Do women oppress women just as much as men?

[Monkeytrousers]

Discuss.

Yes, most definitely so. I have generally have more problems with women than men. I am training for ministry, and there are a number of women I am sure would rather see me baking cakes for the church and cooking/serving food at church functions (I try to do those as well, but if I were a man, would they expect the same?). The training takes up a lot of my free time, I work p/t and have 2 children as well, and yet it is the women who are the first to complain if they think I am not "pulling my weight" in the roles more traditionally give to women in church. (rant over, )

Now Mary, that is very interesting. Usually when I walk into a new church the first thing I am asked is if I can run the creche. Would they ask my DH that? Most certainly not. Would they ask the older members of the congregation that? Most certainly not. Similarly my mate who is a local GP got sniped at for not offering to take a turn cleaning the church, and had to say she was too busy healing them all for that, but she could send her cleaner in if absolutely necessary. Now again, there is no way someone would ask her DH to clean the church. Attitudes to educated/working women in the Church are so out of touch with the reality of people's lives, it explains why they have all stopped attending.

Now if someone in the church had come around to see me when I had my miscarriage, or offered to take me down there now I am in a wheelchair with a pg complication, I might see them all differently. But it all looks very irrelevant to me now. Interestingly my kids have noticed this apparent hyposcrisy off their own bat and lost their faith.

Yes, women are their own worst enemies. I think this is because (a) women are incredibly competitive about a greater range of topics than are men (whose competitiveness mainly revolves around money earned and sporting prowess) (b) it is totally impossible to be the kind of all-knowing, all-doing, all-having, all-earning, all-mothering woman that societal ideals create for us as our objective in life. So any woman can always dismiss another woman because she isn't "having it all".

Oops! Shouldn't have assumed the thread was just about work.

It's interesting when you think about how other experienced mothers in the family respond to a new mum in the family - how many of us have not been on the receiving end of floods of unrequested 'advice'? It's not that I object to advice per se, but I do object to people offering their wisdom when you've not asked for it. It gives the impression that they think you're an utter brainless twit who has no idea what you're doing, and the natural corollary of this is that they believe they are the fountain of all wisdom on the issue they're pontificating about.

It does seem that when a MIL (I'll use that term to encompass all experienced mums in the family) continually tells her DIL what she's doing wrong as a mother and what she ought to do instead, her first reason for doing so is not actually to benefit the DIL but to boost her own self-esteem about what a fantastic mother she is - i.e. she's saying 'my way is the only way to bring up a child'.

This is certainly my experience of mums in my extended family.

Both, I think there is an accepted 'gender regime' in a given society, what men and women's roles are as defined by an overall mass of people, and this status quo can only function because men and women both go along with it, (and teach it to their children both formally and informally), and the balance of freedom/oppression is comfortable for both. It could be that women have greater potential to change things, particularly as they have more role in shaping kids (do they?).. It's interesting to see why gender regimes have managed to change, like women working outside the home more, and who's behind it; I don't know..