The women's room - anyone listening on r4?

[puddle]

I read this when I was about 16 and it was life changing for me - not the greatest work of literature but a book that really opened my eyes to feminism.

I am really enjoying the women's hour seralisation of it - but wondering whether 16 year olds now would relate to it in the same way I did - it sems very dated now (not helped by the music they are using!

I read it too a couple of decades ago. Good choice for Women's Hour.

There was an interview with Marilyn French in section 2 of The Times yesterday. I didn't agree with everything she said, but some of it still rings true unfortunately.

I read MF's article in yetserday's times. She is right that worldwide at the moment women are not having too good a time given the rise in fundamentalism, reverting to islamic law, the numbers of girls still circumcised, the new laws which say 2 women are needed to counter the evidence of one man etc etc and Bush intervening in Iraq has set women's rights back but I suppose that suits conservative US Christian fundamentalists no end anyway.

But I don't agree with her hopelessness over most major EU countries. I think women are doing much better at getting fairness and equality and in their choices than they used to 30 years ago. We certainly shoudn't be complacent even in the UK. The real battle is at home - ludicrous assumptions that only women can clean or that men should never take paternity leave but those matters are really in the hands of individual women.

Completely agree that it is up to INDIVIDUAL women to assert themselves and their rights in the home. But it helps them no end if they have networks of support to understand (a) that this is legitimate behaviour (b) how to negotiate with their partners.

I agree and how we bring our children up makes a difference too.

I read MF's book when I was about 17 and read the aticle in yesterday's Times2. I do not know what a feminist or feminism is. Can someone enlighten me?

My view of the definition is simply ensuring fairness for men and women. So for example it used to be lawful for women teachers to be paid less than men or for women to be forced to give up work when they got married and we change the law because we thought that was unfair. That is is all it is. Most women and even men agree with those principles these days so it doesn't need to be talked about so much although we still have a lot of equal pay cases in the public sector going on which are (he he he) leading to reductions in male wages.

Definitely. Women should never serve or wait on their children - never do anything for a child that he/she is capable of doing for himself is my mantra.

You certainly don't give them life skills if they don't do some things for themselves about when they're busy inevitably parents end up doing things for them.

It does differ culturally, though. My twins have some friends with parents from India and the last boy they went to play with has 3 older sisters. The yougnest 2 children only have school fees paid and the boy (the youngest) gets the family computer etc because of his sex I'm sure. After all they murder hundreds of baby girls in India and China every year some even after birth.

Xenia - just shows that India and China have some catching up to do before their societies are as developed as our own...

I don't do much in the way of household chores for my stepsons which they find a bit complicated, being used to a full-time slave at their mother's house. But I do do a lot of talking to them about life, the world etc and am always lobbying for better educational opportunities for them and take them around and travelling and they are beginning to understand that women are for more that money (their mother) and household chores (their nanny).

I read it years ago but had forgotten much of it. Quite shocking to realise now that the 70's were like that - it seems unbeleivable that such attitudes were prevelant. Mind you 'Life on Mars' does something similar - seems such ah ugly time. Don't remember it that way.

I think schools could do more. Every child leaving school should know about past atrocities like in Nazi Germany and in Rwanda adn the slave trade, but should also know about how women were (and in many places still are) treated.

Schools could always do more... I think that the most valuable lessons of all on treatment of women by men and men by women happen in the family.

If you believe in equal pay for equal work, does that make you a feminist? Noone seems to be able to give me a good definition of feminism.

caroline1852 - you are quite right to be confused.

Xenia thinks she's a feminist whereas I think she's anything but a feminist. Why? Because she believes that women need to work full-time like men in order to be equal to men. I think that implies that women who decide to nurture their children and families - which I believe is bioligically instinctive to many women - are in some way "lesser beings" than men and therefore I reject her vision of feminism out and out.

In my vision of feminism, women are respected and appreciated as equal to men when they are men's INTELLECTUAL equals. That is what education for women is on the path to achieving. However, women still do not generally have the individual or collective self-confidence to assert their equality unless they are in the work place.

Well, it's just believing that women are equal members of, & contributors to, society & that they deserve to be treated accordingly. I don't know how old you are, Caroline, but until 1976 women in the UK were not entitled to the same pay for the same job, or could be discriminated against simply because of their gender. Apart from during the two world wars (when, hmm, we were deemed useful) women in white-collar jobs were expected to give up work once they got married, & definitely once they had children. They couldn't take out bank loans without a man's guarantee, there was no contraception, if you got pregnant out of wedlock it was the biggest shame - girls were sometimes committed to lunatic asylums for years just for having illegitimate babies... I could go on. The women's movement aimed to change all that.

Personally, I think any self-respecting person should say they are a feminist.

& having read Anna's post... women should be free to choose whether they stay in the workplace or not after having children - that choice just wasn't available to them in the past.

Anna I prefer your version of feminism to Xenia's! I think women who compete with men, according to rules determined by men have completely lost the plot.
I am slightly playing devil's advocate in asking for a definition as I think lots of people don't know what it means. It means different things to different people.
I am a feminist if it means that women are respected for their unique qualities. I am not a feminist if I need to be dropping off my baby to nursery at 7am, catching the train, and working in industry that was previously the domain of men only - oh and being rewarded with equal pay to the men. Is this really being empowered?

Caroline1852 - I realise that you are playing devil's advocate but that's fine too.

I quite agree that the sacrifices women have to make to compete on a level playing field with men in many jobs are totally incompatible with any sense of female empowerment.

I don't want to be equal to a man - I am not equal to a man. Not better (well perhaps just a bit!) not worse just totally different. So different in fact that comparisons do not and should not apply.

I quite agree.

I am totally different to my partner.

He is big, strong man who runs a company (practically with his eyes shut), flies a plane, skies off-piste, drives for 8 hours without a break and picks up all three of his children in one go.

But he can't manage his parents, run the house, choose clothes on his own, negotiate with his children or make a whole meal.

We're different but that's just fine.

Scamp - you say every self respecting person shouls say they are a feminsit -difficult to say you are feminist if you don't really know what it means!

Anna - Agree totally. If feminism is something good then it is recognising and respecting the uniqueness of being female.

Obviously I mean, if you understand the issues.

I'm of the men are from Mars, women from Venus bent myself. I have 2 DSs & never cease to be amazed how unrelentingly 'male' they have been practically since birth. I actually worry that society has been feminised to such an extent that boys aren't really allowed to be boys any more - their natural exuberance has to be reined in all the time or they're expected to be on the Ritalin...

As long as you don't also think as most people in the UK in the 1880s thought that women just didn't have the brains or ability to be doctors and lawyers. Presumably Anna accepts that women whether childless or with children could equally well run a company as well as her partner.
No one has disagreed about feminism on here. It means men and women first of all should be equal under the law which on most of the planet they aren't and weren't here until relatively recently. It also means to me that men should equally be allowed to be stay at home fathers if they choose that and women should not pressure them to work. Some men are suited to caring nurturing roles at home and others aren't. People just differ.