What happened to women's liberation?

Why do people want to climb a career ladder? Is it for more money; or more kudos; or out of a sense that this is the done thing?

I know that for me this was unimportant, so taking time out to look after my children was not a problem on that score. I returned to my career after 5 years and stuck with the "real work" rather than seeking managerial roles, which were the trajectory of advancement and would have taken me away from the coal face.

One of my DDs is in a high-powered job which she enjoys, and her OH works part-time and does all the school pick-ups and drop-offs and all the shopping and cooking - I think DD has forgotten how to cook!

The problems as I see it are:

- women can now have careers, but they still mostly retain their role in the home: cooking etc. So they have gained little.

- instead of being at home doing one job, they are now juggling two in the same time frame.

- the important role of bringing up children has been devalued, so that a mother at home with her children sometimes feels she is regarded less favourably than those at outside work.

- I always feel it is slightly ironic that some women go to work because they feel they must pursue a career, while someone else pursuing a career in child care is looking after their children for them. Child care has become a profession, rather than a shared parental fulfilling task.

- the cost of housing etc. has made it very hard to have only one income in a household, but the gain from two incomes is largely offset by the cost of childcare. So in a sense the partners are partially working for no financial gain.

- I do not think it is always about wanting to have it all now, as my DDs do not fit that description - they know to cut their coat according to their cloth, and they all value the time that they have bringing up their children.

I suppose that those people who pursued the cause of liberating women from their educational and professional constraints probably did not imagine the scenario that we now have, as we pursue that aim.

But this is all academic to those parents who are at the bottom of the heap and in a heat-or-eat situation.

GrammyGrammy

Sadly it all went wrong. And women are to blame! Instead of using our new found powerfulness to gain better protections for ourselves and our children from the men we wrestles them off, instead we chose to jump into the moral gutter with the men, causing the disintegration of the family and ending lifelong support for us and our children by men and instead leaving ourselves in a worse mess than before. Now we have no sexual or moral high ground and we murder a quarter or a million of our own babies each year and raise our sons to disrespect women, use and abuse them and become porn addicts- whilst rejecting family members and discarding family and community. We didn't fight the right battles for long enough or hard enough. Now 'woman' is being disappeared from our own existence and we do nothing to fight it either.

Men raise children too, Grammy. I really don't recognise this so-called woman-created apocalypse you refer to.

MissAdventure

Women have spoiled the notion of equality because everything now is judged by others (women)

A prime example there, MissA of a woman judging women.

I think part of the problem is that too many men were raised by women who did everything for them and therefore expect the next woman in their life to do the same. Only men raised by feminists seem to expect to do a half share in domestic tasks. Language doesn't do any favours either. Even on here (Ok in truth, ESPECIALLY on here) I see references to husbands 'helping' with housework, for example. It's not 'helping', it's their shared premises so the work should be shared. I've even seen the term 'babysitting' when it comes to men taking care of their own children. It's not babysitting - it's being a parent.

Made In Dagenham. There's a film about it. There's also a musical. I was in it once.

I think there are many reasons for women's lib not having turned out the way we hoped it would in the 1970s.

Unemployment has made it hard for women who choose to stay at home to look after their pre-school age children to get back into the job market. In Denmark, and for all I know in other countries as well, a woman who is looking after her children is not entitled to unemployment benefits or social security if she is married or living in a relationship as her husband/partner is legally obliged to support her and no contributions are made by her union to pension schemes.
Single mothers and those married to unemployed men are only entitled to benefits if they have child-care arrangements in place, as they are otherwise deemed not able to accept a job at a day's notice - a pre-condition of receiving unemployment benefit or social security.

This makes it a financial impossiblity for many women to stay at home, even if they would prefer to do so.

Yes, in the 1970s we talked a lot about men doing their share of housework, nappy changing and generally bringing up children. How well it worked is difficult to say.

A lot of women of my generation expected their husbands to take part in housework/child-raising but to do it to our standards, rather than accepting that an adult man might well have different standards, or simply not see the dust, as he hadn't been brought up to notice it!

Many of our children's generation heard their parents arguing about housework, so I find it reasonably easy to understand if both our daughters and granddaughters would rather do it all themselves than inflict the often acrimonious atmosphere they grew up in on their children.

I am sure there are other reasons why women's lib. seems to have stagnated, but these are the features I have experienced affecting it.

Sadly it all went wrong. And women are to blame! Instead of using our new found powerfulness to gain better protections for ourselves and our children from the men we wrestles them off, instead we chose to jump into the moral gutter with the men, causing the disintegration of the family and ending lifelong support for us and our children by men and instead leaving ourselves in a worse mess than before. Now we have no sexual or moral high ground and we murder a quarter or a million of our own babies each year and raise our sons to disrespect women, use and abuse them and become porn addicts- whilst rejecting family members and discarding family and community. We didn't fight the right battles for long enough or hard enough. Now 'woman' is being disappeared from our own existence and we do nothing to fight it either.

icanhandthemback

Thank you. I will definitely look up Dagenham Women’s strike.

I agree, we’ll never have true equality.
At points in my marriage I earned more than my husband & I really resented it.
Even today, a woman is thought to have ‘married well’ if her husband earns a good salary. From my own experience, nearly all my female friends & relatives would have much preferred to have stayed at home when their children were young, but they couldn’t afford to due to needing 2 incomes to buy even an average house.

When I had my children in the seventies, most people left their job when they were 6 months pregnant and didn't go back, as the job wasn't held open for them. I just did part times jobs around the children and I have fond memories of all the young Mums in our cul de sac in their bikinis on a hot summers day while the children played. Life is so different now. It seems that my daughter and all her friends are expected to go back to work after the 9 months maternity leave. I took on the role as full time carer for my Grandson but even so my daughter was so exhausted when she got home from work each day. She envies the life that all the Mums had in my day. As previously mentioned, if you leave a job these days, it isn't easy to get another one. These days you even have to produce a decent CV for even a menial job. Also, I had the luxury of having 7 days in hospital after my first child and 5 days after my second. My daughter was sent home after 2 days after having a difficult birth. Life has changed so much but not all for the better and as already mentioned most families need two wages coming in to keep their heads above water.

Womens refuges - fought for and fundraised for by feminists
Law to make rape within marriage illegal fought for by feminists
Law to make upskirting illegal
Much more equal representation within many work sectors
Oh and lots of fights still going on - porn in particular.
Oh and I never thought lesbians werent 'us'.

I think everything has been worth it as now there is a choice - yes money drives a lot of choices but at least the choice is there.

Kandinsky, I suggest you watch the film about the Dagenham Women's Strike in 1968 and it highlights just how much men's Unions did not support women for equality. It's called Made In Dagenham. It certainly did not suit a lot of men for women to be equal so the women had to fight their husbands, their unions, their bosses, etc to get to where they are today.
I've always thought equality was something to strive for but that it could also be a double edged sword. Women will only have true equality when the whole of society change their attitudes. Men who choose to stay at home with children whilst the woman works are thought of as something lesser than a Real Man (especially by other men), looked upon somewhat suspiciously by some of the other mothers, and there is still an attitude lurking about women earning more than their partners.
Just in the home environment, until we get over that, "look what I've done for you," attitude if a man picks up a duster, we haven't got equality. In a divorce situation, if a woman leaves custody to the man, she is something of a lesser person in other women's eyes.
Even on this forum, there are definite negative attitudes from some women about mothers who "just" stay at home. So, even women themselves cannot agree what is considered as equality!

What my grandmother, mother (and father) and I wanted was fairness at work, home and in government. We have made many good changes but we have (wrongly) accepted men can 'opt out' of being a parent (to own children) and can have a free ride domestically. There needs to be a price if they choose these lives. We could use DNA profiling to link children to fathers - that might encourage a bit of responsibility. So, battles have been won, but not the war.

I think that regardless of gender or reason for the break, its always going to be difficult to get back on a career track at the same or near the level that you have left it if you take long gaps out. I have done it twice (neither time childcare or illness was a reason) and I did have to go back in at a grade lower than I left at. I had it fairly easy as I was well known personally in the organisation I was going back to and there were always vacancies. it took a year and luck each time for me to start climbing again and each time I was only out for a year....if it had been longer it would have been harder.

Women achieved equal opportunity quite some time ago. More recently they even achieved more-than-equality, being a woman meant preferential treatment.

What they didn't achieve was the right to 'do it all' but have a male partner compelled to do half of it for them!

Let's talk women liberation iust by posts in this board

The old fashioned idea that the wife reminds the husband of birthdays, sends all the cards and buys all the presents for the family- no longer shared by the new generations

Women finding their own sources of information instead of having only one source (elders) - another difference

Dil having to be friends with the ILs, while the same standard is not held on the hand side

The wife not having to be hostess when the couple has guests over, the husband also steps up

So yes, I would call this progress

Kandinsky - women’s liberationists/feminists worked in unions. We have an equal pay law, despite which I know we earn less but not in the same job. We have maternity leave. I know about pregnant and stuffed not claiming all is well but it’s definitely better

I feel sad that my DD and her DH are struggling to raise their firstborn, 9 months old, although they are happy. They would both be considered “professionals” with good careers, but high salaries are spent employing a part time Nanny (£20 ph if you please!) plus a cleaner, while DD works from home keeping her business afloat. DSiL is great, really pulls his weight with childcare and chores, and much as they would like to have a second child, it would have a massive impact on their standard of living, not least as they are in a 2-bed and cannot afford to buy a larger place where they live. They are 200 miles away, so I’m unable to provide childcare. I think things are much harder for young couples nowadays.

I’m going to be totally honest here.
When I was growing up in a lower working class area of south London. feminists were either lesbians or white middle class women, ( if we ever came across one at all )
They weren’t ‘us’ - they didn’t represent us.
All that ‘burn your bra’ stuff, they just looked a bit silly & embarrassing.
I don’t actually know what women’s lib has actually achieved? Unions fought for rights in the work place didn’t they? Or were Labour backed unions only fighting for mens rights back in the 70’s?.
Women still do the majority of low paid, low status jobs - nursery workers, shop work, cleaners etc.
Porn is as bad as ever if not worse, young women feel they have to have invasive surgery to make themselves more appealing to men.
Violence against women is as bad as ever.
I worked harder than my mum did & often felt exhausted trying to juggle work & children.
The only thing that made my life easier than my mums was having a washing machine & tumble dryer.

I didn’t do unpaid work, we both wanted children, he went out
to work, I worked at home caring for OUR children

Hithere

Daisymae
Very judgemental post

Whatever a couple decides to do is none of anybody's business

We, women, are truly our worst enemy

Really good post.

Why do men not feel like that might bemore of a question. Is the role of a father downgraded if they work full time.

The idea that women want it all, aim to de-masculate men always crops up in gransnet whenever the subject of ‘working mothers’ is raised.
It’s good to see so many other posters who managed to combine work alongside marriage/divorce/life long partnerships and being being single parents . Life happens, we do our best to live the way that works for us and our loved ones.
What about working fathers?

paddyann I suppose it all depends on the relationship whether you feel parasitic caring for your shared children.
My 4 years, unpaid, work as a child carer forour children were rewarding, fun and something I have treasured. A great investment. Some, my DD1 for example, could not afford that time out if the paid workplace for more than a year & waited longer than she would have preferred for her 2nd child as they needed to save enough for her to have a 2nd year at home & unpaid.
It is less common now for a couple to have the luxury of one becoming the main carer for children for an extended period. Rents & mortgages are eye-watering & the workplace moves on apace so women do not want to be away for long as it can disadvantage them when looking at promotion.

I agree Blondie so much for female solidarity! Each to their own I say!

I do, even now I am retired, sometimes resent the opinion of other women, and it is always other women, who dismiss other women not in professional careers

That is one of the things that concerns me. I think that some young women feel that they ought to be out at work, partly because they feel bad about not contributing to the financial pot and partly because they feel judged..... and they fear getting "left behind" on the career ladder.

I suspect that most of that could be eliminated if making and home and caring for children were seen as on a par with a professional career.....of equal value.

Having to fight hard to stay on a par with men in the workplace, they do not want to lose any of the ground they have gained by taking time out for the important task of child-rearing.

I do not think that the women who fought for equality had in mind that, as we have progressed on that front, the role of being a mother would finish up downgraded.