I have done it ChocChoc I worked at a major supermarket chain for 18 months after being made redundant and I barely survived. I had a 16 hour a week contract and worked all the overtime I could get, which was often not very much. I was renting and sharing with another woman and we both paid about 550 each Inc bills and council tax. It was tough.
You're lucky. You're evidently bright, articulate, well-read and you got yourself a good education so you could have a career. Lots of students do that. They pass through supermarkets on their way to a career. Not everyone is so lucky. It should be understood that an awful lot of people do not have careers: they have jobs. Not jobs on route to a career, but a job in which they will stay.
This really cuts to the nub of the whole issue. One of the foundational principles of feminism going right back to the nineteenth century, and one I agree with, is that all women should have economic independence and acces to their own private property if that's what they want.
So in our economic conditions, that implies a problem.
I don't know where you live but where I am a reasonable one bedroom house is a minimum of £550 a month to rent. A 10 x 6 room with some basic kitchen units and a toilet will put you back by about £400 a month. And as for buying, you're talking serious money before in order to cover a deposit.
Suppose a young working-class women wants to have her own life while working at a supermarket. I think my wage was just about the minimum - something like £7.70 ph - but let's round that up to 8. Most contracts are part-time for customer assistants, but again let's be charitable and imagine she's got a full-time contract of 40 hours a week. So what are we talking a month there? Something like a grand at the absolute most?
So if this woman does want to lead an economically independent life and have a space she can call her own, she has two choices. She can either spend ten years scrimping or saving for a deposit, or she could rent a house for herself. The problem with the latter option is that after bills and council tax she will be left with about £300 a month to live on. Even if she shares she'll still be losing at least a third of her wage every month. But there is a third option, and that's to give up on the idea of economic independence and get married and become a mum - which is what so many of these women do.
In short, feminism is now for middle-class, educated women.
Why should not the working-class woman have a career and a good education? Well if that is what she decides she wants to do then she should have that opportunity. But do you know how much a degree costs these days? I've just done my MA which I freely admit was paid for by my parents. It cost about £4'500. There are no doubt lots of very bright girls on supermarket checkouts who will never have the opportunity to make anything of that intelligence because neither they nor their parents have a spare 5 grand.
But there's another very important point to be made. Some people are not very academically gifted and are not capable of entering into a middle-class profession. They are more comfortable working in a supermarket for the rest of their lives. Does that mean they have any less worth as a human being? No. Doeds that mean that they are not as deserving of a house, economic security, a decent pension and a good wage than anyone else? No.
I find it curious that people want 'safe spaces' in elite universities when elite universities are the safest places I'm the world. The people who are really unsafe get nowhere near them.