to understand if you havent walked a mile with it.

"Yet how can it not be subservient - you're seeing to his needs, cleaning his house, doing his laundry, minding his children - you serve him really and in return he pays"

Er, so the children are 'his' if you stay at home and 'yours' if you go out to work? How does that work then, biologically? What nonsense this all is.
Actually, I think children belong to themselves, but they do inconveniently need looking after all day. Which is why you employ someone to do just that, presumably.

And what do you know about Dinosaur's 'non-stop' responsibilities?

"are your views the same where it's the man who stays at home and the woman who is the family breadwinner?"
Do you mean my view that a man is not really choosing to stay home but has been conditioned to do it by his sexist upbringing? Probably not for obvious reasons. If you mean do men stay home because they are serving their wives - well yes, the one at home is running around after the other one really, looking after her knicker drawer and making sure there's a meal on the table for her when she comes home so yes, it's a service role. Do I think that subsidiary service is as offensive when a man serves a woman like that as when the other way round? Depends what you think about servants I suppose in general (which you could say SAHP are in a sense glorified servants).. there's an argument that service is good and as a Catholic I can understand that and in a sense my life as a single parent and caring for my family and the people I work for is service.

What stay at home fathers don't have is a planet of men exploiting women, not even letting them own property or vote, completely subjugated even today and even in communities near where I live in London so there must be a difference.

If we lived on some ideal planet where men and women had equal opportunities and it wasn't women all the time making these choices and sacrifices, in parts of Scandinavia where I have been where society is probably in a better more advanced state then sexually neutral decisions as to who stays home don't offend me although I still can't understand how any sane interesting person wants to spend their life doing housework even if they intersperse that with listening to radio 4.

whatwouldjesusdo - what do you think I do, then?

Hey, good job you only employ dull, insane people to bring up your children then, eh, Xenia?
And the crap you come out with about knicker drawers actually makes me sick. It is so deliberately offensive.

He doesn't look after my knicker drawer, or have a meal on the table for me - how ridiculous! He looks after our - not my, our - children?

Not sure what your point is, jesus. I am sole breadwinner for five people, and when I come home from work I pitch straight in to the bedtime routine. I then cook supper for me and DH.

"Do you mean my view that a man is not really choosing to stay home but has been conditioned to do it by his sexist upbringing?"

Honestly Xenia, how many more times do I have to point out that this isn't just social conditioning. Women, even very educated ones, choose to be primary carer to their babies.

Being looked down on for doing that is what you are doing, not what these women are choosing.

"I still can't understand how any sane interesting person wants to spend their life doing housework even if they intersperse that with listening to radio 4"

This is your argument? It is a fantasy.

I still don't understand how this has become a SAHP vs working parent issue.
If a person, male or female, stays at home to raise their own children, how does this invalidate them as people? Do they suddenly forfeit all right to a rational opinion or knowledge of the world and instantly transform into a stepford persona. Don't be ridiculous, by judging people on the basis of how they fill their days is shallow and offensive to anyone with a brain.

well i didn't choose to be the one who bore the brunt of childcare but that's how it is - dh freelance and not in job that can do partime blah blah blah. and it fucks me off that childcare is expensive, inflexible and awkward in this country - even when it's good. i hate that i am now seen as a 'part timer, not really interested in the job, just marking time till the next baby' at work. dd's been sick for the last week so no work for me and i'm climbing the walls with boredom and frustration. frankly, if this is how it's going to be, there won't be another baby.
but back to original post. i work in tv news and the way the main bulletins have been dumbed down - esp the one - to 'appeal' to stay at home mums (ie nappy brains), oaps and students is offensive. and there is no excuse for womans hour. it's smug, middle class and second rate. it saunters from women who grow herbs under difficult circumstances to string quartets to custard. as for jenni murry. why is she still on air? the only thing i can say - and i've said it on here before - is complain! the bbc reads the logs - it does see your comments. anyone can do it, either via website or ring switchboard 0208 7438000 and ask for the 'duty log'. you don't have to give your name. tell them you don't like to be patronised. tell them chidcare isn't a women's issue. tell them womans' hour is rubbish.

Why do women hate other women so much? Isn't it just a form of self-loathing?

there are some bloody silly women out there. just listen to womans hour.