Can you be a feminist housewife?

[wigglybeezer]

Can you be a feminist if you don't have a career but your DH does, especially if this situation has been going on for a long time (13 years in my case)?

I don't feel downtrodden by the way, merely a bit bored and lacking in choice ATM. I earn a small amount of money, so don't have to ask DH for everything but I'm wondering if my Granny (who was a hospital consultant) was a better feminist than me. I just found a photo of her and her pals at medical school where she has noted on the back that there were 18 female medical students out of 180!

Well yes, but your refrain of "the criteria, the criteria" did rather suggest that it was the definition you were struggling with rather than the economics.

i have absolute grasp on eligibility criteria and funding mechanism and economics

i fear others here do not

and saying oh well society defines carers
a carer is carer is a carer
is lame and does nothing to address or acknowledge that actually state imposes criteria and eligibility to prevent drain and demand upon finite resources

oh rattle,pram time
cheerie then

your argument is flawed,could drive a bus through it
society can define anything.purely subjective
but its state that pays
and state has finite resources and too many statutory demands already.without paying housewives

The state is funded through taxation. Were this to happen, we would need to pay more tax. I'm pretty sure that was brought up in one of the posts suggesting it, so people aren't avoiding the issue. Your posts about eligibility did not reflect your perfect grasp perhaps, as they made you sound like it the critera themselves were immutable and not that the "state", presumably the government we elect (kind of) can change criteria if they so decide and try to fund the consequences in a number of ways.

quite simply demand more from state=pay highr taxes and ni. the state is at breaking point at moment without unnecessary additional financial burden of paying housewives.is a private individual act,negotiable between parties involved.no need for state remuneration or involvement.at all

eligibility criteria can be changed.yes
imposing demand for more papework, medical assessment,interview is utilised to decrease demand. as has happened under current gov

Well, quite. That was sort of my point.

Look, I'm not advocating state payment for SAHPs. I've said more than once on this thread that I think it would be expensive and ineffective at meeting the intended goals apart from any other issues.

I just like mulling things over is all.

do you know of any countries who pay housewives?does anyone do it

Good Lord, you're on a loop!

equally extolling virtues of paid housewife doesnt make it desirable or fact either

you see that how mn usually goes people tend to remain within an ideological stance

dont tend to go.hold on 416 posts time for a wee change.liven up the party

how would you finance it
wouldn't more childcare mean less housewives,is that your intention?
if using ft private nursery would you get free and/or subsidised state childcare

Through taxation.

Don't understand the 416 post ideological stance bit.

Look, the basic premise of post industrial capitalism is that it depends on women's slavery. That is, that men earn money and own women(as in each man owns at least one woman; women who are not in a couple-relationship with a man are owned by a father or brother, to do all the domestic work, childcare (and caring for elderly relatives as well). It's not that long ago that women were legally forbidden to own any money - if they inherited any, it became the property of their husband or other male guardian, if they earned any it was the property of their husband or male guardian (because poor women, working class women, always earned, they had to in order to keep the family afloat). Up until about 40 years ago it wasn't hidden, it was accepted and legally endorsed that women should be paid less than men for doing identical work; the man's wage was a 'family' wage (even if the man was childless and unmarried) while the woman's wage was 'pin money'.
This is why, even now, all the jobs that are percieved as 'women's work', all the caring, childminding, tending the sick or dying, cleaning etc, are atrociously paid. When DS was a baby, his keyworker at nursery, who was NVQ3 qualified in childcare, left the nursery to go and work on a supermarket checkout as the pay was considerably higher.
This is all very wrong, and what worries me at present is that the current government might decide to reintroduce the idea of a 'family wage' ie paying men more in order to put more women back under male control and make them work doing cleaning and childcare for free.

people usually maintain the same ideological stance
did you call it on a loop
and yes that means a consistency in how idea is framed.loop or not im not likely to say hey up.lets have wee change. it is too much loop

sgb,do you want men paying women for housewifery and family childcare .that sits badly with me.and has enormous implication for sense of entitlement or notion of services paid for attached to it

It was a comment on your vocabulary rather than your ideology. You say the same thing over and over again. Not the same argument. The same words. I think that's what Lenin meant by "going Paxo".

and?again it interests me ,the nuances of paid to be housewife if kids are absent.its a contradiction

SM: I think that domestic care work should be recognized as deserving of an income and therefore both child benefit and carers' allowance should be increased to the point of being a living wage - this to be funded by higher taxation on higher earners, because there is a societal benefit to this work being done in the home rather than outsourced, and therefore it is work deserving of an income in the same way that maintaining the drains and the streetlights and the road surfaces is work that benefits everyone. A percentage of our taxes funds hospitals even if we as individuals never get ill, and schools even if we as individuals remain childfree.
I can't see this happening in the current political and economic climate, of course, but I think it's something to ask for, discuss and campaign for.

Good points about capitalism depending on the free labour of women, SGB.

The system cannot function without women's cheap (and mostly free) labour, however, as SM has so clearly demonstrated, those same women are vilified for not 'having a job', 'dipping into partner's wage', 'asking for pin money'.

This is not about individual set-ups (which most of us seem happy with) but about society and the value society places on 'woman's work'

Anyway, Lenin is right. All over the place women are going on reproductive strike and governments are panicking about their ageing populations. It is hardly surprising when the only work that is seen to have value is that which earns money outside of the home.

I like sAf solution of heavily subsidised/free child-care and tax credits if not used.this should be paid to the parent caring for the children and home, not the one earning outside the home.

We should no forget that society depends on all the labour done within it, and it is not just about our own little family set-ups.

I agree with SGB and theRealMBJ.

but OP - this has obviously moved on from your original question and my answer would be yes, you can be a feminist.

For a start, if you are earning money then it is your personal viewpoint that this isn't a career. A lot of this is down to an evaluation of your capabilities - I do it too, I have a job rather than a career (or "proper job" as i tend to refer to it). There are other people doing the exact same job as me though who view it as being a proper job - just because i took a massive pay drop and am over-qualified for this particular position doesn't mean that it isn't a proper job...

I do think that some women are better feminists than others in that they break down barriers, make a stand, make a noise - so it seems likely that your gran had to make more of an effort to follow what she wanted to do, but the fact that what you want to do isn't breaking boundaries doesn't make you a bad feminist IMO.

Out of nosiness, what choices do you feel have been closed off to you? And are they closed off because of earlier choices you made in support of your husband?