Feminism: The Ugly Truth by Mike Buchanan

Author:Mike Buchanan [Buchanan, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, General, Politics & Current Events, Radicalism, political science, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9780957168879
Google: N38kDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: LPS publishing
Published: 2017-05-21T00:07:37.844523+00:00

34| THE FEMINIST ASSAULT ON WOMEN

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

Dwight D Eisenhower 1890-1969 five-star general, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, President of the United States (1953-61)

I’ve long been a fan of guitar-based live music and it happens that my adopted home town, the throbbing metropolis of Bedford, England, has long had a thriving live music scene. In 2008 I published an account of the lives of eight local guitarists, Guitar Gods in Beds. (Bedfordshire: a heavenly county). All eight were men between 53 and 66 years of age, and six of them were from solidly working-class backgrounds.

All eight of them would have been ten-year-olds between 1958-1965, and I mention this because almost all of them had mothers at that time who weren’t engaged in paid employment, but were ‘stay-at-home Moms’ to use the American phrase. From most of the men’s accounts I gained the sense that their mothers had led happy and fulfilled lives.

Half a century later we have somehow arrived at a situation where living standards have improved considerably, yet most working class women and many middle class women have to work for financial reasons. Now this may be partly to finance higher standards of living, but many of these women work to help pay for the necessities of life, not for luxuries. What might account for this astonishing turn of events? In the course of half a century we’ve moved from a situation in which most working-class women could afford not to work, to a situation where most middle-class women must work?

When Betty Friedan wrote of the lack of fulfilment of women as mothers and housewives in The Feminine Mystique (1963) she was relating the perspectives of a minority of women. When a number of women started exerting their right to undertake paid employment they inevitably fuelled house price inflation; and so it was that increasing numbers of women then had to work, to help raise the household income to the levels required to pay higher housing costs. This would proportionately have affected younger couples more than older couples, and with ever more women working, house price inflation was boosted yet further. It’s been a vicious cycle.

This is an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences which often applies in the area of gender relations. A minority of women chose to take up paid employment which over time has led to a situation where a majority of women have to work. This suits feminists fine, of course. In their ideal world all women would be engaged in paid employment. It’s just the majority of women who aren’t suited to this state of affairs.

In the current era many women are, of course, financially independent, particularly those who are single. While this is to be applauded, there’s a flip side to the matter, namely the risk that periods of unemployment – even, in some cases, of a short duration – may have catastrophic consequences for women.

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