Suze,

1850: Men with 100 pounds free-hold, 10 pounds annual value householders, 3 year lease of 10 pounds annual value, or depasturing licence were allowed to vote.

1893: The right to vote in Western Australia was granted to all male British subjects over the age of 21.

http://www.aec.gov.au/elections/australian_electoral_history/reform.htm

1895: Women over 21 were given the right to vote in South Australia.

1899: Women over 21 were given the right to vote in Western Australia.

This women and voting history is a big furphy. Most men didn't vot either around the same time. The feminist tries to rewrite history that it was some big sexist thing, when it was more to do with money than gender. It was to do with gender that the very rich were men, but not that women couldn't vote, as the poor men couldn't vote either.

It's a trick feminists use to position men as unilaterally at an advantage to women, when in the same period of history the vast majority of men, the poor men, couldn't vote either.

Feminists don't want to talk either about how women voted overwhelmingly to send young men who could not vote to Vietnam.

Apparently it isn't sexist to conscript 19yr old male youths to risk life and limb in a foreign country, and not even for the defence of Australia.

Poirot, I too worry about the women in other countries who don't have living or working conditions nearly as good as most have in Australia.

I feel especially angry for those women living under strict religious shackles, with patriarchal 'elders' who want to keep their women living in the past forever.

However, I'm not sure if western consumerism is able to be stopped, or even slowed down though.
Taking away the only employment those poor women have, even if it is to make items to satisfy the increased needs of western consumerism, would not help their lives.

The only changes able to be made in those women's working and personal lives will have to be from within their own countries and communities, and I am sure that will come.

I feel kinda funny around here, Suse, in that I seem to be only one who doesn't think that a subsistence peasant farmer, be it male or female, is out of "employment" or without work. Nor do I think they're necessarily unhappy or destitute or without the basic skills and resources to provide for themselves and their families.

Not every one in third world countries lives in landscapes that can't support them, in fact most live in landscapes that have supported their communities for eons.

I don't necessarily think swapping a traditional lifestyle for the thrill of slugging away in a factory for a pittance to serve the Western need for convenience and excess is a great outcome at all.

Poirot, I started a response to your last comments then realised I really don't know, just some ideas.

Basic premise, long term those subsistance farming lifestyles have had the numbers of people involved kept in check by a variety of factors that may apply less now. Transport can bring in emergency aid during a famine, vacinations reduce infant mortality etc. Meanwhile the subsistance farmers have not gotten wealthy and educated enough to reach the point wherethey start having less kids.

There are less natural checks on the numbers the land needs to support and the old ways don't meet the needs of an expended population.

Hence the problem

R0bert

RObert
You are not alone. I sometimes go to write great screeds on this and find it difficult to express or portray what I want to say. I think there have been some great discussion and honest feelings expressed on this thread.

Poirot's points are highly relevant as regards the standards of women elsehwere and the tendency of westerners to push their values, mainly around consumerism, onto another culture.

Even in the West, feminism is fostered to some extent on the backs of poorly paid child care workers who have to submit to less than living wages to suit the ideal of affordable childcare under a feminist/capitalist banner. It is the same with cheap imports at a cost to those nations who provide the better-off with their cheap goods.

It is all back to front in may ways.

I am a bit old-fashioned in some ways being born in the early 60s and grew up with strong gender differentiation but having been through the 70s as a young teenager/woman I was all for feminism in terms of equal respect, womens' shelters, equal pay for equal work. But feminism has morphed into something of a one size fits all approach which is just as dogmatic as the criticised patriarchial system. And the exclusion of men in the discussion is short-sighted.

People might be surprised at, what I think would be positive outcomes, of governmet focussing policy on good human outcomes rather than always pushing this modern and divisive gender-bent. It is not good enough when men share their feelings on these gender biases that SOME feminists merely reply 'diddums'.