What is the patriarchy?

[EatsBrainsAndLeaves]

I am aware that we use words here like the patriarchy as if everyone understands what this means. I know when I first came on FWR I didnt. So I thought it mght be helpful if women who do understand it, explained what they understand the term patriarchy to mean.

Xenia, with respect, research shows that women still do more housework/childcare even when they earn more (while men do less the more they earn). Plus, tasks at home are often gendered, so men do the gardening (nice, peaceful and quiet outside) while women scrub the loo and referee the children. (Society Now, spring 2012)

I do agree that the problem with SAHMing is the financial dependency - but not the role in itself. The fact that the earning man can up and off and leave you up sh*t creek without a paddle, when you have sacrificed your career to make a nice home for him, you and your children.

That said, I am increasingly coming to the view that working full-time with children for most women means doing two jobs, unless you have one of these (almost mythical??) fair and feminist men. If a man is not going to pull his weight in the home, it is more honest of him to take the role of breadwinner, rather than in the guise of equality, expect his wife to earn a salary and do the lion's share of the child-rearing/domestic work. But then of course, that leaves her financially vulnerable.

So, I think the only unproblematic scenario is 50/50 work outside the home/work inside the home by both partners (which for all sorts of societal reasons is hard to achieve - ranks up there with the mythical fair and feminist man?).

Xenia I am broadly pro-capitalism. But I don't understand your statement that capitalism is supporting women being the main earner. In what way?

The interesting thing about capitalism is that, under it, different jobs quite frequently and easily shift up or down the scale in terms of how well respected they are and how much money they bring in. For example, doing work to do with computers was once considered very feminine (women have such good attention to little details, it's a bit like being a secretary, it's not very inventive), and wasn't well paid. Now it is massively male-dominated and much better paid. It's not always about gender - being a vicar used to be a plush job, but had stopped being so long before women vicars came into the C of E.

So it should really not be implausible to imagine childcare becoming one of those jobs that is well respected and well paid. But for most of us it seems like a castle in the air, doesn't it?

Women are doing better than they were . They now out earn men up to the point when they have babies in the UK. More women are millionaires under 40 than men in the UK. They do better in exams and mroe go to university. By 15 years' time I think most women will earn more than most men in the UK.

I do think some of them are silly enough to accept seixst men. Why over 20 years ago could I ensrue we both did as much as each other at home but today some women cannot achieve that? Why if you both work full time would a woman take on the whole of the "second shift"? I don't understand that.

I don't accept chidlrecare should ever be well paid. it's boring and anyone can do it just like cleaning where as most of us could not do brain surgery. Of course men will subcontract cleaning their houses and minding screaming babies for 12 hours a day to women. So do women when they have decent jobs and enough money to do that.

It is hopeful that women are doing better than they were, but IMO it's not enough.

I don't agree with you childcare shouldn't be well paid. But I do accept I'm not a mum so my opinion doesn't count for much. When I do bits, I don't find it either boring or easy to do - or not to do successfully. It is true anyone can put a row of children into playpens, feed them on a timetable and leave them to scream/stare at nothing, but that's neglect.

I don't see how it's like cleaning, either. My kitchen floor doesn't have a brain or anything interesting about it.

But, even if you do believe childcare should never be well paid - what is the answer to this central question of who you think will do it? If all the women are out being well paid workers and so are all the men?

Xenia -- "Choose to behave like men". That is a very sexist phrase. Who says only men can be those things? Plenty of women are. To suggest women are not ambitious, pleasing, delicate flowers, no interest in money but men are shows women have hardly got anywhere even amongst their own kind on a feminist thread never mind elsewhere in the wider world.'

No not sexist. It is what women feel pressured to do when they work in a no holds barred capitalist system in a field of work dominated by men at partner level. A lawyer in a major American city for instance, where there are virtually no laws to protect her employment -- she can be fired at will, there is no maternity pay, where a condition of her employment is that she bill 3,500 hours every year. Billing 3,500 hours every year means working approximately 70 hours every week. A friend of mine returned with her baby to her office two weeks after a CS. She had been working from home from the day she got out of the hospital.

She really loved the freedom. And the choice. It was actually physically painful for her to get from her home to her office, by car and train, often standing in the train. Then dealing with the jostling as she hauled herself out of the subway and along the sidewalk to the building. And the rush for the lift. And the squeeze in the lift. Carrying her baby with her because no nursery would take him at that age, and her briefcase and the changing bag..

Really Xenia, you are deluding yourself if you think women would like money enough to go through that. This particular woman did it because if she didn't then nobody would pay her rent for her. Or her law school loans. Or her car payment, her utility bill, her part of the medical bills from the CS -- remember no NHS in the US so she was stuck with 20% of a bill over $50,000 just for her doctor and the hospital. She hadn't had a bill from the anesthetist yet at that point. Her husband was also a lawyer and took no paternity leave just in order to keep up the cashflow. I did not know any male lawyers under the level of partner who took time off for paternity leave (or their full one or two weeks vacation leave or their quota of sick days or personal days every year) because as long as there were others brown nosing in any given office it was not a good idea to do so. This is capitalism in the raw and you are welcome to it.

Of course she could have done what another lawyer friend of mine did and have an abortion because having a baby in her second year put of law school would have been financial insanity. She eventually left law and became a teacher. Choice again. Freedom. Women can do everything men can. Huzzah.

They were no delicate, pleasing flowers either, those two women. Rather sexist of you to assume that about women who don't feel completely gung ho after giving birth.

If all you have experience of is British capitalism then you actually know squat about capitalism.

That is terrifying, math.

Will we ever be free of patriarchy while we have an established church? It doesn't matter how many more women now have positions in the church it can't ever be anything other than a male dominated organisation that holds huge power in the running of this country.

To say that childcare should be poorly paid because it is boring and anyone can do it, unlike brain surgery, is missing the point about the work itself. Brain surgery is very important to people who have something wrong with their brain. To that end, it's quite an important job. Luckily, it's only a minority of the population who have something wrong with their brain. Childcare is very important to children. 100% of the population will experience childhood. That makes good childcare an essential requirement for society, much more important than brain surgery. I'm not sure I agree with the statement that "anyone can do it." However, if that is true, or at least if it is true that more people can do childcare than can do brain surgery then that is jolly lucky for us as we need rather a lot of it. Having established the importance of childcare, we should value it more, which in our society means financial reward.

If we sacked all the brain surgeons tomorrow, there would be some sad results but society would be essentially OK. If we sacked all the people providing childcare tomorrow, then capitalism would be in quite a bit of trouble.

The church would have to change hugely for us to do so, if it were possible.

Interesting way of looking at it rosa, thanks.

Yes, I agree rosa, and never thought of it like that.

I also think that although brain surgery is one of those wonderful jobs that we all think of as being very moral and impressive, plenty of highly-paid jobs are rather more dubious, aren't they?

Why if you both work full time would a woman take on the whole of the "second shift"? I don't understand that.

If childcare were anything other than low grade and dull it would be very highly paid and men would be pushing to do it. It is patently obviously it is not and women always over all time periods have found others to help with loads of it from Roman women using slaves to Victorian women with servants to most women and men who earn £100k+ today.

Summerflower why can't your huisband move to b e with you? Mine did. Men move for women's careers all the time.

Louise Mensch's new husband could have moved to London and collected his new step children from school in the constituency every day, been an equal partner in a fair marriage but no it's sexism all the way particularly when he is very very much richer and old enough to be your father.

Riiiiight.

No, I'm sorry, wrong. Very dull work can be very highly paid. I don't know what 'low grade' means, unless it means 'low paid'. Very interesting work can be very poorly paid, for the exceedingly obvious reason that if it's great fun, you can sometimes get away with paying people to do it for the love of the job.

I repeat: who should do it, if neither women nor men?

Xenia, LM has started a new business and presumably still gets royalty cheques, plus column writings etc. The loss of the MP's pay cheque may not be significant as she can maintain her other lines of income from anywhere in the world.

Her DH may not readily walk into a high paid role in London. Seems like a logical capitalist decision was reached as to which should move.

Xenia we agree that childcare is NOT valued at the moment but we are arguing that it SHOULD be because of the enormous importance of children and the future generation to the nation.

So are you essentially saying that you do not value childcare at all? That kids would be pretty much OK if plonked in front of a telly all day on their own, or left to play our in the streets all the time with no guidance, few meals/clean clothes etc etc?

'I don't accept chidlrecare should ever be well paid. it's boring and anyone can do it just like cleaning where as most of us could not do brain surgery. Of course men will subcontract cleaning their houses and minding screaming babies for 12 hours a day to women. So do women when they have decent jobs and enough money to do that. '

How wrong can one person be in a single post?

Doing wills and real estate conveyancing is boring. Tax law is boring. Divorce law is boring. Brain surgery is boring. Teaching tap dancing or physics is boring. Anyone could do most of those, given a little training and the ability to keep one step ahead of the class, and robots can do brain surgery.

How do I know some occupation is boring? It's boring because I say it's boring.

How about stay at home dads who do it because they love spending the time with their children and doing the housework? How about the women who love doing the second shift because that gives their lives meaning? There are people out there who measure the worth of their livesd by factors other than money.

When you hire someone to look after your children, what do you look for? What factors go into your decision to hire a particular individual? Do you advertise and interview, or do you write a message and leave your number on a bus stop? What do you write as the job description to wannabe minders of your children?

Different people find different things boring. I expect everyone finds some aspect of what they do boring and I hope everyone finds at least one aspect interesting.

But it's not actually the point, is it? We all know perfectly well jobs allocated a place on the pay scale according to how fascinating the largest number of people find them. If that were true I could earn millions being Jonathan Rhys Meyer's dresser or the person who has to soap down Kate Winslet after a tough day on set.

'If childcare were anything other than low grade and dull it would be very highly paid and men would be pushing to do it.'

Fine example of circular logic there..

Gah. 'We all know perfectly well jobs are not allocated a place on the pay scale according to how fascinating the largest number of people find them.'

Proofreading, btw, is exceptionally dull, except when someone makes a typo of 'islamist' for 'tiramisu' and turns a thread about dinner-party manners into hilarity.

No, it's part of the "patriarchy" to try to value childcare. All those awful sexist men saying their wives at homes are saints, that there is no way they could do what she does. They put the person doing the dull unpaid stuff on a pedestal so she is conned into the view that she is sanctified because she clean sup and does his shirts and minds his 3 under 5s but it is just a con to keep her in her place and almost hypnotise her into doing his bidding.

Who exactly are you talking about, Xenia? Who are these men? Names please.