What do you think the main common issues are for women

[user1492337624]

I think it's being expected to change name when married
Being expected to do the bulk of caring
All the wife work
The way women are judged on looks for much more then men
If a woman sleeps around it's frowned upon

The wife work.
Unequal domestic load.
Being expected to know how to care for babies/children by default.
Being 'presentable' taking more time and effort than it does for a man.
Walking the line of 'acceptable' assertiveness.
Tiny pockets.

Reproductive health. The expectation that women's bodies are something to be modified, regardless of the health risks - with the coil and the pill. The stories on here about the misery women have been through with IUD and doctors refusing to remove it. Poor care in pregnancy and miscarriage and the health impacts of pregnancy - this mesh scandal being the latest.

Harassment and objectification by girls under 18 by adult males.

Male sexual violence. Male violence in general.

DV.

Mothers living in poverty. Homelessness and substandard accommodation for single mothers. Housing insecurity for mothers. Social stigma against single mothers and young mothers.

Objectification of girls, not by.

Work/childcare. And how at work you're expected to behave as if you don't have children, so time off for illness/ school holidays or just leaving on time is difficult/ impossible. I can just about understand it being a problem in a small company, but in my experience , public sector is much less flexible.
Teachers/NHS staff have a really difficult time, staffing levels are kept to a bare minimum so that there is no flexibility. How is it in the interests of reasonable family life for a 60 hour working week, or 13 hour shifts to be the norm? It doesn't work like this in some countries, why does it have to be this way in the UK?
I've always worked, and as the mother of 3, this was the major problem. Its as if we're all expected to have live- in 24 hour childcare on tap. And these days the grandparents who might have been able to help are working full-time into their late sixties.
And the fact that it is the mother who is considered ultimately responsible for the children, irrespective of whether she is a lone parent ( by design or otherwise)irrespective of whether she has help/ support from the father or anyone else, and that having children is seen as a lifestyle choice, an indulgence, rather than something that is the norm, a human instinct . Most people have children, society needs to accept this as a given and accommodate it ( as in the Scandinavian countries) rather than penalise parents,specifically mothers, as we seem to do in the UK.

I could go on...

Inadequate food, hunger. Inadequate micronutrients. Mothers going without adequate nutrition to feed children.

Physically and mentally demanding work caring for the disabled and elderly for free, alongside paid employment.

Lack of access to adequate toilet facilities and period products. Missing education as a result.

The expectation that when a man has a child nothing will change with his working hours. The expectation that with the mother it might.

The bulk of the administrative and 'thinking/worrying/planning' work in the family unit.

Negative stereotyping. i.e bachelor (fun) vs spinster (freaky), Wizard (cool) vs Witch (scary) etc etc

The way in which we are viewed and often see ourselves. A greying man can still be hot (George Clooney), and greying woman is not.

The grass roots of inequality. The idea that I am lucky because my dh does 50% of housework . The idea that I am lazy because he does 50% of the housework.

Then also. Because I am a feminist. None of the above matters. It's all irrelevent, because 'she is a feminist'. This is my bigest gripe.

Menstruation...every bleeding bit about it.

Cuts to social welfare and health.

The risk of violence. Dealing with the constant threat of it.
The mental load.

Being unable to go into further education as a single parent on benefits which would be a good time to retrain.
Being unable to apply for many jobs as a single parent on benefits, because they are as and when required, and the Tax Credits wont deal with that.

Specifically in the UK or in general worldwide?

In 'western'/first world society -

Unequal expectations of responsibility of household management/life admin/caring duties within relationships/families.

Everyday casual sexism infantilising women and constantly implying we are intellectually and physically inferior, valuing us for appearance and attractiveness over ability and personality. So we believe it. It is deeply ingrained in all of us. Gendered expectations.

Neglect of women's healthcare, safety, needs in design etc - the assumption being that the average body is male, so everything from new medicines to the height of seats in bus shelters are designed for the male body, not the female.

The acceptance of male violence and victim-blaming culture. Whilst assault and abuse is illegal, there is widespread social acceptance of male aggressive tendencies and an attitude of women must not provoke. More gendered expectations.

All of this persists despite equality laws supposedly meaning that there are no inequalities between the sexes any more.

Obviously, there are still many countries in the world where equality law doesn't exist, women's lives are absolutely horrendous on the basis they are female and it is all legal - lack of access to education, healthcare, maternity care, rape within marriage, forced births, forced marriage to rapists, forced marriages full stop, so-called honour killings, female genital mutilation, women being unable to work, unable to drive or travel freely, unable to wear clothes of their own choosing, men being legally entitled to beat their wives, stigma of victims of rape, or divorcées, etc.

On a less practical level, the belief that women are here for men and that women are responsible for men's behaviour, emotional states, participation in society, individual needs and wants. And anything women do that isn't directly for or about men is some kind of trivial selfish time wasting.

As if we're those stage hands dressed in black who come on and move bits of the set around, and they do their job best if you don't notice it being done.

Thanks for the replies you made me think about things I hadn't really been thinking about, and I agree with every single one of these issues
TBH j was only really thinking about in the U.K.
But I've now realised I should also been concerned and horrified really about what's happening to women throughtvthe world

I remember now seeing a tv programme about women who sustained terrible birth injuries but could get those injuries sorted so where basically left doubly incontinent and excluded from everyone else 😨😨

In the UK- domestic violence, sexual violence and the responsibility placed on women to avoid it - how that restricts our life
Worldwide - the menstrual taboo leading to women dropping out if education, being isolated from society and in extreme cases death.
Forced marriage
Segregation of men and women
Poverty and lack of contraception

Being expected to do all the baby work. I was talking to a group of friends recently about a friend who's DP does nothing around the house or with the baby (and when she asked for help asked her how SHE would deal when they moved to a bigger house ) and they said that I can't put my own relationship onto other people and expect everyone to do housework like my partner .... huh? Surely everyone should expect 50/50 as a standard in a relationship? I guess because he's a man it's okay.

You mean white women in the UK?
Male violence and the threat of it, male harassment of varying levels from annoyingly flirty to relentless objectification.
Inequality at work.
Women being programmed to please and not having the strength to break the programming. Not even radical stuff, just not bobbing along in the flow of other people's expectations because they don't want to make a fuss.
I do get frustrated by women who accept shit from their partners about wife work and domestic balance,yes it's his fault but enabling the selfishness won't change it.

Domestic violence and abuse in the home including financial abuse.

Teenage girls and the way they are viewed in our pornified world. There is a spike in depression amongst teenage girls, they are deeply unhappy, they need feminism and it's not there for them, schools and unis are full of queer politics and menism.

Misogyny on the internet and the silencing of women who speak up.

The loss of language to describe ourselves and the inclusion of males into almost all feminist and lesbian space. Obviously this only affects lesbians but they literally have nowhere left.

The harassment of lesbians, all women must be sexually available to men. The harassment of butch lesbians to trans.

The way women's achievements are viewed and treated. The world is shaped by men and women's work and academic success is ignored, dismissed or appropriated. Woman says something at work. ignored, man raises same point 5 seconds later, gets credit.

Wifework and the expectation that she will organise Christmas and birthdays, provide care to the young an old and do all the mental labour.

OP, there are at least two charities supporting women who are left with a fistula after childbirth. They are well worth a donation, imo.

The way child maintenance is administrated. Pay the pittance legal amount and you are applauded as father of the year, whilst the mother gets all the negatives mentioned up thread. Pay fuck all and you are still viewed as superior to the woman and child/children you've left in poverty. Pay a decent amount and do your fair share and you are a god.

Unless of course it's the mother who is the nrp. In which case the father is a saint no matter what. And the mother could be paying way above and beyond, and shouldering half the care and she'll still be a heartless bitch who dumped her dc.

Casual sexism and the assumption you are less intelligent and less knowledgeable about supposedly complicated man stuff.

There are lots of very important issues which have been mentioned on this thread but these from SylviaPoe were ones I came on to post:

Harassment and objectification by girls under 18 by adult males.

Male sexual violence. Male violence in general.

The casual day to day sexism Lurkedforever1 mentions also gets to me and I think "everyday sexism" is very important to challenge. In my opinion all instances of sexism and misogyny need to be opposed, no matter how big or small they may be perceived to be by some.

Things like this show how hard women still have it
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-41107982

Reproductive rights
Violence against women and girls (I include FGM in this).
The feminisation of poverty (and not just for mothers)
The gendered division of domestic labour (for those in partnerships with men)
Capacity to engage in decision making in the public and private spheres (as opposed to having men make decisions for us or in our name).

Underpinning all of these is the need to secure a biological definition of what is female.

For me personally the biggest issues have been fighting against social pressure in order to get a career in STEM, and fighting for equal pay once I got there.

More generally, reproductive rights - free contraception and abortion - are near the top of my list.

A recognition that male sexual violence is not a plethora of individual, disconnected, random acts of nature (like being struck by a falling tree), but systemic and interconnected, and propped up by a society which victim blames women, puts women into the category of "sex objects to be used", while taking property crimes more seriously than crimes of violence against human beings.

The way the workplace is set up to favour the 1950s model of man who can "owe his soul to the company store" and demonstrate loyalty by working every hour the flying spaghetti monster sends, while being propped up at home by his wife's unpaid labour - even though almost no-one lives this way any more.

• Gender roles (I'd include marriage/family expectations, wifework, the beauty industry, carer related poverty, casual sexism etc under this)

• Healthcare (including misdiagnosis, poor drugs testing, "hypochondria", "hysterics" and reproductive health (inc abortion) in this)

• Domestic abuse, rape convictions and male violence in general

Worldwide I'd say these issues are the same ones, just on a different scale and in a less insidious way

Worldwide I'd say these issues are the same ones, just on a different scale and in a less insidious way

Worldwide I'd add access to education as well does that make me a lib fem

Agree, I think I'd include that under gender roles too though... as in "you cannot have an education as this is what your life will be"?