It'd mean finding enough supportive men to take over child and other caring duties. Could it be done? Would it make the point that the world would grind to a halt if women didn't do all the supposedly invisible stuff they do?
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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions
BertieBotts ·
06/11/2014 21:46
I think the problem is that it involves pissing off individual men.
With a train strike, or whatever, it's annoying to the passengers which means it's annoying to the bosses because they're not able to provide the service.
But individual train drivers don't have to go and deal with their individual boss or the person who has picked up the pieces and get their wrath from it. They are a collective mass, with the support of the others, and usually a union, too. The "bosses" are faceless, they don't deal with them day to day.
If women (housewives, is really what you mean) decided to go on strike and just announced it and their DHs suddenly had to find childcare or leave work for the day and cook their own lunch and run out of socks, then yes you'd get the odd DH who said "I'm so sorry honey, I had no idea you did so much!" but you'd probably get more who were just pissed off at the fact their partnership had dissolved, some who would deal with it with no question but also no change/understanding and of course, abusive husbands would just get... well, abusive.
Plus, you don't get the "wifework" from one or two days of childcare. I've heard lots of people say "He looked after the children for a weekend when I was away/for three days when I was in hospital/other reason and now when I am tired he says "Well I don't know what's so hard! I found it easy!"" - well duh, it's easy to play trains and cook fish fingers and wipe noses for three days. It's not so easy to do that for one hundred and fifty days in a row. It's easy to hold a baby for twenty minutes. It's not easy to hold a baby for ten hours, for six months in a row. It's easy to sort out childcare as a one off, to take the occasional day off work, to deal with broken sleep once in a while, to look after the kids on that weekend you don't have anything else to do, but it's the relentless nature of being with beings who are repetitive by nature, can't hold a conversation and don't have a concept of adult things like "not wasting stuff". Of trying to deal with them when you also need to buy a present for the birthday party next weekend and shop for your upcoming holiday and plan a presentation for work when you have a toddler who won't go to sleep without hours of input and arguing.
Leaving blokes to deal with stuff for a day or a week would be nothing. They'd think it was a fun project. Leave them for six months, then they would discover what it's really like. But of course who is going to leave their young children, their jobs, homes, etc, for six months. (And I surprise myself with a slight hint of panic that they would get it all magically sorted in those six months and we'd come back to be laughed at and told "Never mind, you're not needed any more! 
)
Actually I am starting to warm to this idea. I'd love to take six months off Can we arrange some kind of feminist retreat?
GarlicNovember ·
06/11/2014 22:04
We should ask Xenia to set up the retreat on her island
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SoMuchForSubtlety ·
06/11/2014 22:06
Bertie I'm coming too! About 90% of my sleep for the last year has been in 2-3 hour blocks, I'm shattered! DH should share the experience
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GarlicNovember ·
06/11/2014 22:19
Haha, me too, Irene. And the cat would shit everywhere 
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