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.

coming back briefly to a couple of points.
tribpot - my argument is based on the assertion that (middle class women) the suffragettes wanted votes for women on the same basis as men, but a large proportion of men still didn?t have the vote at the beginning of the 20th century, so such a demand excluded many working class women and men.

i have no doubt therefore that the suffragettes wanted equality - but what was their equality? it wasn't as simple as equality for all.

oh and as a further counternance to this argument, in its historical place, the rights of more men to vote - I would wager was in part becuase the French had revolution not in the very distant past - and WHOA! what a revolution, there was continuing unrest and those in power got itchy.

so a few property owning men, with some money as well i think - so they had to have a certain amt of money too, got some more rights. the same year as the London Society for Women's Suffrage formed to campaign for female suffrage.

all womens suffrage?

they wanted equality remember! but that equality was not equality - are you still with me?

sorry - the other comment i think was senorapostrophe mentioning about men not working at asda!

good point - its mostly students as far as i can tell, with a good proportion of middle aged women and retired men ...well obv,. not but YKWIM.

i have been out of the benefits system for a long while and i havent got young children, and therefore my knowledge isn't up to date - but i wonder...and i dont know... but i have an inkling that the nenefits system and WFTC is geared more to women working in line with the needs of such service industries,

which is a whole other thing i cant get into cos mi brIan is frazled - sommat about taining, oppotunities or promotion, the workplace in general.

and UCMs point ( i think) regarding male equality -

what equality in the workplace is this - if i am supposed to forfeit my place in the workplace all the fucking time becuase i get time allowed for the effing dentist and emergency school chicken pox stuff.

in any given family - if the female has an employer moreundertanding - it makes sense that she would end up being the primary carer becuase of the understanding employer - which i would wager means that she is tutted at behind her back for leaving early again is passed over for promotion becuase jonathon never leaves to get kids from school yadd a yadda - you know where this is going - so this equality female primarty carer shit - its not equality - its chains MAN, chains, your not seeing! equality for all should mean that - shoudl mean my dh gets to get the effing phone call from school when my ds beats someone up, when my dd gets bullied, when my other ds bangs his head .......

but no - he is mr effing reliable - and i end up looking like i cant tell my arse from by elbow.

equality?

My DH is at home because he had a thriving business in London. BUT couldn't compete with the Polish builders. Thankfully, we have had a few calls from old customers, who have had them in and now want DH to go in to repair/replace stuff that has been done on the cheap. He has sort of said 'stuff you, if you don't want to use quality to start with...., but I whacked him on the head with the baby monitor and told him to go'

Cust I am lucky because of where I work, but I can tell you that most of te men think I am a fucking loser because I ahve taken the mat leave twice now.

I have worked in my office for 5.5 years and they must really hate me. What they don't realise is that I have worked a previous 7 years somewhere else without having children. WTF.

I will go back and say my usual 'You're just fucking jealous because when I have a hangover I can say my child is sick, you can't'

I know this is a bad thing to say but I would love to hear any other riposte from any other MN who work entirely with men, who do have hangovers.

Hunker, that women are because they want to be.

And that they have been exploited because of this.

Ah, yes, I'd agree with that, I think.

Lots of women need to work on misplaced feelings of guilt that I don't think men have in quite the same way. Feel guilty about things you can change, but not those you can't. But that's a confidence/self-awareness thing too, I think.

Actually, thinking about it, do men feel guilt in quite the same way as women?! [generalises wildly]

That would be an interesting study. From my personal experience my partner thinks the role of the father is ignored in all of this and they are expected to not mind having less quality time with their children.

So women feel resentful for being punished for being primary carer and men feel resentful for being considered latch key dads. There has to be a middle ground somewhere that doesn't mean men and women swap roles en masse, which wouldn't be sucessful anyway and again, people would be being forced into roles and not being allowed to define themselves as individuals.

I think men do feel gulity. My Dh works long hours during the week so he doesn't see DD as much as he would like. I know this weighs on him. I was sick not to long agao and he had a meeting he couldn't miss so I had to look after myself and DD and he felt awful.

MT, I suspect the middle ground you are looking for is called "Sweden".

Oh gosh, I'm posting here so it will appear on 'threads you're on' next time I get some time, gotta go but back tomorrow.

custy....your post of 23.41 last night.

i BOW to it.

I BOW. LOW

but

it is exactly what makes me a raggie (ragey? raggey?) feminist.

exactly.

Radgey

thanks monkey!

radgey it is.

i dont know what that is - i should go and google but can't be arsed

I think it's the "What have the Romans ever done for us" in "The Life of Brian" It probably doesn't seem as if feminism has done much for us and often I feel that way when I'm rushing to get the 3 boys out in the morning, am running late and there's always one who can't find his shoe. But if you think about it, the right to work, the right not to be beaten by your husband, the right to vote, the right to equal pay with men, the right to maternity leave, the right to be allowed to express breastmilk at work, the right to be supported by the state if your husband leaves, the right to be promoted, the right to choose what career you want................It's not bad.

was a word i learnt in durham meaning someone fiercely and aggressively something. radgeys in fact were beer drinkers out for a fight (as opposed to us e-generation ravers who just wanted to talk crap all night and dance).

so a radgey feminist is a fierce one. i think.

i'd love to know if there is a life of brian link though!

the right to work, ... POOR women have always worked
the right not to be beaten by your husband, did feminists give us this right?

the right to vote.. again i would argue that the suffragettes view of equality is not what we consider it to be today - see my posts below

the right to equal pay with men ...did feminism do this?
the right to maternity leave... and this?
the right to be allowed to express breastmilk at work...and this?,
the right to be supported by the state if your husband leavesand this?, the right to be promoted...and this?, the right to choose what career you want...some - most dont have this right.

i would argue that you are attributing things to feminism just becuase women have better rights.

if feminism is such a major political force i'm a bit sketchy on the detail.

i mean some of these rights are reletivel recent...

wy attribute them to feminism?

Wow- what a good debate. Agree with so much on here and particularly that whilst we have so many better rights and the requisite legislation, society is still dominated by outmoded patriarchal thinking. Examples are how it is still assumed by so many that women are the most adept at nurturing parenting when we can probably all think of examples where men are just as capable.
What really concerns me though,is that whilst we now do have better control of our fertilty not nearly enough has been done by the medical profession to eradicate painful periods and to find a genuinely pain-free way of having children. Why is it beyond medical science to invent pain relief for period pain which actually works? So many young girls are plagued by this and it can seriously affect their performance at school - imagine sitting exams in excruciating pain - the boys don't have too. But the chattering classes would prefer to debate the 'problem' of girls outperforming boys at school - why exactly, is it a problem?

haven't read all of the posts, so don't know if I'm repeating, but feminism has allowed us the opportunity to think and debate about our lives, values, worth etc openly, and to believe that we deserve equality (whether we get it or not) without persecution or being considered to be mad.

Thank fuck for that. There are many women in the world that still lose everything they have, including their lives, for daring to do this.

I think the laws put in place to safeguard women's right in the work place have to a certain extent backfired. I have heard it often said by small businesses, and know personally one woman (who would consider herself to be an über feminist) who owns her own small business that she would not employ a woman of child bearing age as she couldn't afford the cost of maternity pay, the uncertainty of whether or not she would return to work, and the costs and disruption of hiring a temporary and then possibly a permanent replacement. So women have been given rights on the one hand, just to have them indirectly witheld on the other.

wrt the op, not sure feminism has achieved a whole lot. women have gained a huge number of rights, eg education, the vote etc, but as said, not sure this is due to feminism or not. My school (all girl's grammar) was ultra feminist. Our colours were Green White and Violet. The Pankhursts still rule there at least, (well, they did in my day) God forbid if abyone wanted to learn to (hushed tones) type we all had to be engineers or scientists.

Many women and men consider feminism to = anti men. Many view the 'equality' to mean women can or should act more like men 'ladettes' etc.

Equal doesn't mean the same.

I think it's not clear in many people's minds what they want/should aspire to.

has feminism undervalued motherhood? And women's desires to be mothers?

well without feminism this thread wouldn't exist - an important element was consciousness raising, getting women talking about what crap they had to deal with and that it didn't have to be like that.
30 years ago you couldn't get a mortgage as a single woman. 45 years ago my grandparents took it for granted they'd pay for my uncle to go to private school and/or university but not my (far brighter) mum because girls' education didn't matter. 40 odd years ago abortion was illegal and many drs wouldn't prescribe the pill unless you were married. 30 years ago female civil servants had to resign when they got married cos why wd anyone with a husband need an income?
i ain't knocking any movement that's given me a university education, property, a bloody good job with guaranteed right of return from maternity leave, the economic independence/social confidence not to get married til i met the right person, and control over my fertility til i actually wanted a baby. and that will give any future dd an infinitely better chance of fulfilling her potential than my mum had.
agree with senorapostrophe's feeling that getting lumbered with all the housework/childcare plus job is a bum deal but just shows feminism hasn't finished - and needs to sort out domestic as well as public realm.
blimey sorry for the long rant. question: without feminism would mumsnet exist?

it's given us the freedom to choose and a good education, but ultimately we can't fight our own bodies.

no, feminism is not to blame for society looking down on housework and mums. that existed before, men refusing to help around the house as it's 'women's work'.

feminism still has to give traditional women's roles the same status as men. we ARE contributing to society when we wipe pooey bums.

a question to those who think feminism wasn't responsible for the improvements in women's rights in the 20th century: what was responsible?

re maternity leave: it is a bit of an anomaly in some ways. we should allow more paternity leave to even things up a bit.

Interesting thread - about time we had some good discussions on here that challenge our underused brains!
With regard to the original question; Feminism has given us the freedom of choice. However, the paradox is that for me the amount of choices have been my nemesis and I've over-agonised about what a professional, educated woman in her 30's should do re having my cake and eating it! Too many choices are not always the best for ones mental health!!
I'm astounded when I hear of my friends who still do not have joint access to the family finances and have to whore themselves to their husbands to get some extra housekeeping, I'm also shocked by my 'freinds' attitudes when I announced that I'd made the decision to stay at home and take a career break. Too many of us mums are near breaking point because we refuse to challenge the notion of feminism and admit that today we are actually post-feminists, living in a world which challenges both the male and female gender roles whereby everything is up for grabs and redefinition. Oh, and good to get my teeth around something rather than sleep routines, etc