Do you think women in Britain are as free as they think they are?

[Pruni]

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pruni, i find the society depicted by jane austen to be incredibly depressive. if i had to live in such a world, it probly shoot myself.

pruni - are you me?

A bit. Along w/freedom to chose comes the necessity for judgement. Not always good. Sometimes never good. Sometimes always good. Instilling the confidence to make a decision and take responsibility for it is a critical point in the education of a human being, a point of education which isn't available to all in all societies, but is part and parcel w/Western society.

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I really like being married and being able to stay at home for my children (although the attraction is beginning to fade after 18 months!)

I have a good man who takes his responsibilities seriously and agree with what expat says about some women who seem to feel 'lucky' because their bloke picks his underpants up. This repels me beyond belief.

However,I get so irritated by the constraints on women in the city I live in in Turkey too,particularly this inbuilt feeling that women's bodies incite lust and lewd thoughts and therefore must be hidden. (Noone seems to be addressing the issue of what men are doing to harness these thoughts!)
As an example,we live by a huge lake in Turkey. The ostensibly public beaches are solely frequented by men and boys,stripped down to their underwear. The women's beach is a tiny patch of the worst beach,surrounded by a brick wall.A woman wouldn't dream of swimming on the miles and miles and miles of 'public' beach.

But no,the promiscuous feckless Vicky Pollards of our country are not a great advertisement for the emancipation of women are they??

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well part of what i hat about austen's world, is the class system. how you cannot better yourself, except by marriage.its all so stultifying. the son of a lord is supposedly a better person than the son of a blacksmith. aand a woman of high class is good only for marriage and producing heirs, whilst a low class woman can be seduced without any major consequences. oh, and the whole idea of bastards.
uggghhh.

I can't help be compare my life (and the women I see around me and compare it to my mother's and my grandmothers and thank god that I live now and bless the freedoms that I have.

I'm not saying that life in the UK is perfect for women, it obviously isn't, and I'm not saying that it is equitable, but it is so much better than has gone on before, and goes on in other parts of the world.

We are free to limit the size of our families...my gran would have thought she had died and gone to heaven over the choices that we hace that are free and available to any woman in the uk....without our partners say so.

We are free to have our children grow to maturity...my grandmother lost 3 children out of 6 and this was the norm.

We have free education to 18. My great gra was illiterate, my gran left school at 12, my mother at 14. We have assisted education even further, and as women we have equal access....I was in the first year my collage took women in 400 years.

We have the freedom to work. Yes, with that come extra pressures, but also extra benefits. My gran had no choice, and neither did her friends, they would look at our choices and be astonished.

We have freedom of movement, no longer resricted bt stays and long, heavy hot clothes, I don't know about you but I wore loose clothes this summer. But If I wanted to, I would wear a vest and shorts and it was my choice! My grandmother sweated in long skirts, with a pinched in waist that prevented her taking a deep breath.

I reapeat, am I free, provbably at least as free as my dh. I don't live in heaven, but who does?

moondog, part of the problem is religious, women in isalm are supposed to cover up, whilst for men the admonition is to lower their gaze. unfortunatly most societies have interpreted this as free license for men to practically weld tents onto their women, whilst men are just ..... oh i can t think of a word bad enough.

Pruni, read Jane Austen a bit more and you will see that the choice was - marry a man (ANY man, no matter how repulsive, even cruel) by the age of 27, or never marry, be regarded as an outcast by society, and slave for your parents until you die. Not such a choice. And it is the reality of life for many societies around the world for women today. I think we are careless of our freedoms simply because we take them for granted. It sounds lovely and simple to be married and taken care of of, but what if your husband is cruel, or violent, or abusive? It's not that uncommon. Thank God for divorce, for abortion, for mortgages for single women. I relish the freedoms we have.
Good god, I wear 'loose cotton clothes' every day! Today I am wearing a £2.50 primark cotton t-shirt with an ancient long Ghost skirt. I don't think men faint with lust at the sight of me and I couldnt' care less. In fact, atm, I feel I live in an entirely female world anyway as I can't work much due to lack of childcare. Do I want to live as a slave or a free woman? Is this really a question that needs an answer?

well said hmb

the admonistion for men is that they should also cover their arms and legs....IIRC....but they often 'forget' that bit while insisteing on correct dress for their women

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Well said hmb.
Arguably,because we are so well off (in the sense of being free) we are now creating emotional/psychological problems for ourselves to fill the void.

The empty self indulgent ranting and whingeing of some women I know (generally childless) has caused me to foreclose on a few friendships in the last couple of years.

but we are supposed to be comparing parts of the world with the uk, as opposed to timelines.

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We are astonishingly free!

And with that freedom comes the time to refect and nit pic.

I laughingly say that dh and I get on so well because we have all manner of shit drop on us from outside sources. We have all the panics that we can cope with and so never feel the =need to 'generate' them within our relationship

I'd put my freedoms up against anyone's. People wanting to read about lack of freedom for wone should read the Bookseller of Kabul and see the casual contemt that the women were treated with. And yes I do realise that this isn't representative of all islam, in the same way that all western wone are not in thrall to their men (what and asinine thought!)

but it is funny pruni,
i remember in school, i grew up in saudi arabia, learning about this in one breath, and being encouraged to cover up so much as to wear gloves whilst all saudi men in the shops etc would openly leer at you. as if!

must go to bed now.
must stop spending life on mn.
must must must

pruni - can't play the piano - but my sewing is improving!

HMB - you are right - we do have more choices now and therefore more freedom I guess. But we also seem to have assumed more responsibility. Which is of course right and proper. I think a lot of women who don't have a partner who can carry the can financially while the kids are young (as you are lucky enough to have and good for you) find there is a lack of choice (and theerfore freedom). of course it is all a construct of the capitalist society and our material expectations being raised etc. but we still find ourselves in a bind.

So, I don't feel I have much of a choice (freedom) re. going back to work. But I do feel free in lots of other ways HMB mentioned (contraceptives etc) - however am still not happy to walk the streets late at night alone or drink in a pub on my own (although I used to do this when a more radical feminist in my youth, to prove a point I think)

brain is mush now, sorry

Pruni, you can take what I say and extrapolate it across the world. There are pleanty of muslim women out in the world who can only access contraception if their husband's allow it

Who the appalling curate - Lady Catherine De Burgh's protege? If that doesn't cure anyone of nostalgia for JA's era, I don't know what will!
My point is, this is what life is like for many women around the world right now. Marry or be less than nothing. And marriage is ownership. You are someone's possession, to be treated however they like.