Equality at home - Can this really be achieved?

[marga73]

There is an issue I've been wanting to discuss for a long time. It's the issue of equality inside the house.

Even though women now work and are able to gain respectable positions in the workplace, and we can say that some level of equality has been attained, it seems to me that once they have children, women lose more than men in terms of work opportunities and financial independence. And all because the house and the children still seem to be a "woman's job".

It's all great to find women who are happy being the SAHP, but don't these women feel sometimes that being 100% financially dependent on their husbands is frustrating? Doesn't this situation make them feel trapped and powerless? Is it OK for women to sacrifice their independence for the sake of their children and the house keeping?

I work part-time, and have two small children, and still feel trapped sometimes. I'm grateful in many ways that my husband earns enough so we don't have to worry about paying for mortgage, food, childcare etc - and I contribute to this too - but I feel it's far beyond from the ideal I had when I was young and it really annoys me. If I'm honest, it makes me very angry.

I would like a society where men and women work part time, share domestic tasks 50/50, and look after their children part time, and therefore pay for everything on equal terms. Is this too much to ask in the fierce capitalist society we live today? Am I naive to think that should be the case?

Quite.

I think it would be a very sad world if the only thing that counted was how much money you earned.

There is so much in life of huge value that doesn't have a 'cash alternative'.

What I'd like to see is a way of protecting the interests of those who do these apparently 'valueless' things (that needless-to-say allow the more important commercial world to function). At the moment, too many women perform these vital roles and yet get shafted at the end of it. That's not fair.

The world would come to a grinding halt if people all thought that way Bonsoir. I met a graduate last week-doing voluntary work. He was British, but had grown up in US and been to university there and he said that he was back because he liked the idea of community and not having to think dollars about everything you did.
If everyone is so busy working at top jobs who is going to give up time to be a cub leader-take them on camps, run youth clubs, volunteer for the national trust, feed the homeless and all the other 1001 things that people do because they enjoy it and want to put something back-all unpaid. Or do you have to wait until you are 60+?

"At the moment, too many women perform these vital roles and yet get shafted at the end of it. That's not fair."

Yes, I agree.

All the jobs that I would really enjoy are not going to earn me much, but would give real job satisfaction which is priceless. I would like to be an archivist-I doubt they earn much.

In our family we make and have made lots of money and will continue to do so! It just isn't the most important thing in our lives and we therefore think long and hard about taking up new opportunities to make more money, and the impact that those opportunities would have on our carefully constructed work/life balance.

In Xenia's world there would be no child care, no shop workers, no waitresses, no care for the elderly because they are all aiming too low and a disgrace to the female sex!
She ended the last thread like this without telling me how lawyers and doctors would cope when they can't get a meal out or buy things in a supermarket or get child care or their elderly parents cared for.

In Xenia's world the only respectable career is a monolingual lawyer. Her DCs are going to be in for a big shock if they follow her career advice!

It is lucky that we are all different-I wouldn't be a lawyer for any money.

I think she finds doctors a respectable career choice-another thing that I would hate-unless on the purely caring side.

I know lots and lots of highly successful lawyers - 50% of the parents at DD's school must be lawyers - and they all say the same thing - if you aren't multilingual and can work in several jurisdictions, the future is very bleak indeed.

Gosh, how retro so many people are. You are missing the feminist point. The part timers with the husbands, the housewives all think it's pretty good they are at home and dont' seem to appreciate the reason wopmen have so much difficult getting to positions of power is because so very many of these housewives take that choice. They kick working women in the teeth and then seem to think they are making some gender neutral personal choice. The living off male earnings and dependence on men and lack of power and money which women earn is at the heart of feminism.

(Rather bizarre comments given every country has different laws and of all careers the most national is probably law.... whereas medicine is pretty much similar as a heart is a heart is a heart)

have to say as the sister of a highly skilled legal translator who has moved back to england and found it impossible to find work in her field the multilingual bit really doesn't apply in this country.

unless you are living overseas and translating into english there's not much opportunity to use languages.

legal companies, businesses etc in europe all have their own long established translation departments and infrastructure for dealing with the language issues of multinational business. here there's bugger all.

the translation work she does manage to get is from the country she used to live in and her contacts there. nothing from the uk.

anyway - rather irrelevent to this thread sorry.

That just isn't what's happening, swallowedafly. Lawyers who are now senior partners in global firms are largely monolingual but they won't recruit junior lawyers who aren't tri or quadri lingual and qualified in more than one country - no need to, as the market is awash with them. The monolingual lawyers only able to work in a single jurisdiction are going to be doing very limited and unrewarding work in future.

I am certainly not discounting bons' point that language knowledge is important but I am afraid the French just don't get it. They have lost the international battle over languages. The English have won. Of course Mandarin in China can be pretty useful although even there 3 minutes ago I was emailing in English a new Chinese client who presumably either knows English or he is doing a google translate every few minutes as we email. I am going to an EU state tomorrow on business and the whole thing is in English. I go to companies all around the world and the company language is usually English even if as in one company they had 40 nationalities represented in their company in that office.

However language GCSEs are some of the hardest (which is why many state schools don't do many of them and concentrate on basket work GCSE instead) and I have certainly encouraged my children to do languages and they have all been at schools where you must do at least one foreign language.

I don't want to be in a position of power-I make my personal choice and I am not going to do it so that I can help other women do something that I don't want. It isn't as if women who get to positions of power are doing anything except deride those who are quite happy doing things that interest them.

Margaret Thatcher got to the top-and she didn't help other women.

I have just been out to get some milk. I got back and DH is doing the ironing-I didn't ask him to -it isn't my ironing -it is our ironing.
I am just about to go out to do 6 hours of voluntary work-I love it.I shall be talking to all sorts of people, using a lot of skills and doing something very useful but I don't get paid.

I do some paid work, which all helps. DH earns our money on the whole. A lot of it is in my name so I could run off with it! He knows that I won't.

It is a partnership.

I appreciate that a lot of people find law interesting and you can do it in all countries (I have my doubts) . I am just grateful that someone else wants to do it-I class it as boring. Luckily we are all different.
As you say, a heart is a heart is a heart-pretty boring after a while unless you get a very interesting case.

While I am out DH is entertaining and getting lunch for my elderly mother. We don't have this MN thing of 'my mother' she is 'our family.

I don't think I've said what I do. The bottom line is that as long as women are the ones playing second fiddle and not having any interest in money and work women will never get anywhere and gains alread made will kbe lost. More intersting is why in individual couples is it always the woman shooting her career to pieces and staying home and working part time. Is that because women marry someone who earnsm ore or because they aren't up to brain surgery or they are lazy or just interested in nurturing and not cut out for work? Is it nature, nurture? It's certainly not coincidence that so very often it is women at home and men out earning money.

You haven't- but I have been told. I am not going to say because I wouldn't want to be 'outed' and I didn't ask to be told.
We have someone in the family who does the same thing (from a northern comprehensive). She loves it doesn't have children and is a workaholic. It suits her-I would hate it and don't aspire to it at all. I don't want to work in London for a start.
If I was a man I wouldn't want a position of power either. It takes up too much of your life.
In my case I am the one staying at home or working part time because DH is ambitious-I am not. I love having the choice.

I am not second fiddle! I merely choose not to see myself as defined by how much money, status and power I have.

Anyway-I am off to work hard for 6 hours for no pay-and I will have a lovely time too!

In high tax societies there is inevitably more equality - the lower paid do not get left behind while the well paid buy their privileges (education, healthcare, property).

The German model where high tax is paid , coupled with decent laws that enable flexible working which is protected, decent wages and respect for manual and support type work means services are good for everyone. Good services are key to ensure flexible working for all.

This government and several before have spent decades chasing their tail by trying to encourage equality with discrimination laws, 'parental choice' in schools and healthcare, sure-start centres and tweaking the tax and benefits system to the point that nobody knows whether they are up nor down. And in the end they tackle a few symptoms but never get to the cause.

Their ineffective wrangling has supplied billions to consultants, lawyers, paper-shifters of various kinds while we all take each other to tribunal and question our rights. It has created the Daily Mail reader, the smug opinionated person who wants so desperately to play the game but finds it easier to blame their fellow Brits for all the trouble that this bizarre sytem has caused our now confused nation.

And that's why I laugh in the face of those who think that finding fault in each others lifestyle choice is somehow going to get us anywhere at all. We are all jumping through ever more impossible hoops and the longer we put up with it the more power divided we become.

I dont think there is anything wrong with being a sahp. Some of my friends do it and I can see why it works for their individual families. What I do see as an issue for feminism, is the vast majority of cases, its done by women and this is a perpetuation of a type of inequality.

bonsoir i'm sure it's true in france - it just isn't here sadly. there are very few jobs for people with european languages. my sister and several of her friends who she studied with or worked in france or germany with have all moved back over the last decade or so to england and all have found the same thing.

we sell languages to kids as real earning potential qualifications but it's only the case if you are going to go and live in mainland europe where the translation takes place. here everyone trades and works in english - the weight of the multi lingual problem has fallen on the rest of europe and they've done it so effectively there's no need for it to be done here. english still prevails as the common language it seems in euorpean business - they employ english people there to get round things. and very often that's relatively cheap labour as it's youngsters in their 20's just out of uni and happy to get to live overseas and perfect their languages.

Basil the point I was trying to make was that may it be possible that SAHPing is undervalued because it is generally an unskilled occupation? That it's something anyone can do.

Not a deeply held conviction but just a thought I think is worth exploring. I don't even believe everyone can do it (I for one am pretty crap at it - not crap at parenting in general, but just the SAH part). But I think it's a bit more complicated than just it being held in low regard because it's traditionally a female role.