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 :)

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.

My pet theory for the prevalence of women in senior roles in the US is that short maternity leave (six weeks is pretty standard, if not generous) helps establish from the off that looking after a child is a joint endeavour, for professional women at least. Long maternity leave has lots and lots of benefits, but it does set up the proposition that women make lots of changes to their life to have a baby but men take off a couple of weeks then carry on as before (or maybe even better than before, as they now have a partner at home to support them)

I'm not advocating shorter mat leave, BTW, and in theory shared parental leave should go some way to bridge this gap, but it's an interesting upside to the short mat leave (or even sickness leave, as I believe it is classified...)

The key feature of social democracy is that the state intervenes to ensure equality.

No. That would as well define a communist state as a social democracy. A social democracy is a primarily capitalist state (private ownership) where taxes support a welfare state and other social support structures. You omit a critical element in your description.

TheQuestingVole has a much better understanding. In particular they are absolutely spot on in bringing up Norway's oil boom. You could point to the high per capita GDP and wealth of Saudi Arabia as well and you wouldn't think it an indicator of effective government there!

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.

It could potentially indicate that but it could also indicate that women either:
· Tended not to want such jobs
· Tended not to have the qualities that suited them for those jobs.

Note, there is overlap between the two. One of the key personality indicators for CEOs et al. is Disagreeableness. And men are more commonly disagreeable than women. (I mean this as the psychological trait).

Which brings us back to my opinion that the key differentiator between a Right Wing feminist and a Left Wing feminist will be the focus on Equality of Opportunity vs. Equality of Outcome respectively.

Very interesting reading, and it's made me think; and I am not being sarcastic now.

But - what does all that mean for the baby? (Which should be the focus in all this, FFS!) If neither mother nor father is willing to give the necessary practical care for that small, young baby?

Six weeks off for post-maternity is, frankly, mad, in my view. (Have had three, while being a working woman, with varying maternity leaves, depending on circumstances. But six weeks is still mad. I was still bleeding fairly heavily after the birth, at six weeks, with all three of them, for example..)

It could potentially indicate that but it could also indicate that women either:
· Tended not to want such jobs
· Tended not to have the qualities that suited them for those jobs.´

Apart from the at the misogyny shown, you seem to have missed the bit where the number of women in top positions was lower in Scandinavian countries than other countries including the US.
So, it's something to do with the countries and their culture or politics and not with being women. But don't let it spoil your narrative.

I'm what I call a pragmatic libertarian (and generally more right than left) but I think in this day and age you can't have even a mainstream, right wing discussion on female liberation and empowerment and call it feminism because the left have basically claimed ownership of the term, conflated cultural and economic marxist ideologies with the rights and interests of women and generally demonstrated why we can't have nice things.
I am in favour of equality of opportunity, discussion and awareness of women's issues and protecting the rights and freedoms of women and girls but I'll never call myself a feminist.

squarecorners :
So. in your brave world - who looks after the baby? Please, tell me!

Your post does not even touch that.

Whereas in reality, it's a clincher.

I am in favour of equality of opportunity, discussion and awareness of women's issues and protecting the rights and freedoms of women and girls

I am curious, and possibly why I'm in this thread, but nobody has really answered it yet.

What practical measures does the right (or you) suggest to ensure equality of opportunity, and to protect the rights and freedoms of women?

Um, whoever is the most appropriate according to their situation, obviously.

Lweji - the basic principles of libertarianism, preferably enshrined in a document enforceable by a democratically accountable (under universal suffrage) legal and governmental system.
I infinitely prefer that to the left's solution, which is by force.

Just vague notions.

What would you welcome in a manifesto? What do you think is fair? What would you think would work best?

whoever is the most appropriate according to their situation, obviously

What would you consider the most appropriate and in which situations?

It's not my place to decide who is the most appropriate carer for other people's children. Is it yours?

Markets don't function properly without individuals having agency - so if half of the population doesn't have the freedom to make the choices which are in their own interests, the market is inefficient. Patriarchal societies limit their own growth potential because they limit women's choices. So feminism is necessary for markets to work properly to produce prosperity. For example, having the ability, as a woman, to control your own fertility massively increases your choices and brings enormous economic gains not just for you but for everyone around you.

Markets are generally, in the broad sweep of history, on the side of feminism because competition (assuming you don't have crony capitalism/corporate welfarism, which I would argue is not at all what right wing economic policy should be about) is disruptive to power - free markets disperse power away from existing elites, whether they are corporate or political, which is usually in women's interests. I think one can argue that markets have not yet dispersed power enough, but we are broadly on the right trajectory. We are talking a very long time scale here.

Another example - I don't think it's a coincidence that the strongest market economy in the world (the USA) was the first to develop the contraceptive pill - it was free market forces that enabled that, in the face of enormous opposition from men, the church and the state to women being able to control their fertility and have sex without risk of pregnancy.

Long maternity leave has lots and lots of benefits, but it does set up the proposition that women make lots of changes to their life to have a baby but men take off a couple of weeks then carry on as before (or maybe even better than before, as they now have a partner at home to support them)

I support generous parental leave provision but I completely agree with this

It could potentially indicate that but it could also indicate that women either:
· Tended not to want such jobs
· Tended not to have the qualities that suited them for those jobs.

I don't buy this at all

Sadly, you just remind me of bro's beneath a Guardian feminist article circa. 2016!

I move on from this conversation, now, and leave it, because you're discussing ideology, but you refuse to discuss actual practicality of looking after a small baby!!

You're basically proving my point there fella.

My previous post spoken towards squarecorners, just to make it clear.

but you refuse to discuss actual practicality of looking after a small baby!!

I support the shared parental leave policy.

The more men who utilise this, the better it will become for women in 'equality of opportunity' due to not being viewed through the prism of 'she's probably going to be off on maternity at some point, whereas he isn't' at the interview stage for example.

Wrt 'who looks after a small baby''
How small is small?

I had just over 4 months maternity with my eldest, and 6 months with my youngest - they started childcare when I went back to work.

It could potentially indicate that but it could also indicate that women either:
· Tended not to want such jobs
· Tended not to have the qualities that suited them for those jobs.

This ^ is just total bollocks btw.

The more men who utilise this, the better it will become for women in 'equality of opportunity' due to not being viewed through the prism of 'she's probably going to be off on maternity at some point, whereas he isn't' at the interview stage for example.

So, how is this policy supposed to be implemented from a right wing point of view?

Imposed by law, left for employers to implement it as they please, or just allowed and see what happens?

It could potentially indicate that but it could also indicate that women either:
· Tended not to want such jobs
· Tended not to have the qualities that suited them for those jobs.

This ^ is just total bollocks btw.

Not necessarily, at least for the first point - recent data is interesting (www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/).

Really interesting, thanks.

I just wonder if women in more gender equal countries feel more free to pursue less profitable professions, as they suggest, or if non-STEM professions are also valued more in more gender equal countries.

As a STEM professional myself, I can also see that the women I meet from those countries may also feel integrated in a wider community where their gender is less of an issue and better accepted. Or get more opportunities to get out.

But STEM is very diverse. My field is female heavy, but others are much less so.

I’d like to take issue with a couple of points made earlier.

It was claimed that only the Consevatives have had two female leaders. That’s not actually true. Labour, too, have had two female leaders in Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman.
The fact that the Conservative leaders were Prime Ministers becomes less impressive when you consider the relative time that both Parties have spent in Government.

In fact, it’s the Liberals/Liberal Democrats who have yet to elect a female leader. Yet no-one accuses them of misogyny. I wonder why?

Nor do I agree that Theresa May has done a great deal for feminism. A Prime Minister that bundles childcare into women’s interests, as she did when she created a Minister for Women, Equality and Early Years, is showing her true colours, in my opinion.

Tax Credits are being attacked as an example of a damaging Blair policy. In fact, they were the latest in a long line of such policies first introduced by the Conservative Heath Government.
Why are they fine under Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, but sudfenly bad news under Tony Blair? And why is Universal Credit any better?

The last Labour Government did a great deal for the Childcare and Early Years industry, which is a female dominated one. I don’t see that high regard for professional childcarers and educators shown by the Conservatives - quite the opposite!

Becket She was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party under John Smith from 1992 to 1994, and briefly served as Leader of the Labour Party after Smith died suddenly

Which explains why I didn't remember her as leader...

@OldmanOfTheWeb

Based on 19th-century socialism and the tenets of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, social democracy shares common ideological roots with communism but eschews its militancy and totalitarianism. Social democracy was originally known as revisionism because it represented a change in basic Marxist doctrine, primarily in the former’s repudiation of the use of revolution to establish a socialist society

This is Britannicas definition.

Therefore my statement:

The key feature of social democracy is that the state intervenes to ensure equality

Is correct and your comment:

No. That would as well define a communist state as a social democracy.

Is irrelevant. There are similarities between social democracy and communism as social democracy is based on communism.

You state that a social democracy is a capitalist state. Social democracy exists within capitalism and uses its structures but is moving towards socialism.

A poster upthread referred to voting for parties 'apart from ukip, obviously'. I just googled ukip transgender policies and something called ukip daily came up.

www.ukipdaily.com/the-transgender-agenda/

Hope link works. I would describe myself as socialist at heart, but am horrified at how Labour are throwing women under the bus. Comes to something when only ukip can see through the madness.

But - what does all that mean for the baby?
I think that in some Scandinavian countries parents get equal amounts of parental leave on the birth of a baby, but if both don't utilise it, they lose it. My friend in Sweden took the first 6 months, her partner took the next 6 months.
So, the care of baby, rather than being solely the responsibility of the mother, and then outsourced childcare (with the mother squeezing her work around nurserydrop off/ pick ups) can become (with the normalising of involved fathers) the responsibility of BOTH parents.

I don't see how that can be bad for a child, and it can only be good for women.
So, with regard to long mat leave I would agree it has been harmful to women's careers because by the time the 9 months/year is over, the woman's role as the default parent is solidified.
I don't know if anyone read the thread on here a few months ago about facilitated men? It was fascinating to read how over and over men are facilitated by women to progress in their careers , even in ways we might not have thought about, and long mat leave is the start of that.
Men have children too. The state HAS to play a role in legislating to support that idea, because private industry (mainly run by men) is never going to voluntarily level the playing field.
As an aside,It's not even funny how many times overstuffed, overpaid middle aged men have said to me lately that women don't really "want" the top jobs..
It's usually the same men that deny white priveledge by quoting some statistic about how the best paid men are actally South East Asian.
It's almost as though they are all reading the same things on the Internet. .
And then they come here and pontificate about feminism.
It's so tiring.