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!

yes we do need to have that conversation with our daughters
stick in at school
get good job
dont be beholden to anyone else
retain a way of earning your own money
dont give up work,negotiate a share of tasks with your partner
dont be guilt tripped or kid self on that baies and childcare are women work and you shoulder the responsibility as nurturer and goddess
if you do give up work do so short term,and study and/or retain contacts and refs whilst looking after babies and plan to return to work when they at school

Or how about, work hard at school, get a good job and then you have a choice about how you live your life?

choice is good but be realistic that your life isn't enmeshed in someone else choice.thats not choice.if you dont earn then the wage earner job determines location,lifestyle etc and your choice if you want to maintain things is to fit in around their choice

And how about 'work that involves caring for others - paid or not - is not shitwork', and giving it some value.

Nope. Not always.

We moved where we live to be near my parents.

I have now bought two houses that DH only saw after we had agreed to buy them.

The main reason I don't work is that my professional salary is pitiful compared to DH's. He can earn in an hour what I earn in a day. It is simply not worth me working. Quite apart from wanting to or not.

I think it's very easy to wax lyrical about how you would always work if your partner is not particularly high earning and your salary makes a significant difference.
Quite different if you would be working for no financial gain whatsoever.

Still dying to know what super duper amazing non shit job SGB does...

I'm not at all sure that the dual-earner couple model provides more choice of location than the single-earner couple. IM (very extensive) E, couples where both partners insist on maintaining their careers never move anywhere, whereas in couples where there is more give and take about careers, there is much more flexibility for seizing interesting opportunities - and not necessarily determined by the earning party. By definition, the more constraints you have in life (and jobs are a massive constraint), the less flexible you are...

really?we have moved around uk and overseas.both working facilitated this
been remarkably easy

It is rarely easy for two people to get simultaneous overseas postings unless they are pretty junior.

I know lots of families who moved to Paris primarily because the woman in the couple really wanted to and was the driving force behind it (ie she chose the location) but the earner was/is the man .

Ditto SM.

some junior do move about
i wouldnt know about that though

Shitwork is still shitwork when it is done for pay - because the pay you get for shitwork is really low and this is born of the idea that it's women's work, and women don't need money, they work for love and duty and are kept by men. How your status is acknowledge in any kind of job is: the higher status you are the less shitwork you do - whether the shitwork in your particular line of business is errand-running, filing or data-entry. It's the repetitive but necessary work that is always delegated to the low-status, who are always told that it is their duty.

do you do shitwork,or have you procured a non-shitwork worthy well paid job

SGB - I don't think people do dull, repetitive, low paid, low productivity jobs out of duty - they do them because they don't have a better option - they have to work locally or limited hours, they lack education, training or self belief to do something more rewarding etc....Women, and particularly mothers who've been out of the workplace for a long time face more of these barriers, but so do new immigrants etc...

These kind of jobs will always be low value whoever does them because they lack economies of scale or progressive development of high level skills. Wages are low because there are low barriers to entry (qualifications etc..), because more and more of them can be one by machine (automatic tills etc..) and because if they are too costly they are just not affordable to do at all (childcare..) .

Work out how to avoid ending up in a job that can be done by a robot or a school leaver seems like good careers advice.

So SGB, a low skilled job is shitwork in your eyes?
Wow. I'm pretty gobsmacked at your arrogance.

All work is valuable .

And you STILL haven't told us what it is you do. I wonder if some of us might consider what you do a shit job? i suspect so, as you're so cagey on the subject.

Plenty of men do low paid shitwork as you call it, too. BIL has colleagues who chef all day/evening and work as cleaners in the early hours. When you get off the train in the morning clutching your latte, it is these men who will have cleaned the station floors following a 12 hour shift in a kitchen.

I think talk of paying a salary to those at home is unrealistic. Affordable childcare is needed and if you find yourself short of cash use the childcare and get a job.

Exactly Norman.

SGB clearly has nothing but contempt for people doing this shitwork.

I think there's dignity in work if you do it well. And you should be paid aliving wage to do it. But caring for children in your home? I'm not so sure.

I think SGB's point is that more women than men do low-skilled part time work with no prospect of advancement.

I suppose I will be doing shitwork soon in a call centre so that we can stop a further slide into debt . It's funny how concerns about self esteem while caring for your children become insignificant when faced with the need to keep family finances secure.

What would help me as a feminist would be some accessible subsidised childcare not a salary from DP for looking after our children - how the hell would that help us?

There is dignity in work and dignity in caring for others.

My problem is the way shitwork is atrociously paid, the people who do it are given low or no status and yet told to find 'dignity' or 'pride' in being ripped off and exploited. THey are also regarded as unfit for anything else; shitwork jobs offer no possibility of progress or promotion (wouldn't be so bad if they did).
And, going back to the OP's question, the thing to watch out for when you are a SAH mother is finding yourself responsible for all the shitwork and being percieved as of lower status than the wage-earner and therefore obliged to serve him ie the wage-earning man gets first dibs on all the leisure time available becuase he 'works hard' despite having set hours to do so and despite the fact that looking after children is work.

true true riven, we share eevrything too, if SGB's experience is of a partner who lords it over her no wonder she sounds a bit bitter

Just how do you define shitwork?
I don't consider caring for children and running a home as shitwork at all.
Lots of jobs are at minimum wage, it's purely personal opinion as to whether they are "shitwork" or not, there are jobs I wouldn't want to do no matter how well paid (or not) they are, Nursing for one, care home work, restaurant work, I hated shopwork with a passion, even though I've done plenty of it.
To me, all paid work is shitwork because I don't really want to work at all, I'd much rather be at home.

As has been pointed out, plenty of men have jobs that are shitwork too, I'd much rather take care of babies and children than work where my husband does, his staff slaughter and cut up chickens for a living and they all run the risk daily of picking up some lovely infectious diseases, DH is management but still contracted campilobacter when he was splashed with poultry innards.
Unfortunately, all the really essential jobs are poorly paid, the country would grind to a halt if it weren't for all the men and women doing the shitwork, but even so, one person's dream job is another's shitwork.