Beachcomber, I would say that traditional feminism believed that there was a gender hierarchy and that it should be abolished. That is to say that activities when done by men were given time, status, resources, freedom and attention. The core 'value' of feminism was them to give whatever was done by women equal time, status, resources, freedom and attention.
So if we were to apply this value to the Sahel, we would prioritise all those things done by women:
- Clean drinking water made available near to dwellings, not unclean water from miles away.
- Health care.
- Childcare
- Care of the sick and elderly.
- Resource provision for farmers of marginal land to reduce desertification and increase productivity.
- Provision for the poorest.
- End forced marriage.
- End chattel slavery.
And by following that 'value' feminism works towards the UN's recommendations for the Sahel. And every time it starts on one of them, it immediately makes things better for women. And that is abolishing the gender hierarchy.
And the same for the UK. What are the kinds of task women do most that we should prioritise because women's work has lower value? Health, education, care of children and the elderly, the voluntary sector working with excluded groups, provision for the poorest.
And feminism keeps doing this, and where it does any of these things, things get better for women.
But now people are using abolishing gender to mean something different. That other meaning is gender neutrality. Men and women will be attempt to be culturally the same and so will be more equal. And the 'value' of that will be? The things in society that will be prioritised will be... we don't know. People are just going to be themselves. So maybe we will prioritise health, or maybe we will prioritise war and high risk behaviour in financial institutions, and the Sahel can prioritise war as well or maybe it will go for health. But none of that really matters, because if we do have more more high risk financial disasters and less health care, at least men and women will die from lack of health care in equal numbers. It doesn't matter what the 'values' are, as long as we are equal.
But of course we haven't got there yet. So how are we going to get there, given there's no road map as no post hunter gatherer society has reached gender neutrality or got very near it? Well, we could maybe look at other examples where a group with low status and a group with high status try to get rid of differences between them. Whose behaviour does everybody take up? The behaviour of the group with the most power. The low status group has to assimilate. So the likely outcome is that we all have to say that what the males used to mainly do is the important stuff that we now all have as our values. And in the process the most vulnerable of our group don't get to assimilate. They stay as an even more marginalised other for a long time.
And if health care, education and care of the vulnerable have been the tasks mostly done by women in society we know of, it would a big deal to give them up and say something else is more important. So I say abolish the gender hierarchy as the priority. The whole of society then gives increased status to those things mostly done by women. And when women have equal status to men, then we talk about the complete integration of two equal groups. But I see no benefit in assimilating as the less powerful group and dressing it up as gender neutrality.
And every time I hear somebody complaining about girly girls, mums, trivialise child care or appear on this section and compare women who don't want to give up their maternity leave for their husband to slaves who don't want freedom, I think this is assimilation, and marginalising a whole load of women in the process.