Feminism chat for right wingers

[LeslieKnopefan]

Wondered if anyone else who is on the right like myself (see myself as centre right) wanted to chat about feminism.

I noticed there was a chat going for those in the Labour Party and thought it might be nice for anyone else like myself who is on the right but see them self as a feminist.

To introduce myself to begin... I’m in my mid 30s and always been right wing for as long as I can remember and am an active member of the Tory Party. I didn’t until recently see myself as a feminist because I always had negative connotations about the word and felt it wasn’t an issue that effected me.

But now that I’m older I’ve realised that feminism is a broad church and it is an issue that I’m not only interested in but actually there has been times in my life where being a woman has held me back or where I have been judged in a way that a man wouldn’t have been judged.

The areas that I’m currently most interested in are trans issues and how the Conservative party will deal with the many grey areas that trans rights brings with it.

I’m also concerned about the way we raise girls (and boys!!) such as the seperation of toys and the pinkness of everything for girls that we didn’t see when I was growing up. I know myself that I will say to little girls how pretty they look but wouldn’t say that to a boy, I am trying to stop myself saying such things but I realise how ingrained this is.

Finally, an issue that hasn’t really changed since I was growing up is the idea that men that have many sexual partners are great whilst women are sluts or slags. Again, I can’t say I’ve always been innocent of this especially at school where it seemed to be the norm to talk badly of girls who had lost their virginity but not boys.

Anyway that’s enough from me right now. If there is anyone else on the right here who wishes to join in please do :)

Moussemoose You will agree however, I am sure, that Lenin said a lot of things. . As regards the Scandinavian countries you will again, agree that they ARE capitalist. The point being argued was that there's nothing more patriarchal than capitalism. I proposed a few real-world counter examples and since then a certain party keeps pointing at "scandinavian countries" and saying 'Not capitalist, low sexism'. They've as yet not shown any connection between their response and my point so far as I can see! Just clarifying as you seem to be joining the merry go round and I don't want it to just spin around in ever faster circles for no reason.

Capitalism doesn't even pretend to support women

FHCD has beaten me to it, but I agree with them. Nor is it supposed to. Capitalism doesn't care about gender. Might as well argue that democracy doesn't care about gender, either. (Although Lweji kind of did take a stab at that! )

Capitalism is not an ideology so it doesn't mandate anything.

My comment was a direct reply to someone who complained about "Capitalist Ideology". Their exact words. Everything that has followed has been Lweji disputing my reply. Take it up with them!

However, 'women's work' has little value, people in caring roles, cleaning, childcare are paid low wages and treated badly. Capitalism places little economic value on these roles.

Nothing in capitalism says one way or another what jobs are most valued. And my ethos - and I'm sure others too - is that the goal should be to prevent certain jobs from being "women's work" not to artificially try to reward those jobs above their value and preserve the status quo.

State intervention does help women.

I wasn't aware anyone had ever said it couldn't. There's a little bit of straw poking out of your collar, there. .

Scandinavian countries exist within capitalism but don't consider themselves capitalist. Hairsplitting I know.

I think the patriarchy is ideologically neutral as demonstrated by the female doctors in the Soviet Union. Women get the job, the job becomes devalued.

Misogyny like anti semitism is the prejudice that unites. If they can't agree on anything else they can agree on who should make the tea and who to run out of time. Sad but true.

Should say " run out of town"

I was think pogrom.

Anyway. Right and left (and centrist) women might have differing ideas on how best to run the economy but we (women) all have a vested interest in doing our best to ensure that women get real oportunities and outcomes, and that our rights are not eroded.
We all have skin in the game, so let's not be derailed.

Capitalism doesn't mandate 'oppress women/keep women down".

Really? Until I see the day that all adverts have men doing 'wifework' and the odd woman is put in to 'balance' it, is the day I see capitalism not being the oppressor.

But maybe women like the misery of wifework - to outrageously misquote Mrs Doyle

The low paid jobs came before the tax credits I was signing on in the late 90s (after the abolition of the Wages Councils) and there were jobs advertised in the JC paying £50 a week for a full time office job and no it wasnt a training job for a teen. There were £1 an hour jobs being advertised as well Working tax credits were brought in to address this.

www.heraldscotland.com/news/12577696.Abolition_of_wages_councils_and_threat_to_the_lower_paid/

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/labour-campaign-on-wages-councils-1462659.html

ald Macintyre @indyvoices Saturday 21 August 1993 23:02 BST

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The Independent Online
"Frank Dobson, Labour's employment spokesman, is to launch an autumn campaign designed to warn workers of the pay cuts they face as a result of the abolition of wages councils earlier this year.
The campaign, which will target Conservative marginal constituencies, will seek to alert as many as possible of the 2.6 million employees covered by wages councils that they are likely to see cuts in their rates, ranging from pounds 2.59 to pounds 3.10 per hour.

Two million of the workers affected are women. Labour is committed to introducing a national minimum wage, which Mr Dobson yesterday insisted would have no long-term adverse effect on employment"

Thank you for this thread op! I belong to lot of FB rad fem groups, and I know in reality that I probably have absolutely nothing in common with the other members of the groups when it comes to political leanings (I am a Tory voter), but day in and day out I agree with, and support everything that is
being said in those groups, especially wrt transgender issues and self id.
For me, first and foremost in life, I am a woman - and everything else is secondary to that.

Working tax credits also meant that those without children in low paid work got some help for the first time.

Tax credits created a trap though overall, although well intentioned.

Focussing simply on increasing minimum wage & increasing the personal tax allowance to equal a ft min wage amount, would remove the need for in-work benefits.
I'd like to see this done alongside increased childcare access & funding & increased child benefit.

The only welfare payments should be unemployment benefit, (more generous) disability benefits, housing benefit & child benefit.

I'd also like to see specific, mandatory courses, in the national curriculum directed at basic life skills such as financial awareness (running a basic household, understanding different credit systems etc).

Not sure where this fits on the left/right spectrum tbh.

Great thread. I’m left wing but trying hard not to be just in an echo chamber on social media. So it’s good to hear from right wing women. First and foremat I’m a feminist, second I’m a remainder and third I’m left wing (currently voting Green). But I like Ruth Davidson, Anna Soubry, and ie always liked ken Clarke. Corbyn has been a massive disappointment over the lily madigon issue.

Misogyny like anti semitism is the prejudice that unites. If they can't agree on anything else they can agree on who should make the tea

Exactly. The problem with looking around the world at strongly right or left leaning regimes is that they are all patriarchal, and therefore women come some way down the list of priorities.

The small state, low interventionist approach of the right wing means that it will never bring about the sort of changes that we want to see (or so slowly that it will be our great-great-great-great-great-granddaughters who benefit). We've seen time and again that state intervention through legislation and / or tax regimes is the only way to shift behaviours in a meaningful way.

However, the left might talk the talk, but (in the UK) the might of the unions prevents the sort of radical changes that we need to achieve real equality. I'm struggling to think of any countries with a strong socialist history where women have done very well: individual women might rise to positions of prominence, but as a class women do not seem to have benefitted from left wing politics.

I'm struggling to think of any countries with a strong socialist history where women have done very well: individual women might rise to positions of prominence, but as a class women do not seem to have benefitted from left wing politics.

I would suggest you look at Scandinavian countries. I would also ad that women have never benefited from right wing politics either. Or if they have, perhaps you could explain why? Please don't say two prime ministers.

Personally I think Justine Greening was thrown under a bus with the remit she was given regarding the equality act, and simply because she was the L in the LGB.

Just popping in to say hello. I’m politically central (member of the Lib Dem party), but I’m a feminist first and foremost.

Elendon - aren't Scandinavian countries social democracies, rather than socialist? (If I understand it correctly, the key distinction is that means of production are privately rather than government owned, and the market leads on how resources are used rather than the government)

I'm not the person to argue about how great right wing governments are for women - I'm not a right winger!

I agree re Justine Greening being given the shitty end of the stick, though

aren't Scandinavian countries social democracies, rather than socialist?

Yes- social democracies- as is the UK.

Also a lefty here but thanks for starting the thread - I'll be really interested to hear the views coming from the right. It's an important discussion.

The U.K. is not a social democracy. Possibly during the 1950s it might have been described as such but Thatcher destroyed our claim to social democracy.

The key feature of social democracy is that the state intervenes to ensure equality. Take a look at the homeless on our streets and any claim to social democracy crumbles.

I was reading an interesting article the other day which presented some evidence that while the Nordic countries have near equal labour force participation for men and women (much more equal than the UK), they fall behind the OECD average (and WAY behind the Anglophone average, especially the USA) for share of senior managers who are women. So this I would take as potentially indicative that the welfare systems in Scandinavian countries promote a superficial equality but actually play a role in keeping women at the bottom of the economic pile relative to men.

Scandinavian countries are not that capitalist. They have huge social support by comparison.

You have to have a particular kind of economy for this kind of high tax, high welfare model to work well though - Norway in particular relies very heavily on exploitation of natural resources to achieve what it does. Its welfare system is backed up by the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, the basis of which is the nation's oil revenues. This model is unachieveable in the UK because we just don't have the same economy structure - we don't have anything like the same scale of natural resources. Nor would I like to try to argue that a high-carbon, high-consumption, heavily-extractive economy is feminist - it is environmentally unsustainable - we should all be trying to decarbonise our economies, not copy Norway ...

If you really believe in the free market, my view is that you have to take feminism seriously, because markets don't work properly without it. In fact I don't think it's a coincidence that modern feminism and the theory of the free market emerged at roughly the same time - and in roughly the same place. My view is that feminism and markets reinforce each other.

I'm sorry sweetheart but the tory party is very cebtre left most of the time. Go read a book on basic economics.

The Tory party is centre left in which universe?

Economics are not the only way a party is defined.

Possibly, possibly in the 1950s under consensus politics the Tory party was a centrist party. Centre left nowadays, don't make me laugh.

My view is that feminism and markets reinforce each other.

How?

So this I would take as potentially indicative that the welfare systems in Scandinavian countries promote a superficial equality but actually play a role in keeping women at the bottom of the economic pile relative to men.

True, which is why they're trying to correct it with equal parenting leave for men and women.
Well see if they'll get more women in the top positions.