I don't know whether your general punter woman does lap it up anti. My partner doesn't, she laughs her head off when I regale her with my latest reading of feminist social commentry. She reckons she must live on a different planet to the authors.

Then again I have another younger friend who keeps banging on about a boys club at work, and every time I meet her she appears to have been promoted. I once got sick of all this goings on and challenged her to identify one anecdote where she had been held back or discriminiated against and she couldn't come up with anthing. But, then she had kids, and now she's mightily peed off that her hubby doesn't earn enough and that he dared to suggest he be primary carer.

I think most women accept that if you leave the workforce for 5 years you may not come back with 5 years worth of payrises handed to you. It's only those in acedemic la la land who would think it should be otherwise. I think it's a case of the 'academics' always missing very academic evidence that most women are happy enough in the carer role and accept this involves a few trade-offs.

I really don't see many women chanting rah rah with every stunning relevation from feminists that that your average mother with 3 kids isn't going to be a CEO. Why, because most of them aren't interested, so too for myself and most of my friends. Most people work to live, and understand commerial realities.

There's actually a massive discord between feminists and your average woman as most women with kids I know are actually looking for part-time work for their work-life balance, and want more of it, and all you hear from feminists is that the very fact of these women in part time work is some great injustice.

Women who are lucky enough to not even have to do part-time work are considered the really lucky ones in the social group.

SO many women oppressed that don't even know it.

Houellebecq,

You are correct.

The author quotes figures from the HILDA survey, but the following paper also comes from the Hilda survey.

"Family Structure, Usual and Preferred Working Hours, and
Egalitarianism in Australia"

http://melbourneinstitute.com/wp/wp2004n01.pdf

This paper found that the average woman only wants to work about 20 hrs per week.

This is if they have children, AND ALSO IF THEY HAVE NO DEPENDANT CHILDREN.

Of course the last part is very important, because no one can have a career, while working only 20 hrs per week.

I have never heard a feminist ever mention that paper, and I regard feminists as being as non-bigoted as the Klu Klux Klan.

Reading between the lines, they want to elliminate the father and replace him with the taxpayer.

Houellebecq:"SO many women oppressed that don't even know it."

You'll love this, from Malcolm Turnbull's old firm, proudly touted by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.

http://www.eowa.gov.au/Pay_Equity/Files/Australias_hidden_resource.pdf

"Closing the gap between male and female employment rates would have important implications for the Australian economy. We estimate that closing this gap would boost the level of Australian GDP by 11%."

but

"However, policies aimed at merely bringing women into the workforce are inadequate. A large gulf exists in the historical measures of male and female productivity growth in Australia. Male productivity has historically averaged over double that of female productivity
over the past 30 years. We refuse to believe that a female with the same educational and work experience as a male will be 50% less productive in a similar role. Instead, we find that an important element of gender equality is the dominance of females in low productivity sectors of the economy, particularly health care and training, a bias to clerical roles and a bias to working short hours."

So

"Policies aimed at directing women joining the workforce into more productive sectors of the economy and retaining women in the workforce for longer would narrow or even eliminate the productivity gender gap. The impact upon the level of economic activity of such a change would be profound. On the assumption that females already in the workforce remain in their existing roles, then new female entrants exhibiting equal productivity gains as male workers
would have the potential to boost the level of economic activity by over 20%."

How do we do it?

I'll leave that to the interested reader. Suffice to say that it involves spending lots of money to convince women to do stuff they don't want to do and cutting support for stuff they do want to do. Oh yeah, "educational programs" in schools and workplaces to convince them they really do want to work 60 hour weeks while bub sits in childcare.

Antiseptic,

What is not mentioned is also inflation or increased costs.

If women were to increase their productivity, they will be asking for higher wages, and then the price of everything goes up, and no one really gains.

I am seeing this in the town I live in, which is a mining boom town.

The prices have steadily increased with higher wages being earnt by miners, and now, people just want the miners to leave or go somewhere else, because prices have increased so much no one is gaining anymore.

Vanna, the current bubble in house prices is a result of a few factors, one of the most important in my view being female participation in the paid workforce. House prices are sitting at present at around 6X mean income, when historically they have been at around 4X. A working wife makes the difference and it is those working wives who decide that they need a McMansion in the sticks at $600,000 instead of a worker's cottage closer to the workplace at $400,000.

Marketers have shamelessly exploited this and so have politicians, with the result that housing prices will remain flat for years, unless the Govt can get more women into those high-paid jobs that demand commitment and productivity.

Antiseptic,

Its not just house prices that increase, (although some people are now paying $300 a week rent for a caravan site in a caravan park, and other are renting a shipping container to live in).

Eventually the price of food goes up, as well as the price of most other things.

It has reached the stage in this town where you can go into a shop and tell the shop assistant that you are a long term resident and not employed in the mining industry, and you can expect about a 25% discount.

That would be indicative of the price increases if women increased their productivity.

OR, another scenario is that wages will actually drop because there is more labour available, so both mothers and fathers have to work anyway.

Oops, can't mention the word father in a feminist society. Now have to say "partner".