what has feminism ever done for us?

[SenoraPostrophe]

right girls, it's timne for a proper debate which isn';t about blardy weaning.

the motion is this:

feminism has not really acheived anything. women got the vote and were accepted in the workplace because of the world wars and not because of reason. Later, we accepted careers, but ended up neither having our cake nor eating it what with all the housework and childcare we were doing. and male hegemony still reigns supreme.

discuss.

Isn't that though why women are moving into the ascendancy, doing better (certainly below age 25) than men, getting jobs when they leave schools boys cannot get because now in 2007 it's skills women traditionally have that are valued and as you say people don't work in the same groups etc as before although today I was speaking to one man who is at an internal group - they have 1 woman out of 60 men at that director level. Not exactly hopeful... except it's not a very well paid sector so I suppose that shows women have more sense than to pick it.

interesting posts MT.

It's not about the survival of the species, it's about the survival of individuals, or even more specifically genes. It just so happens that things such as cooperation and alturism arise from this scenario. These are the basics we'd go back to.

*thread hijack for Monkey Trousers**
Am bumpbing a thread asking for you earlier. Hope you are okay.

Bloody hell, where have you been??

Despite any scientific evidence you might dredge up, I still feel that vanity is to be found equally between the sexes.

Maybe I just read too much Jane Austen.

'dredge up'

hell yes Senora!

before feminism woman had the house and the kids. now women have the house and the kids and a career and interests (that you have to have to fit in and impress, not because you like them, which would be fine!) and have to avoid 'letting themselves go' and can never be content with ok, but have to be the best and take full advantage of the opportunities available nowadays..........

it all means loads more stress and hassle and women put too much pressure on ourselves to do everything.

it seems that in the end, feminism benefitted men more than women!

"before feminism woman had the house and the kids. now women have the house and the kids and a career and interests"

Go back 100 years and most of our relatives worked male and female in factories or one of the 1m live in servants in Victorian England or in fields. It is a myth women never worked.

Also what you write above is marvellous. It's wonderful having children and working.

depends on what you mean by work Xenia. and the factories and workhouses were not nice places

Elasticwoman, what is it about the idea that women are relatively more interested in looks that you find so hard to accept; even in the fact of massive evidence?

I think that when we think about the past and what women's lives were like, we tend to think about our own mothers, grandmothers, greatgrandmothers. Our perception is coloured by our own family history.

So if your grandmother was a servant and you has yourself become a professional person, you might think that your life is rather much better in 2007 than it would have been in 1927. If your grandmother had been to university and was leading a very comfortable life with lots of servants, large houses and children with nannies and at private school, you might find the same job as the woman whose grandmother had been a servant a bit of comedown.

Yes, but very few women in the past had servants. So chances are most of our great grandmothers worked. Mine certainly all did. one had 17 children (and two husbands.. one died) and worked even!

I am sure women pay more attention to looks in most countries because their worth is judged by their sexual attractiveness and not their earning power as they are appendages to men. This will change if all mumsnetters ensure they marry men who earn less than them and become househusbands. The power is within your hands to effect change.

Actually, what is happening across the Western world is that MEN are paying much more attention to their looks and sexual attractiveness just as women are paying more attention to their earning power.

There is never going to be the role reversal you suggest Xenia

what an interesting debate - it's nice to find a debate about ideology rather than which brand-of-nappy-to-buy.

for my two pennies:

i am a feminist and proud of it.

it means i have access to education, birth control, good working conditions, the vote, access to knowledge, a career.this means in turn, i can educate my children to be positive and have access to knowledge without things like periods being wrapped in mystery. i'm very proud that all my children know about periods, where babies come from, what happens to your body as you become an adult, that poo is waste, where water comes from, where their food comes from etc(they are 6,3, 1).

i know i'm still discriminated against because i'm a woman and non-white, but at least i believe we can change things for the better.

Good, c. Also Anna I agree with that. Things are changing. I think most of the problem for those women who want to do better in their work is that in their relationship their partner can be sexist. Most couples who both work full time you tend to see the man is there helping as much as the woman and for many women those are much easier relationships than her trying to work full time whilst living with some male chauvanist pig she should never have married in the first place.

It's a good thing - men having to think in their 40s and 50s if the beer gut might in fact put women off even though the wallet might attract them. I reject men on looks grounds all the time.

Although I don't think we're reached a point where mostly we don't want men to work or aren't bothered in the way many men aren't bothered or quite like the quodos and status of supporting a trophy non working good looking clever wife. (just reading Hello magazine over lunch and ulricha Johnson with another man who is giving up his job and life and property in Sweden to move in with her when in last year's hello she was writing that her last marriage broke down because her husband looked after the children and she was having to keep the family - looks like a repeat of the same mistake)

..and on c's point I think in work race and age can be bigger problems than sex. Someone last week applied for jobs age 50 something and again as a 30 something; no interviews over 50, 6 interviews with identical CV in 30s.

Haven't read all of the thread as I am at work and my boss would notice that I had been glazed of eye for approx 5 hours, but one of my thoughts on the subject (sorry if it's repeating a previous post):

I'm grateful for lots of the things feminism has achieved. Access to birth control, expectation of fulfilling paid work if that's your choice, it being acceptable to have friends of either gender for example.

What I don't like is the feeling that I am judged by men on their terms now. If I don't want "it all" (i.e. kids career family life social life nice home and so on) I am not really a valued member of society. If however I do have all these things on my wish list then I am in the club.
If I'm honest what I want is to be able to be with my family and be a) valued for doing so and b) allowed to be fulfilled by this. (Because of course my mind must be incredibly soggy if all it took to fulfill me was spending my days with children, my home and other women and their children. )

Thoughts coming out in random order sorry if not propoerly thought through!

I agree that the domestic workload (housework and bringing up children) is by a very long way the greatest hurdle to the parallel advancement of two careers in a couple.

However, I think that it is not a simple issue of dividing the domestic workload down the middle between two people in a couple. The negotiation of who does what (and what is sub-contracted) is immensely complicated and many people have no good role models from whom to learn.

And also, should add that I do believe in the principle of equality but that I am unhappy about men being the ones in society who get to define what terms anyone is held up against- it shouldn't just be the bloke's standards that we have to achieve it should be a jointly "agreed" set of standards.
Have a nagging suspicion that when I dropped down to 4 days from 5 at work, when ds was about 18 months, that DH secretly thought "there we go, she couldn't cope with it. Women keep harping on about wanting the same as us men but when the cards are on the table they just can't cope." Dur, IT WASNT ME PERSONALLY who has shaped society's attiudes and i should be able to define my own life instead of living up to someone else's ideals!

OOoooh that one has obvioyusly been brewing up for a while

tatat - and how do you share out the domestic workload? Because if you are doing more of it, you should feel quite justified in needing that extra day a week that doing a four-day week at work allows you. And your husband should support you in that, since he isn't doing 50%.

Don't worry three are plenty of working mothers who are happy to judge stay at home mothers as dull and unfulfilled. It's not just men making those judgments because objective housewife stuff is deadly dull. It's nothing to do with male standards, success, earning power, macho things - it';s that many adults of whatever gender do for obvious reasons give greater status and admire more achievements outside of the home. This is not women being corrupted by men from their purity of enjoymen of domestic service caring and giving but humans of whatever sex knowing what is more valuable a thing to do - leading a nation or plc or hospital ward being more important and valuable than one parent bringing up one baby.

But more and more men are choosing to reduce their hours of work and are finding time at home with their young children more rewarding.

... except that not all jobs are valuable to society. Lots are quite destructive.

Good for them. When it's 50/50 that's fine. Many men have been denied their caring side and forced to be macho. It's nice culturally that is changing here.