When did you realise women still needed feminism?

[TowelNumber42]

Inspired by the direction another thread took I wondered if other women had thought feminism unnecessary then had a rude awakening at some point in their lives?

Me, I grew up in a sexist environment but "knew" that how I was treated was something I could change through my own behaviour and general bolshyness. Older women harped on about feminism because they were from the olden days.

Then I had children. Then I realised I had been passed over for promotion earlier in my career without realising (I'd still got a good way up though).

The way I was treated in pregnancy by the medical profession and the world was an eye-opener. I was now the host-organism, a silly woman to be talked down to even when I object and am bolshy.

The attitudes of people who think mumsnet is all pram reviews and lipstick.

Did you think the world was equal then change your mind? What changed it?

I'm going in to work now so lack of response isn't a post and hide. Laterz squints.

Yes, motherhood for me too.

I was always a feminist, my mum's a feminist. But I think I saw it more as club you belong to or - dare I say it - an identity, a set of beliefs, rather than an urgent need to address sexism and discrimination affecting me in my life and other women in the UK.

Then I had kids. And I realised how little the feminism I knew had to say to me about motherhood. And how badly mothers are treated, what we are meant to bear and just STFU and get on with it.

And, the extreme marketing of gender stereotypes to children became apparent to me, and how much things had chanced for the worse since I was little - I'd just assumed we were getting more progressive as time went on.

And more recently, I'm terrified fro my kids grouping up in a society that's teaching them that if you're different, then you need hormones and surgery to help you fit in. And I've woken up to how little women are listened to, how sexist all the woke bros and those in power are.

Feminist campaigning is now a major part of my life, before motherhood it was something I nodded along to but nothing I actually spent any time on.

Mumsney has had a lot to do with that!

growing up, not grouping up!!

I was the higher earner in our marriage for a few years. I was treated with respect at work and socially. Then my husband began to earn significantly more than I did (change of field to a better paid one). At the same time my parents moved in with us for a spell and the children hit the teenage years. We were stretched too thinly so we decided I would take a break and be at home to support the rest of the family.
I immediately seemed to become a non person; when new people asked what I did I was aware of their eyes glazing over as I no longer had an interesting career and could be of no use to them in any way.
Not all people were like that obviously, but there were a significant number. It was as if they assumed I had no value.
That’s when it hit me really; ‘womans’ work, supporting elderly parents, guiding children through the difficult teenage years, supporting a partner in his career so he could financially support us, that work was treated by so many people as if it had no value.
I no longer care, I know my own value and it isn’t in my job or what I earn, but at the time it was a complete shock to me and it rekindled my interest in feminism, after a couple of decades of believing I did ‘have it all’.

When I realised I was part of the problem, working as female in a male environment that in an attempt to prove myself I reinforced the misogyny, indulged the sexism. I did not want to prove them right by not being able to handle the “banter”.

I was a second wave feminist, did all the "boys" things at school such as science, technology and engineering. I really did think that women and men might have achieved huge strides towards true equality. Then I left school, couldn't get a job in my chosen field because I was a woman (there were 2 women in the UK doing the job at the time), and to be honest it probably wasn't exactly a safe environment for women anyway.

Stuck in an abusive marriage for the next 10 years, and realising the way other people / men thought that the behaviour of my husband was okay. Working in a pub and seeing men flirting / shagging other men's wives and girlfriends but getting violent and angry if it was their "own woman", as if she was their property.

A second marriage to a very kind but damaged man (damaged by the patriarchy), and realising that I was doing all the emotional labour and it was exhausting me. This coincided with me being a third-wave feminist too - because money is all that matters.

Giving birth to a daughter and suddenly emerging into fourth-wave feminism. Understanding that no woman is truly free whilst any woman is in slavery (whether that be sexual slavery or domestic servitude).

Reading the threads in the Relationships board and realising the shit that women are told is normal and acceptable within relationships, and having to put up with because they are financially dependent.

Each of these experiences tells me we still need feminism because there is no freedom for women from patriarchal values. We have moved on very little and are still seen as chattels by society at large, despite what people say.

Someone on mumsnet said "when someone shows you who they are, believe them". I think this is true when society says that women have achieve equality and that feminism is no longer needed, but then acts in an entirely different way.

Oh all through my childhood.

When I was told:

I needed to learn to cook so I could entertain my husband's boss and his wife.

I needed to be 'ladylike' at all times - no mashing my potatoes into gravy; no biting my nails; no sitting on the floor; no having opinions; always being quiet; always being responsible for my brother's behaviour... I could go on...

I had a 'responsibilty' to be thin if I wanted anyone to love me.

I wasn't pretty enough to be loved.

I wouldn't be able to get a mortgage if I didn't have a husband.

I couldn't go to pubs alone.

I couldn't drink beer.

I must always defer to the man.

I didn't need to go to university because I'd get married at 21 and have children by 23.

I needed to learn to type so that I could be a secretary.

I needed to stay at home and fulfill my 'duty' of looking after my children.

I mustn't make my husband feel 'inadequate' by being better at DIY than him.

I mustn't antagonise a man to the extent that he hit me and, when one did, I needed to learn from that and not do it again. After all, next time he might dump me...

All of those were messages I received between 8 and 30 years old. On a loop. Constantly.

I completely failed at all of them...

Oh and then, when I had children, I realised it wasn't just my mother who was a raging misogynist!!

I was a feminist by the time I was about 10 years old. I just didn't know it then.

Shockingly late. Thought it had all been sorted out bar the dinosaurs who were dying off.

Then I saw the sexual exploitation of young women, human trafficking, and the Trans business.

Maybe in the last six years or so. Depressing.

I worked for the first decade and a half of my working life in construction.

Every day, it ingrained in me how we still need feminism. Or at least, to smash the patriarchy.

Throughout my working life since I have done things to try and smash the narrow minded viewpoints of both men and women, boys and girls.

It is quite interesting how many times I've heard 'women/girls can't do that' and said 'Well, I'm doing it so obviously we can'. It's the soundtrack to my life.

I used to have to attend meetings with this bitter old bloke who - every time he would see me would say 'building industry, not for women'. And every time I would retort 'I wouldn't know about that, I am a civil engineer' and every time he would go purple and get angry that I yet again, dared to question his stock line. Wanker.

very late indeed.

I come from a long-term highly-educated (eg great aunt had place at the Sorbonne in 1914) female-dominated family. My mum and aunts with kids all worked, and not at aunts had families, so being a wife and mother was not the default for me.

Went to a girls' school for 10 years

Uni course female dominated

Have worked in a female-dominated industry for 20+ years

So I was basically blind to a lot of inequality, thought it didn't effect me. And, looking back, even in my female-dominated family and world, there was/is a lot of work to be done.

It's extraordinary now that the scales have fallen from my eyes. Depressing too, really - I was probably happier in my ignorance.

Thought it had all been sorted out bar the dinosaurs who were dying off.
Me too. They just found new and different ways to express their entitlement, didn't they.

I won't give details because its too upsetting.
It involved a friend who miscarried, and the realisation that women who miscarry in public are no longer even allowed the small cold comfort of a women only toilet in which to do it.

I should also say that my mum and aunts (born in the 30s and 40s) were all professional-level working women.

It was drummed into me at an early age that you should never depend on a man for your financial security. I am the only woman in my family of my generation who has been a SAHM dependant on her DH.

sothishappened

You had the same upbringing as me. Except I’m in my 50s. How sad that little has changed.

I have always tried really hard to never to comment on my daughters appearance in any way, beyond the basics of cleanliness. She has a whole world out there telling her that all that matters about her is how she looks

IM0GEN

I'm in my early 40s. I went to university (really had to fight for that one!!) in 1995 - doesn't seem that long ago really.

I tell my daughter she is amazing; I tell her she is strong; I tell her that she is capable but I don't comment on her appearance. She's already showing signs of feminist leanings and challenges sexism in school when she sees it.

I have a male friend who has always annoyed me with "humanism not feminism" nonsense. He told me the other day that he was really beginning to see what I'd been talking about for the first time. I was stunned. But pleased!

I still have a couple of female friends who are high up in male dominated industries who mock me for feminism and tell me it's not necessary - look how well they have done - being a woman hasn't held them back. And yet can't see that the complaints they have about work - generally the attitudes of the men they manage towards them; injustices in relationships; difficulties re balancing family responsibilities; sex based expectations that frustrate them are exactly what I'm talking about! They seem to regard these as 'natural law'...

Same here - I was the first woman in my family and parents’ social circle to go to university, everyone said it was a waste of time for a girl as she would just get married. My parents wouldn’t support me through uni ( even though they could well afford it ) so I worked all weekends and holidays just to buy food and other essentials.

My DD is also a feminist although she probably wouldn’t use that word. She’s at uni now and is very gender critical. She phones me to complain about misogyny that she sees on her course from the lecturers #proudmum

The “ natural law “ issue is about cultural hegemony, isn’t it? Men as the ruling class set the value system so that it becomes seen as normal and natural . So women ( as a class) consent to their own oppression as it’s invisible to them, they see it as just the way the world is and can’t conceive how it could be any other way.

That’s one reason why Mn is often seen as radical . Women come on here and complain about their lives and other women say to them “ it doesn’t have to be like that”. It’s very shocking.

Yes, quite.

My son is 20 and in his first year at university. He is shocked at the number of female students who aren't feminists.

He's going around radicalising all of them! Challenging outdated stereotypes in lectures and encouraging them to critically evaluate their beliefs.

So many of them had "never thought about it like that before"...

He sounds like a great lad!

I've always known women have needed feminism but have become more and more 'radicalised' myself in the past couple of years due to a combination of ageing and the extra barriers that brings, and the transborg. I had a conversation with a new colleague (gay male, 20 years younger than me) who stated women are not discriminated against and there should be no special measures like AWS or initiatives to encourage women into STEM etc as it wasn't fair and equal (he meant for men!). He would not believe that I wasn't allowed to study the subjects I wanted to at school, that I hadn't been able to follow my chosen career path, that women I worked with had had to leave careers because they had children, all because we were female. He was a patronising git though and just wrote me off as a middle-aged invisible woman. Arsehole.

Then just yesterday I was interviewed for a fairly senior role and the male director referred to every woman in the place as 'girls' - 'the girls from HR', 'the admin girls', getting his own PA as 'needing a girl outside his office'. Gah!

SoThisHappened, you are describing my childhood too. I didn't win the "girls don't need to go to university because..." battle though I did find a career where equal pay and conditions were a given but promotion and advancement were heavily dependent on being part of the male-pub-and-golf-club network. Still, I sharpened my elbows, achieved a very senior position and every time I secured promotion, quietly reached out to another capable woman and offered her a helping hand onto the next rung of the ladder...on the strict condition that when she achieved promotion, she would do exactly the same. We formed quite a wide network in the end. I'm very proud of that. So I guess I've been a feminist since the age of about 10 too.

And still fighting.

user

My grandmother had a lot to do with my becoming a feminist, from about the age of 7 - the insistence that I needed to clear up after my older brother as that's women's work. Always seen as somehow less than my brother and male cousins.

My mother was not what you'd call a feminist, called it rubbish actually, but then said that there was nothing I couldn't do.

At my all girls school we learnt sewing, cooking and typing, while my brother learnt handy things like woodwork and computers at the boys school (this was in the nineties!).

I studied a female dominated subject at university and then worked in a female dominant industry, so really thought that we could have it all. Looking back though, the few men in the industry managed to get promoted much faster than any of the women.

And then I made a career move into a male dominated sector, and suddenly found it much more difficult to get a job. This coincided with getting married, and I noticed that in interviews the interviewers glancing at my wedding ring. It was almost as though they were weighing up how likely it was that I'd leave to have kids.

Just the other day one of my colleagues informed me that as the Equal Pay Act came out in 1970, women have equal pay. Well yes, but murder is against the law as well but people still do it.

I don't have children, and probably won't ever have them. I do feel though that I am judged as though I could be off at any minute. The outrage at work when one male colleague took six months shared parental leave was hilarious!

My brother is the biggest misogynist I know (thanks Grandma) but I am slowly but surely radicalising my mother. A couple of years ago she said that the patriarchy had never negatively affected her life. I don't think she's say the same again now. She's also upset that she managed to raise a son who thinks it's sensible to discriminate against female candidates for jobs.

DH on the other hand was raised by a DM who was the main earner and a DF who did all the cooking and cleaning. He's never doubted that feminism is necessary

From tiny I had a strong dislike of injustice and unfairness and was very indignant when it reared it’s head, was aware of feminism from an early age

When my mother said I needed to learn how to sew buttons on but my brother didn't.

Like a bump in my first job. I left university in a little bubble, and came up against an unequal hiring policy, unequal pay, and experienced colleagues who called this out being called “ungrateful bitches”...