After centuries of misogyny, women deserve reparations – but how much are they owed?

[IwantToRetire]

NB extracts only

We need to talk about compensation for the crime of oppressing half the population, if only to acknowledge the harm that has been caused for generations.

Are women owed reparation for the centuries in which our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers were denied education, prevented from working, blocked from professions and forced into unpaid domestic subjugation?

How far do we go back to calculate women’s losses?

“These are real lower-end estimates” concluding that the minimum sum lost to women - in the UK – would be £7bn a year in today’s money, which adds up to £700bn across the whole of the 19th century. Divided by the 35 million women in the UK today, this would give us each a lump sum of £20,000. And that’s before you begin calculating the financial oppression that followed in the 20th century and beyond.
Which poses a further question: the gender wage gap for full-time employees now hovers near 7% – do men today owe women 3.5% of their earnings?

Not to mention women’s unpaid domestic labour, enabling a society to be built on our backs. On<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/ERjjY/url.uk.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/Q46kC8XxYf68K3nC2igNsyoPoQ?domain=billthepatriarchy.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> billthepatriarchy.com women can tally their unpaid work, though of course some losses are incalculable.

Full article https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/after-centuries-of-misogyny-women-deserve-reparations-but-how-much-are-they-owed and at https://archive.is/ERjjY

And women still to be born? Some men aren’t paid more than women, do the women who earn pay men? Where’s the money coming from?

Yes. Whenever the talk turns to reparations for past race-based slavery I have a hollow laugh and think, "Try reparations for the ongoing shit, the crap being dished out now not a century ago -- to half the human race. The unpaid labour is staggering."

And that's not even mentioning all the ways women are shortchanged. No. Straight up unpaid labour.

Ha - I love it.

I play with this idea all the time. My thoughts?

Women have really been out since the 70s. So we should have a look at the how much is spent on social services and that really is how much women used t do for free.

The cost of care of the elderly, cost of child care, cost of obesity (cause we used to do the cooking!) and so on.

That is a sort of a base line of how much women saved the nation's coffers.

I cannot think too much about this stuff - it is bad for m marriage! 😁

Thanks for the link OP, really though provoking and interesting.

Reparations for women don't follow as straight a line as reparations for slavery. Women as a class are mixed into the general population in a way that most opressed classes are not. Unlike the value of the unpaid work done by slaves, the value of women's work has been passed down to the next generation including the half that is female. Not entirely fairly, but it's not as massive a theft as from slavery.

When my mother gave up her life to bring up my brother and me while my father fucked off to do whatever he wanted, the wealth of her work didn't pass directly to my brother, it passed to me too. When she cared for my grandparents, it wasn't just her father than benefitted, her mother did too. Because of the work my DM did, my father got to keep wealth he should have had to expend on his family, but when he passes, I will receive as much of what is left as my brother. The same for all the unpaid work my grandmother did, and her mother too.

My mother is dead so cannot benefit from reparations, but if she did, that benefit would pass on to both my brother and me.

I would like to see instead, more wealth put into recognizing the work that women do. Paying childcare workers, nurses, teachers, care workers, properly. Statues to women who have cared for others. Effort put into ensuring women are listened to on these matters when developing policy. And legislation that ensures women who do give up on career ambitions to provide care have access to family wealth, get pension contributions, and are compensated for that career loss on divorce.

Though would also like to see all the men kicked out of the Lords for 10 generations so we can have a tiny bit of rebalancing.

I want a million pounds for every female that I'm descended from.
My calculator can't work out how much that is, I'm going to need a quantum computer to crunch the numbers.

IMO reparations are a misguided, nay, stupid idea - stupid on a number of levels. I would never support this.

The slaves are dead now and cannot be repaid.

Maybe instead of spending all that time, mental energy and money arguing about how to do the impossible - recompense the dead - we focus on improving the lives of people currently held in slavery today.

The value of their unpaid work went to their owners, not to their families. The value of women’s unpaid work went, for the most part, to their families.

The descendants of slaves didn’t benefit from their ancestors labour. But women have and do benefit from their female ancestors’ labour.

edit to add: and since this is a women’s forum I don’t see any issue with discussing, even theoretically, how society might get make amends for its past abysmal treatment of women rather than discussing other oppressive societal horrors.

The article is prompted by the reparations for slavery campiagn.

And deals with how, if there is such a possibility, it could be financially calcutated.

I expected responses based on the suggested calculations etc..

And thought it interesting that there is a web site called https://www.billthepatriarchy.com/

Excellent idea and I love the bill the patriarchy website.

Agree with those saying that often women’s labour benefits their families but (a) some members of the family (men) simply enjoy the benefits, (b) women do not equal their families, this is still disadvantaging an individual to benefit their families, I don’t think it’s reasonable to rule out reparations because women knew the people who were benefiting from their labour and (c) these benefits are skewed. You can see this most clearly in the aristocracy where it is specifically the eldest son who inherits but this misogynistic scale is apparent in many families. Until very recently sons were more likely to be prioritised for private schools, universities and paid for/subsidised professional training. I don’t think privileging sons should exempt mothers from reparations.

Actively work to address systemic problems in society. Paying reparations requires taking money from people who committed no crime. The entire concept is flawed.

This makes me cringe a bit because it seems nicked from the idea of slavery reparations. I’m white, so may be wrong, but wonder if that link could make it feel offensive to black women.

THIS there are nearly 50 million enslaved people NOW. https://cdn.walkfree.org/assets/uploads/resources/global-estimates-of-modern-slavery-forced-labour-and-forced-marriage/GEMS-2022_Report_EN_V8.pdf

Are we not allowed to talk about women’s rights or trivial things because there is still slavery in the world?

Better close down the whole of Mumsnet.

Getting my pension back to 60 would be a start. I was born in the early 60s lived through a school system I wasn't allowed to do subjects as boys got first choice. Had children before maternity leave or pay was a thing. Got paid less than men my entire working life started my pension late for all the above reasons and really struggled with working through the worst years of menopause and now am caring for elderly parents helping and regularl childcare for grandchildren. I'd really like the pension I was promised and worked for. Currently early 69s still got years to wait. Fuckers. I don't want reparations I want a fair deal for once.