Gender equality

[goldengrove]

I've been thinking lately about how far feminism has come since my mother's time, and how far yet it still has to go.

My thoughts are still sorting themselves out, but this article expresses some of what I'm thinking quite well.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2009/02/27/women_s_work/index.htmlQuote

Comments

[paradigmshifty]

You can boil that down even further, to 'what does it tell us about how much we value women?'

[goldengrove]

Yes. Although I think it's more 'how much do we value (or not) feminine attributes/skills/traits'.

The example that's been percolating in my brain is that a woman can walk down the street in trousers (masculine clothing) without anyone batting an eyelid, but if a man walks down the street in a skirt it draws attention and possibly (probably?) ridicule.

More thinking is needed...

[the_starshadow]

On the other hand, I've read articles about how relationships where the man is at home doing housework and looking after the kids and the woman works as per normal are increasingly leading to divorce, as the woman begins to resent that the man isn't earning any money and is no longer the 'bread-winner' etc etc, and is no longer 'manly enough' so to speak. What makes the problem worse is that family courts generally don't take this into account and just assume that the woman was the primary caregiver, and therefore gets custody of the children, even in some cases where the man was almost entirely responsible for them.

This isn't meant to be an indictment of your argument, in fact I agree with much of it, I'm just saying I don't think it's simply a matter of men not respecting women that don't work, I think it's increasingly that people don't respect people that don't work in non-domestic employment.

[goldengrove]

Yep, and I think that's because child-rearing and housekeeping, which are traditionally women's work, are not valued in Australian society, even if men are doing them.