As a woman who has had the chance to live through all this history I find your account very interesting Jane.

I would mention the low level of employment and the 3/4 wages available to women in the 70's resulting in a worldwide economic decline while parity in western countries was obtained, and the blame it drew at the time. That prosperity was at the expense of an oppressed 50% of the population was overlooked.

Jane, you make it all sound so simple and wonderful, like a shampoo commercial. Two legs bad, four legs good.
Wealth has always been the remedy for oppression and the enabler for choice, regardless of gender or any other determinant.
30% of females will never marry or have children, primarily because they won't 'marry down', so consequently 30% of males have no hope of a family because they don't have what women require.
Next time you are in a city go and look at some of the numerous boarding houses chock-a-block with low income men living in rooms smaller than prison cells and ask yourself if it is fair that women still benefit from affirmative action legislation. Of course it is comforting to think simply, that all women are oppressed and all men are advantaged, but it simply isn't true. Feminism has always been about money and political influence and it has worked well for plenty of women, particularly those who weren't oppressed in the first place

One only has to look at the Queensland Public Service, with its much higher than "usual" level of female management, to see the result of this change.
With affirmative action driving the process, the catastrophe is obvious for all to see. Has any organisation, in the history of man,[or woman] ever been so dysfunctional?

Well, this article more than any other shows how distorted the ideology of choice has become.

Most of us when young dream of marrying and having children as a central fulfilment in our lives. But for Jane Caro such a life outcome is cast in negative terms because it is "conventional" rather than individually chosen. She writes,

"Yet 1963 was literally on the threshold of possibly the greatest social revolution in the history of the modern world: the remarkable and rapid change in the status and destiny of women.

For the first time in recorded history, women began to have choices about the kind of life they would live. Indeed, Apted’s four girls, particularly those from working class backgrounds have demonstrated precisely that.

One has had a high-powered career and in the last film had chosen to become a single mother; another is a single parent due to divorce and the third, who runs a mobile community library for children, has not had children at all. The upper class girl, after a startling adolescence, has lived a more conventional life, revolving around marriage and full-time motherhood.

Without doubt, the increase in the choices women have about the shape their lives will take has been exhilarating, exciting and not before time."

So in Jane Caro's opinion, divorce, single-motherhood and childlessness are good things because they increase "choice" for women! She even thinks that experiencing such things would have been "exhilarating" and "exciting" for the women involved, rather than disappointing or even soul-destroying.

I wonder if the writer of the article is the same Jane Caro who wrote about her own life that:

“As for my personal life, as well as wanting a career, I also wanted a family. I knew that a career on its own would be a lonely life. To only have a family would be better than to only have a career, but I wanted it all – a whole career and a whole family ... I took five years off to have my children. I never considered I would go back to advertising ..."

Here we have real life: a woman who wants, above all, "a whole family", with a husband and children - and who got it.

Yet she doesn't stop to consider that the working-class women in Apted's documentary might have wanted the same thing. She thinks instead that the working-class women have been "liberated" by being unmarried, childless and divorced.

Again, let me point out here the distortion in Caro's ideology of choice - she is willing pragmatically to pursue the important things in her own life, but returns to the ideological view - in which not having a husband or children is a "freedom" to choose - when considering the lives of other women.

http://www.thelounge.com.au/show_library_article.cfm?Article_ID=3910

I feel I am being willfully misunderstood here.
I am not saying that exercising choice for women will always bring happiness, but it does equate with being grown up - rather than infantilised.
When an adult makes a choice- about job, life partner, having kids, whatever, there are never any guaranatees that such a choice will work out well, but not making a choice may not work out well, either.
The women in the 7UP films have struggled with good times and bad times, they are like the rest of us, sometimes happy, sometimes not - but they have made their own lives, as much as any of us can. If women were so content with the lack of choices they had prior to 1963, why did they flood out of their homes with such enthusiasm? Because no choice may be worse than a bad choice.
Yes, I am the same Jane Caro, and this article, if you read it carefully is actually a tribute to my husband and life partner of more than 30 years. He has embraced the changes and supports me through my -sometimes unpredictable - journey to discover myself, as, I hope, I support him on his. If he had tried to limit my choices or I had tried to limit his, I doubt we would have lasted this long. But I am pleading for adult relationships where two grown ups freely choose to be together, not where one partners life choices are so limited they feel compelled to stay against their will.

When you take one life experience out of the whole prism, sure it's easy to distort the whole picture. That is, looking at the impact of feminism on someone's life and ignoring other impacts (like poverty or income situation), you risk distorting that person's whole life experience. It might be sometimes true that women with feminism, but without financial stability or mental health (one of 7UPs working class women, or Neil ), might be left behind.

However, I can't see that as discrediting the writer's point at all. Choice doesn't always lead to success, other factors can impact - but at least now women are freer to try. Had our society remained where it was, women would not have been as free to make their own choices, their own futures, their own successes, and their own mistakes. Men have had this opportunity all along (to a greater or lesser extent, depending upon their own income status, education, etc). Why should this have been denied to half the population?

I am much cheered by the optimistic account that the writer has given, and by the homage duly given to those men who have been willing to see it only fair to run relationships as a give and take.

Mark wrote:
So in Jane Caro's opinion, divorce, single-motherhood and childlessness are good things because they increase "choice" for women!

A pretty important choice, I would think, and one that is available evenly to both women and men. Have you a problem that women can now escape a bad/dangerous relationship?

ena, I particularly liked your last post.

For those arguing against choice on the grounds that it does not always turn out for the best

An animal kept in a zoo is at far less risk of external harm than one wandering in the wild but who amongst us would choose to live in a cage.

R0bert

@ Jane Caro My wife was killed in a car accident and so I gave up my full time job and concentrated on raising our daughter and doing whatever I could that fitted in with being a sole parent. I also did a university degree while surviving on austudy. My daughter finished school with 93% and as school captain before going to university to study medicine. Since then i have been battling to get back into a real job with a Mr Mum cv. I drive a delivery truck and clean offices. How do you think it feels when I have to deal with affirmative action and the women's network (nepotism) even when the women who have an institutionalised advantage over me already have a well paid husband? I don't have any problems with women being free to choose but for the last 20 or 30 years women have been treated as an homogenous 'class' regardless of their real situation and the savvy, well-connected have benefited most. A man without a job, or a low pay, low status job, is condemned to a lonely life and has no power to choose because rich men don't give a damn about him and politicians have been intimidated into doing whatever the Women's Electoral Lobby etc dictate. It must be just ducky enjoying the fruits of woman's empowerment but spare a thought for the human refuse which has been one result of it.

Citizen, thank you for your good post.

I have not had the time to respond accordingly to this pro-feminist-garbage, but rest assured I shall.

These women like Caro here, have not the first idea of the miseries that hey have spread across society. They are all "soooooooo" [to use their feminist, post-modernist vernacular] caught up in their own importance, the importance of being WOMAN, that they have failed to see the dire and disruptive influence they've had on society's values and, ultimately, the children of the Western world.

Rest assured good folks, I shall write more on this thread, in time.

But, in the mean time, I'm deeply pleased to see "ena" has been unmasked. Oh yeah, deeply pleased, but somewhat disappointed. I had expected better.

Jane, you are providing a whole lot of excuses for people to behave badly. “I am making my own life”, says the man who trades in his loyal wife for a youthful secretary. “This is my journey to discover myself,” says the woman who leaves her husband, depriving a girl of her father and another woman of her grandchildren. “My choices should not be limited”, say the increasing number of Western men supporting the idea of polygamy.

It’s not good enough to have a random exercise of choice. There has to be some encouragement for us to choose what is right, both in a moral sense and in terms of upholding the framework of a functioning civilisation.

Your idea, that men have always had a freedom of choice denied to women, is a dangerous one. It makes you unaware of what might happen if the average man really began to believe in the “choice theory” you are promoting.

It takes a great deal to produce a man who will discipline himself to be monogamous and to work steadily for his family for 30 or more years. These are not choices most men will make randomly. If we do it, it’s because we think it’s the right thing to do, and the best way to contribute to a civilisation we identify with.

If men really believed that they should instead allow themselves the maximum freedom to choose – and that this is what made them responsible adults – then I doubt if society would last a single generation.

Why wouldn’t a man then give up an arduous career in order to pursue a hobby? Why wouldn’t he indulge his instinct for sexual variety by taking a mistress? Why would he risk his safety to defend his country in time of war? Why wouldn’t he drift in and out of the life of his children according to his own preferences?

We are fortunate that a sufficient number of men continue to reject an individualistic emphasis on choice, but act stubbornly instead according to a notion of right behaviour.

So what did we learn about Jane?
That in her childhood up to the age of seven she was brought up in a conservative household and learned to write conservatively.
Jane is writing about women but started with “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man”.
That is a masculine quote. A radical woman would change the gender in that quote to represent women of today.

Citizen, I don't know where you've been applying for jobs, but having been involved in recruitment (albeit at the bottom of the food-chain) this doesn't tally with my experience at all. No quotas, just a strict screening of CVs against the selection criteria. Young, old, male or female, we just asked the same questions and rated their answers. The person with the best rating got the job. Easy.

I'm amazed at the bile in this thread, looks like a lot of bitter old grumps, yearning for the good old days when women were sacked when they got married. Are some of you guys a bit upset at too much competition for the good jobs?

Less than 15 years ago my wife applied for a job. Asked in the interview whether she was married (I guess the wedding ring was a bit of a give away) she said yes. At that point the boss lost all interest and she didn't get the job (naurally). Just as well, really, who'd want to work with a dinosaur like that?

@Johnj I was really hoping for an answer from Jane, but John, do you really think I would work at crummy, boring jobs for $16 an hour if I could get better? The system is so much about who you know and the time spent as a single father puts you in the total loser class which is virtualy impossible to climb back out of and the massive shift of women into the workforce has not only reduced the available positions but put many women into the role of deciding who gets the job. The women-for-women mentality that has been avidly promoted for 30 years is now institutionalised, eg http://www.eeo.nsw.gov.au/women/networks.htm
(there are so many websites as examples) yet they manage to ignore the impact on the men they have pushed aside. The Queensland government has an active affirmative action policy conducted by the Ministry for Women that demands equity if any particular group has less than 50% female but are quite comfortable with more than 80% of staff in Brisbane council libraries being female, for example.
Im not so concerned about myself, though i would dearly love a job that was stimulating, such as I had when I was younger, but I'm more concerned about my daughter's generation who will live in a society with an abundance of pissed-off single men. When Ms Koval was interviewing Norman Mailer on the ABC he said that the anti-woman feeling in america was stronger now than anti-semitism. Combine that with the maturation of a generation of undisciplined boys raised in single mother households, and the general fragmentation of society, it may make the laptop, vibrator, and nifty japanese hatchback less fulfilling.

Citizen, I find it interesting that you mention libraries. As I work in the public library field I can make a few observations. The work is often interesting and the workplaces are often refreshingly old-fashioned; how about morning AND afternoon tea? The downside is that pay and conditions are absolutely crummy (coincidental that it is a predominantly female workforce?). Whenever I've interviewed for low-end library jobs the vast majority of candidates have been women. It would be nice to see gender equality in libraries, but most men turn their noses up at the pay available. You'd have to form a press-gang to get enough men into libraries, either that or pay librarians more money (I wish).

I think you make a valid point about disenfranchised young males, as women want to marry up. Professional women complain about the lack of suitable partners, meanwhile there are a lot of blokes on the relationship scrapheap. Having a female boss probably wouldn't help their self-esteem either.

Which I guess brings us back to 7-Up. I visited the UK about 10 years ago and I was astonished at the class divisions there and the way that class determined choices and opportunities. I'm not saying Australia isn't segregated by income disparities etc, but I felt like a foreigner despite speaking the language. Perhaps the funniest thing was the way people tried to pigeonhole you eg. Australian=Convict=Lower Class.

Networks for women? I think you'll find most of the networks that matter are blokes-only.

@ Jane Caro I was disappointed that I didn't get a response to my direct question so i went back and read some of your other posts. It enabled me to picture you sitting in your cosy world ponificating on subjects that are mere abstractions to you.
You and your 'sisters', the most privileged people on the planet, are smug about winning so many battles but seem unaware of being in the process of losing the war. Or your collective part in making the world a more heartless place.

I've posted a criticism of this article at the following website:

http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2006/07/7up-girls-as-feminist-success-stories.html

There is an insecurity between the genders that will never be erased completely. Women menstruate which in turns allows them to breed and continue with the immortality of future societies.
Consider this opinion, Primarily we survived with the danger of being taken, killed or our offspring killed. The reason behind women and men helping each other was based on logic and equality. Protection for birth and tribe strength. My opinion then turns to the reasons behind men becoming more dominant, seeking power and property to be the strongest alpha male in the area. Women had become used to sharing and not being responsible for the whole of survival, this new male changed that. Woman was a commodity that was now of use to keep lands and instill sperm into other tribes to create larger, stronger settlements. Woman lost the equality and man became more dominant and controlling.
It was the mind set of the female at that time. When a box is your home from birth, it takes many generations to find a way to open the lid and step out. I personally believe that when women opened the box it was like a new world and the power that came to us was in effect no different than men find in many situations in this world.

Women can have sex, get pregnant, have an abortion or give the child away.
Men can have sex, get a woman pregnant, walk away and get another woman pregnant 4 hours later, and keep repeating that routine if he is highly motivated and has stamina.....
On both sides of the coin we are responsible for our own thoughts, decisions and actions. I cant dispose of men and their actions without giving thought to the reason being locked subconsciously in my past interaction with men. Our views will always be biased. To be glib you could compare it to the state of origin, live together until that day comes when you need to choose the side you will be on.......Go Us Women.....

Citizen, this is a very personal subject for you because of your past. You see this world through the minority eyes of a sole father. When a man does the same duties as a woman he needs to be shown that he is appreciated and because of insecurities needs a slap on the back for the nearly impossible feat of being a single parent.
You raised your child alone. Excellent. There are many parents like you and who are doing so much to help their children become the best they can be. You chose a degree and then decided that you were willing to go without to achieve the outcome of studying. Congratulations, this was an amazing feat and I am sure you were left you without a social life and money but the end result is worth it. I cant understand what is making your taste of life so very bitter. Cleaning offices? If it pays the bills and allows you to have money who cares? Women arent allowed to live your envisaged life and achieve an outcome? It is getting very repetitive that genders blame each other for their own failings. I am divorced with 4 children who is left to survive and raise children and make sure I dont end up in a boarding house. My survival instincts will ensure I dont. Apart from sex and that is debatable I am not alone in my life. I dont pity myself, blame others for my life choices and decisions. Stop being bitter and using the gender debate for your life. Now I will finish my studies and go kiss my 4 children goodnight, and while I lay down to sleep in any part of the bed I want to I will consider the power I have in developing the future generation of this country and how to help my sons have confidence in their own abilities and be proud of their sisters and other women who will enter their life.

The blurb reads:
Jane Caro is a Sydney writer with particular interests in women, families and education. She is the convenor of Priority Public.
Sounds like 1963 hey.
Now if Jane was a woman of the 21st century and looking to the 22nd it would read:
Jane Caro is a Sydney writer with particular interests in men and women, their relationships and families as well as public and private education. She is the convenor of Priority Public.
How can we men and woman advance TOGETHER when only one gender is studied.

Jane’s frivolous frolic through the tulips offers yet another glimpse into what women want; choice, without responsibility. And according to Jane, women have been thriving in it - whether this is oblivious narcissism or just plain recklessness, we’ll just have to tune into the next generation or so, to find out.

This sudden abundance of choice for women has left a lot of people wondering whether it is time to scrap equity in preference for equality. Guess time will tell.

Is pre-marital sex an effective political statement? Double-standards are not beaten by joining them. Many claims are made by feminists 'representing' the silent majority of their sisterhood. However, surely the standard of chaste relations is not lost merely by the presence of a double.
I think most women would hope their chosen man would have waited for them, or if not, be able to reconcile themselves to their apparent sin and put on a new lifestyle of fidelity.
The modern person's compulsions to satisfy immediate desire are personally disciplined, or encouraged to be disciplined, in every other aspect than in their spiritual and sexual lives. Why is it that an elite performer or actor is expected to be ignorant of their own most intimate and fragile self?
Surely it is another example of 'loving neglect', decried by Mick Brooks, British rep and Head Teacher, of young people becoming 'unfit to learn' because their parents 'loved them too much to say no' (SMH 15-16 July, Rachel Johnson, Spectrum p. 26). I would add that people of all ages need encouragement to be self-loving and respectful of other people, in order to feel free to say 'yes'.
The capacity to make a positive 'yes' statement to the future cannot be taken for granted. Many folk find it easier to believe that they are loved and able to make choices to promote happiness when they have experienced it.

Renee,
What are you saying?
Communication means to get a message from your mind into the mind of another with the meaning that you intend to send.
Communication is not a gobblygook of words that sound impressive and intelligent but can't be understood by a simple mind like mine.
And you said "what?"

Jane, you talk about the increasing choice that women now have... an that is great! Women don't always go on to be 'just mothers', they choose between full-time work, part-time work, or full-time mother.

But what about the other 50% of the population? When men become dads, society has some VERY FIRM rules about what choices they have...
Work longer hours to support and house several dependants, or
Work longer hours to support and house several dependants, or
Work longer hours to support and house several dependant.

And of course, after a few years, the woman has more choices...
stay married, or kick out her "unsatisfactory" husband. This is a light choice, because she knows that she will keep everything... keep his kids, keep his assets, and keep the bulk of his after-tax income... and also keep him on a leash, because she controls the thing dearest to his heart - she controls his kids.

Meanwhile the dad has the choice of copping-it-sweet and walking away from everything he loves and everthing her worked long hours for... or giving up and suiciding...

Fact 1: Australian dads work 5hrs a day longer than Auastralian mothers - that's real Work-work

Fact 2: For every woman who suicides 5 men suicide, THis is the 'official' figure... the real figure is much higher... because you have to add the "accidents" that are really suicides... the Drug O-D's, the accidental shootings, and the car-runs-into-a tree-on-a-straight-stretch-of-road-with-no-skidmarks accidents.

Yep... women have many many choices... and men don't.

PartTimeParentpobox.com
www.fathers4equality-Australia.org

Thanks to everyone who responded.
I hope in the long run - and the change in women's status is still in its very early days - everyone will be judged ( to paraphrase Martin Luther King) according to the contents of their character rather than their gender.
I am not for a moment arguing that women have got it "right" - how could they in just over 40 years? Or that many men do not struggle with unfair lives and lack of choice. I am, however, arguing that allowing only the narrowest of life options - for anyone - is oppressive to everyone. I didn't make women flood from their houses and kitchens, nor did what is called "the women's movement". Women did it themselves, and for all sorts of reasons, including the ability to control their fertility and the need the economy had to use all the available skills and talents. The "women's movement" grew out of the real desire many women had to change their lives.
Some of you do not agree with me, and I have been interested to read your comments, but with all its mistakes, imperfections and difficulties, as the mother of two teenage daughters, I believe it is better to be born female today than ever before. And, talking to the young men my girls socialise with, it seems it is also better for many of those young men. They have more choices too, about work, friendship and, most important of all, how to be an involved and loving husband and father. I know some of these hopes will be dashed - for some of these boys and girls - we all have some of our hopes and dreams dashed - that's life, but why was it okay once for girls not even to be allowed to dream - of adventure, worldly success, fame, intellectual achievement, wealth, whatever? And why would it be okay to go back to that situation again?
Men and women spend a great deal of time emphasising our differences, I have always been much more interested in our similarities.

ena,
What similarities? What similarities?
If you can find any similarity between men and woman you don't belong on this planet.
It has even been proven scientifically that our brains are wired differently.
It is impossible to even think the same when that wiring is then interferred with with different hormones.
If a woman is close to acting like a male, she is not a male. She is butch.
If a male is close to acting like a female, he is not a female. He is effeminate.
The "butch" and the "effeminate" are then ostrasiced from both genders.
No, people don't emphasise the gender differences. The differences are so different that they don't need emphasising.
I, as a male, am so different from you, I can't even understand your letter.
It is time to get the males out of the kitchen. Now I bet you can't understand how I feel?
I am male!

Well, I don't know about you, Glenwriter, but I am human first and female second.

Did you ever hear about the famous experiment, done years ago, where a group of babies ( male and female) were first dressed in pink nappies and adults were asked to interact with them and describe their behaviour ( they soothed and caressed and said the babies were gentle, affectionate and passive) then same babies dressed in blue nappies and adults played vigorously with the babies and described them as active, energetic and curious. When same babies presented in white napppies, adults tried to see their genitals before they could decide how to behave or what the babies were like. Why couldn't they just be babies?

As we share 98% of our dna with chimps, the genetic difference between a male human and a female one must be very, very small indeed. I ain't saying they don't exist, I'm just saying why do we make such small differences the whole story? I have met many men with whom I have more in common than many women. Isn't our shared humanity our most imp. characteristic? when you decide to define me as female first and human second, you make a whole heap of assumptions about what I am like and how I should behave and live - as i would do if I defined you as male first and human second. If i simply respond to you as another human being and let your individual personality unfold, I avoid making a lot of possibly inaccurate snap judgements, or so it seems to me.

Ena,
You say: "Isn't our shared humanity our most imp. characteristic?"
Maybe that is the correct answer accordinging to females.

Ena, gender difference is at least partially hardwired. There are differences in the male and female brain, as well as differences in male and female hormones.

This doesn't make all men the same and all women the same. It does, though, give us a strong sense of gender identity. We experience ourselves as men and women, not as sexless "personalities".

You take a negative view of gender difference, as representing a potential limitation on choosing who we are for ourselves.

But you neglect the positive side. First, there is the responsiveness to gender difference we have as heterosexuals. What red-blooded man would respond to women as "humans" rather than as women? The truth is that most men love the feminine attributes of women. Much of human art is an expression of the male love of femininity in women.

Second, most of us men don't experience masculinity as something oppressive, even if it's not something we get to choose entirely by ourselves. It can be a great feeling to have a sense of your own masculine physicality, or of the masculine drives and instincts. It can be a great thing, too, to sense strongly the masculine "ought" and to have such a standard to live up to in your own life. It gives depth.

There certainly are things you ought to expect of me as a man. You are not oppressing me by expecting these things. Why would I feel oppressed if I am masculine in nature and in self-identity?

Mark this society has certain expectations of a white protestant man that reaffirm that individual's worth.

Up until 30 years ago the expectations for Australian women were restricted to marriage and children. Girls were bought up to marry well and rear well behaved children in wedlock. Women who didn't conform were punished in low paid jobs at 66% of the male wage, denied the opportunity to purchase homes. Women whose husbands ran off or were widowed were doubly punished by seeing their children grow up in poverty as there were no single parent pensions.

My mother studied in 1947 alongside women whose families had educated the [often incompetent] son but sent the girl to work at age 16. These able women had enlisted for war and as part of their repatriation deal they were receiving university training so they could fulfil their potential.

billie - "this society has certain expectations of a white protestant man that reaffirm that individual's worth." I suspect that in some cases that should be rephrased as "this society has certain expectations of a white protestant man that entrench perceptions about that individual's worth."

In particular the idea that his worth is judged primarily on his earning capacity.

I think that the equivalent for women is being judged on physical beauty.

Both are to some extent wired into our systems from more primitive times but both leave individuals who don't happen to be top of the heap in their respective characteristics feeling undervalued. Those expectations/perceptions can have dramatic impacts on the individuals ability to find (and keep) a partner and other aspects of life satisfaction.

R0bert

Mark says there are certain things i should expect of him as a man, and I have been puzzling my head over this one.

There are certainly things I expect from people as human beings; things like courtesy, honesty, integrity, decent, considerate and law abiding behaviour, but I can't see that I make any distinction between what I expect from men and women here.

There are other things I delight in when I find them; kindness, intelligence, self awareness, a good sense of humour, a sense of humility, open-mindedness, playfulness, a sense of fun, enthusiasm, engagement with the world, compassion, courage, sensitivity and intellectual rigour. I love these qualities, but I don't expect them, that is too big an ask. Never-the-less, I enjoy them equally in men and women, and find them to be pretty evenly spread across the sexes.

Just what I would expect exclusively from Mark as a man, I can't imagine. That he change light bulbs and take the garbage out? Well, that's nice, of course, but I don't expect such things to be done for me, I quite enjoy mowing the lawn and my husband does the hoovering. And, being of sound mind and good health, I don't currently want or need his protection. One day I may need it, but it is just as likely that my husband could require care and protection from me. That he go to war on my behalf? No, I don't expect that either and have always beieved that as women gain more rights they must also be prepared to shoulder more responsibilities - such as serving in the armed forces.

No, I honestly believe I expect the same things from men and women, and if I had sons, I would expect no more and no less of them than I expect of my daughters; that they be honest, civil, polite, self responsible and compassionate people who remain true to themselves. Surely it would be totally unfair and, therefore, terrible parenting, to do anything else?

Ena,
Why did you not answer billie or RObert.
You answered Mark Richardson because that is the letter that attracts you. I as a thinking male would not answqer it in a fit.
What floods out of his letter is the attitude of "money, power, status, security, arrogance and even aloofness but women will put up with arrogance and aloofness so long as they gain, money power and security. Mark's letter is a lot of showy puffery of power.
Mark's quote was:
"There certainly are things you ought to expect of me as a man. You are not oppressing me by expecting these things."
The second sentence means the opposite to what is written. It means he will certainly oppress the woman. He certainly will. I as a male would not write to Mark but ena as a woman does.
What does it all mean?
It means that women oppress themselves by being attracted to money and power and security that the elite male has and they trade off their individuality by marrying these men. The rich men fool women. What does that teach the male? It teaches men to be more powerful, arrogant, aloof and rich and they can have any female they want.
When that happens women are second-class citizens.

Neither Billie nor R0bert required an answer to their eminently sensible posts.

Why did I answer Mark? Because his question puzzled me and made me think about just what I expect and do not expect. Your interpretation of my motives, Glenwriter, is just that - your interpretation - and has nothing whatsoever to do with what they really are.

However, you make an interesting point. I agree that stereotypical "female" (passive, submissive, masochistic even) behaviour does encourage men to behave in an exaggeratedly "male" fashion, sometimes to the point of tyranny. That is why I don't like such stereotyping, I believe it both limits and corrupts both sexes, by causing them to act parts, rather than behave in ways that genuinely and authentically reflect their individual human personalities.

I agree basically with jane's analysis. The movement of women via education into high pay, high status jobs and the economic liberation that went with that was the most important event in western history. This has had interesting consequences though. Now educated couples like my wife and I earn $200k+ a year as a family unit Whats more we send our kids to state schools!!(horror). we can afford to live in inner city enclaves where a tiny house costs $$$$. Families such as ours have pushed the costs of housing to ridiculous heights. The single or poor(uneducated) struggle with both parents working fulltime to pay morgtages which are insane in the burbs and/or pay the credit cards for Kath/kim lifestyles. The social consequence I believe is the sharpening of class difference in Australia and the ghettoisation of the cities especially. The liberation of women has been fantastic for the deucated middle class but I have big doubts about the growing underclass that is what is left of what were once the proud working class of the 40s and 50s.
The restrictive sex based roles of father/mother defined working class life for centuries, now this is gone, and not much replaces it but more and more unemployed or poorly paid if employed young men with little or no chance of forming lasting relationships with women who have a totally different view of their futures.

What do you think??

pdev, I agree that there is increasing differences between the haves and the growing class of working poor but I don't believe the emancipation of women is the cause of this - try globalisation.

I look back at the economic role of Australian women last century

in the 1920s and earlier middle class women did not work, if the worked they were not paid

in the 1920s only working class girls worked for a pittance that was too small to allow them to catch a train home on Sundays on their afternoon off

in the 1930s the public service decreed that married women could not work

in the 1940s women were encouraged to step aside from their war time jobs so that demobilised servicemen could work.

The 1950s were the low point for women who were judged on their husbands position, children's behavior and cleanliness of their house. Only low class married women worked. The middle class ideal for was for girls to work as typists, nurses or teachers until marriage then produce the first baby after a year of marriage.

In 1966 the public service allowed married women to remain working after marriage.

In 1973 it became illegal to pay women 2/3 of the male wage. ie EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

In 1978 women could contribute to superannuation funds at the same rate as their male counterparts when they were made permanent employees.

in 2000's young women think pole dancing at $1500 per week is a career option

The problem's arose
- when the husband died or ran away, interstate was far enough, the wife and sprogs had to survive in poverty of enforced low pay
- educated, wealthy, unpleasant, ugly or fat women who had difficulty finding a suitable mate were shafted.
- single women couldn't get mortgages
It was discrimination.

Historically in australia high status women and low status men have remained single.

If you are embarassed by your household wealth, your wife could stop work. Remember you are unlikely to both be earning high bucks over 50.

billie,
We can forgive pdev for not reading the Bible of 1Timothy 6:10 as a prospective deviation.

pdev,
I think that the proud working class families of the past were great for the men in them , but perhaps not quite so much fun for the women in them. If they had been equally satisfying, they would not have changed. They changed because they were not working for half the participants.
The women's revolution is in its very early days, of couse we are getting it wrong as often as we get it right, but it was inevitable. We will not become fully human until we value the female experience of the world as much as the male. We are closer now, at least in the west, to doing that than we have ever been, but we still have further to go. In the end, this is logically a journey we must embark on, it will be risky, painful but exhilerating. There is no going back.
And, I truly believe, that it will be ultimately liberating for all of us, because we can live as human beings first and drop the straight jacket of gender, at last.

A few points. First, women were not as excluded from work in the past as some are claiming. There was a whole wave of feminism which lasted roughly from 1860 to 1945. During this period women were able to pursue higher education and enter the professions. A significant number did. Before WWII there were female academics, doctors, lawyers, artists etc. However, this first wave of feminism collapsed for the same reason the second one will: it was too disruptive to family formation. Ultimately women wanted love, marriage and children more than they wanted careers.

Second, it is not only poorer men who face difficulties partnering in a feminist culture. Everybody does. My best friend has four younger sisters (upper middle-class family). None of them has even ever had a boyfriend, let alone partnered and they are now in their 30s.

Why does feminism disrupt relationships? First, there is the assumption within feminism that gender is to be thought of negatively as a "straight-jacket". This idea might fit in well with liberal ideas about "writing your own script" etc, but it is anti-heterosexual. Heterosexual men want women to be attractively feminine; heterosexual women want men to be admirably masculine. It doesn't matter how good a job a man has, if the women he meets are mannish and therefore unattractive, the odds are much worse that he will partner. (continued next post)

Second, feminism rejects the idea that men are protectors and providers. This means that what remains to connect men to women is the sex instinct. That's one reason why you get the female "raunch" culture in a feminist society, since sex is the one thing left by which women can hope to attract the interest of men. But the problem is that the male sex instinct is promiscuous. A self-confident male can keep churning through women, not choosing to settle down until very late in the piece. It is only when the protector-provider role is encouraged that men are likely to opt for monogamy, as it makes little sense to dedicate yourself to protecting women, and then exploit them sexually.

Third, feminism assumes that what matters is that we have the power to enact our own will. This means that feminism is concerned to a high degree that women as a group have the power to enact their will relative to men as a group. Therefore you have the assumption that men and women are competitors for power within their own personal lives and within society. A mood of gender war is created which breeds resentments between men and women.

For all these reasons, feminism is a highly unstable philosophy on which to build relationships. Most women refuse to associate themselves with the movement because they sense the negative and destructive side of feminism. Most men are either openly hostile to feminism, or else have turned away from the idea of making longer-term commitments to women.

Mark you do a good job of showing one side of the picture. ena has already acknowledged that some things are not being done right. I've used the illustration in the past of moving house, when you move generally things are in a mess for a while. Stuff is still in boxes, we we struggle to find things, the routines we are used to do not work so well anymore and it will take some time to get that sorted out. Not a reason never to move, just something we should expect.

I'd like to pick up specifically on one point you made. "It doesn't matter how good a job a man has, if the women he meets are mannish and therefore unattractive, the odds are much worse that he will partner.". What are you meaning by mannish in that comment? I'd accept that some women have picked up some of the worst trait's of what they think it takes to be a successful man to get ahead in the business world. Annecdoatal evidence and some of what I've seen suggests that some female bosses can be the worst of the worst (especially in their treatment of other women). Some women do dispense with personal grooming and the like as well (as do some guys) but they would seem to be far in the minority.

My impression is that feminism will increase the proportion of women who are attractive in totality. I see one end of a scale being the essentually useless woman who has devoted herself to external appearance and little else and the other end being the woman who has chosen to be an adult human being, on average not as physically strong as a man, has different emotional responses and takes responsibility for her own choices. The latter is so much more attractive and it is part of where I see feminism taking things.

Rather than opposing feminism men are much better served by supporting the parts that are about the development of more complete human beings, we have a vested interest in the outcome.

R0bert

Ena,
Your sentence:
"We will not become fully human until we value the female experience of the world as much as the male." pricked my conscience.
When do you think that females will enjoy sex without the aim of having children?

Richardson stated:

“There was a whole wave of feminism which lasted roughly from 1860 to 1945. During this period women were able to pursue higher education and enter the professions.”

Misleading and inaccurate.

While the formation of the suffragettes, created greater awareness of the lack of female participation in the world, the only period where women entered the professions in greater numbers was during WW1 to replace lost ‘manpower’ and, of course, were expected to return to their domestic duties as the war’s end

Women have always worked in the fields, laundries, as maids – all low level occupations.

Only in the wealthy ranks have women been ‘kept’. From these rarefied ranks only a minority were indulged by being permitted to participate in a dilettante’s version of professional occupations.

Even then these careers were limited to writing (some such as George Eliot pretended to be male) or fine art. Even rarer were female scientists (Madame Curie) and I can’t think of a single lawyer or doctor during this period. Perhaps Richardson could enlighten us. Ultimately the numbers nowhere equalled that of men.

“Ultimately women wanted love, marriage and children MORE than they wanted careers.” So says Richardson – a man! What could his agenda be, I wonder?

I should not have to point out this basic fact; women make up half the world’s population and, as such, are affected by decisions made in politics, business and the public world. To deny women from participating in the world is a form of slavery people such as Richardson would have us return to.

As human beings, women and men fundamentally require being treated as mature, intelligent beings, each responsible for themselves. To place either gender into rigid categories such as ‘man, the provider’ and ‘woman, the nurturer’ limits the evolution and progress of the entire human race.

Richardson is clearly afraid of change, he can’t deal with it any more than he can cope with an independent, resourceful woman. He is shackled by his dependency on control over half the population; hardly the aspiration of a mature, responsible and fully realised man.

I’m jumping in late (been away again) but this is too much fun to miss!

Mark, so many small minded comments... where to start?

** “Ultimately women wanted love, marriage and children more than they wanted careers”
Please provide evidence to this, rather than making an unsupported claim. Interesting that you get into the mind of every female in the last 200 years!

** “Heterosexual men want women to be attractively feminine; heterosexual women want men to be admirably masculine. It doesn't matter how good a job a man has, if the women he meets are mannish and therefore unattractive, the odds are much worse that he will partner.”
You seem to be projecting your perception of what men (and women) want. Is it possible that you don’t understand the concept of diversity and what this means for different people wanting different things?

** “Second, feminism rejects the idea that men are protectors and providers... what remains to connect men to women is the sex instinc... and then exploit them sexually”
What a load of codswallop! The Neanderthal attitude speaks for itself. If this is all you perceive in the connection between men and women, then it is a sad, limited and narrow world you live in.

Ena,
I think you hit the nail on the head – until we perceive in human only ways (gender should not be an issue), there are going to be problems. Both for the men who live in the last century (or the one before that) and for women fixated on becoming ‘dominant’, ‘more than equal’ to men or who abuse their position/talents to seek advantage

I understand the threat this may pose to the fundamentalists on both sides of the argument but it is nevertheless true that equality should not be about power or dominance but about compromise, honesty and co-operation.

For my part, my partner and I will take 6 months leave of absence each, in turn, for the children (when they come) – and damn the world for thinking less of me – or her!

Reason asked for evidence of women's participation in the professions in the 1800s. I can't find the name but the first surgeon to perform cesarean sections when both the mother and baby survived on a regular basis was a woman who had to masquerade as a man for all of her adult life. Of course her name escapes me and Google can't help.

The woman was the daughter of a British doctor who thought that girls would make just as good doctors as men. He connived with the head of medicine in Edinburgh for his daughter to study medicine. She adopted male dress because women were unable to study. When she graduated she was went to South Africa as an Army surgeon, still masquerading as a man. The head of army in South africa was another of her fathers connections. Her patients and their babies started surviving cesarean sections in the 1890s. When she died at about 60 years the person laying her out was surprised to discover she was a female and her body showed signs of child bearing. The fate of her baby is unknown.

Reason,
Ena has not hit the nail on the head. You have not had a family so you don't know anything about life yet or women.
You have a lot lo learn. For instance your last sentence does not make sense until we get to the last two words "for her".
It is only at the end of the sentence that we know if you partnet is male or female.
All the human world is devided and understood in gender.
We are not human. We are gender orientated from birth to death and each gender is the most ignorant when they get married. You have not got to the 'toss-a-coin' section of married life yet.
Divorce is about 42 percent in Australia and will rise to about 50 percent and I have heard it is as high as 57 percent in the USA.
Feminism is doing a lot for family life and the children.

The limitations set by OLO really restrict adequate and effective responses to posts.

However, I am nothing if not persistent.

Richardson argues with anecdotal evidence: “My best friend has four younger sisters (upper middle-class family). None of them has even ever had a boyfriend, let alone partnered and they are now in their 30s.” Maybe they are gay, maybe they are happy as they are – independent – as a single woman myself, I am far happier being free. Why does Richardson see this as a problem?

Richardson asks: “Why does feminism disrupt relationships?” First, there is the assumption that feminism does disrupt relationships – where is the evidence?

I have no doubt that any woman who wishes to stand on her own two feet and not be dependent to anyone for her life, would not remain in a relationship with anyone who wished to dominate her. Would Richardson prefer that dysfunctional relationships be forced to continue will all the attendant tragedy such relationships create?
I am happy to see the male posters who have effectively taken Richardson to task over his anachronistic views.

Men, like Richardson, reveal their inadequacy by their fear of strong, confident and independent women – that these men are being ‘outed’ by their peers gives me much hope for the future emancipation of both sexes.

When we can stand together as equals there will be hope for the human race, yet. For how can we eliminate racism if we can't treat both genders of the human race equitably?

I find views like Richardson's quite odd - as a young woman (23), I have not seen any evidence in my social group - or even that of my younger brother - to suggest that his views continue to be the case in men of my generation.

The various young men of my acquaintance expect their girlfiends/partners/wives to work in professional jobs, and respect them for doing so. Indeed, my boyfriend was chatting to one of his female friends when she was having a "agggh, no one loves me" freak out, and pointed out that she was very attractive to men - not just because she was pretty, but because she was "smart and financially solvent". The girl in question was rather annoyed that financially solvent was one of her attractions (although pleased that 'smart' played into her attractions!), but when I heard this report, it made me realise, that just as women have always looked for a degree of fiancial stablity in men, so men now look for it in women. And why should they not? If you truly believe that relationships are partnerships, then you tend to look for similar traits that will set you up as a couple.

I have read several of the 'foundation' texts of second wave feminism (greer, friedan, de bouvior), and identify as a feminist, as I know what the word means. Many young women these days do not call themselves feminist, as they do not realise what anti-feminism truly was. I doubt many young women would seek to give up the right to vote, the right to work for equal pay, the right to purchase property, the right to be an individual, not a chattel. But that is what pre-feminism meant for women.

On slightly different topic- I find the fact that less than half of marriages break up quite inspiring. In a society where there are no social consequences for divorce (you are not shunned, for example), the fact that more than half of the people who marry continue to stay that way for the rest of their lives is amazing.

Billie,
Sorry but I didn’t ask for evidence of women’s participation in professions in the 1800’s. You may have mistaken me for someone else?

GlenW... where to start.

I haven’t had a family, so am not qualified to make such statements? I’ll avoid insulting you and just give you an insight into what I know of the capabilities of women:
My mother was single and raised 4 children alone as the father was an alcoholic, left the family and refused to assist with raising the children. The mother worked 15 years night work as a nurse to see the children morning and night, while also completing the following:
- 2 degrees at university,
- State president of Toastmasters,
- Award winning speaker for Epicure Toastmasters,
- Lieutenant in the Australian Army Reserve,
- Sexual Assault counsellor at a major hospital,
- Aged Care instructor at a TAFE

And all the while raising these 4 children. And what of the children? Lawyer, police officer, Phycologist and Assistant Manager as a casino. No criminal records, no drug use, no alcoholics.

And I come from a world where single women with kids was a regular sight and knew many women in this unenviable position. What I saw and what I know is that statements that restrict any gender into a mould are incompatible with reality.

Now GlenW. Tell me I know nothing of families and single parents again…please.

As to my last sentence not making sense – can you explain why? Seems to me it made perfect sense. Whether I am the primary income earner or she is was the point (in case you missed it) and as this world seems to judge men and women by this benchmark, I’d simply give them the ‘bird’ for their troubles if anyone judged in this way. Clear now?

Sure, gender is a part of life. But that does not make it a part of living. Do I need to explain this for you?

And finally, your oh so special statement – to quote: “We are not human’... Need I say more?

Reason,
You know nothing of families and single parents.
Do you really think it is wise to ask me to tell you again.
You asked, I complied.
As you grow older all the things you think are important are not really important.
Love, understanding, empathy, compassion, passion, independence are the important things.

Wow,
I love these posts.
but to go back to Glenwroter's odd question, some days ago about when "females' will enjoy sex without wanting kids, I can only answer that many of them do already.
Women tend to enjoy sex most, it seems to me, when they are in a loving realtionship with a considerate partner who truly wants them to enjoy it.
Women enjoy sex least when they feel pressured to have it, that it is their"duty" to have sex, and there will be an emotional price to pay if they say no.
It is true that the birth of children can effect women's desire for sex. This is partly physical, they need to recover, and partly emotional. When you become a life support system for another human being ( i.e. a mother, particularly of very young children) you want to be nurtured and looked after in your turn, not to have to turn round and look after yet another adult human being after the kids have finally gone to sleep. i remember telling my husband I was all hugged out one night when the kids were small and, bless him, he totally understood. I needed physical space at that time, not physical closeness.
If you are with a woman with small kids and you want a better sex life, a word to the wise, do a whole lot of housework, listen to her sympathetically when she whinges, and make sure you give her plenty of no strings attached massages and back rubs - they just might develop into something.
Getting sulky and hurt and demanding won't make you more attractive.

GlenW,
I know nothing of single families? As I grow older? How old do you think I am? So my life experience counts for nought? Interesting point of view, I’ll give you that much.

And what did I ask that you complied with. Sorry but you are not making any sense to me. Feel free to elucidate and clear my clouded mind.

I certainly agree that the 5 qualities you outlined in your last sentence are very important. I have never implied any differently. Can you please tell me what I think are important at this ‘early stage’ in my life, since you seem to know my mind?

Please I would really like to know what you think my current values and thoughts are. While you are at it, can you tell me exactly how you came to read my mind and know me so well after a couple of posts?

Ena,
Ever so true in what you say. I’d go so far as to say it should be applied to the ‘housemate’ of the couple - the one who stays home and provides the love and care for the child. And the housework for the most part. It doesn’t have to be a gender issue.

Ena,
I could answer you with clever quips about posts, horses and sulkies, and different positions when in the Lounge or anywhere else in house advertising but that was when humour was humour and people had a sense of humour.
In today's straight-jacket world where people take a fence and a paling and nail someone to the wall, men are losers when they joke, as jokes are sexual harassment.

Ena,
it wasn't that long ago when the average married couple has sex three times a week. Now it is down to about 1.8 times a week. I know, I know you have already said it is the man's fault in not doing enough housework and back massaging.
Why am I divorced Ena?
Because I didn't do all the housework to the standard she wanted?
I didn't listen to her whinges long enough and attentively enough? She was a schoolteacher and had to tell me about her 28 children.
And my arms and hands aching in massaging her?
Then she complained because I was dressed in an apron most of the time.
And what hapened after all that? She said I did not act like a man. We divorced.
PS: Peter Costello has just been on TV trying to get couples to have more children. He is trying to get it up to 2.1 children per couple.
Yes, I know men are not doing enough housework.

Congratulations to the upwardly mobile women!

Now that you can afford your own house, nannies and housekeepers, and can accumulate and strategically scatter a few boy toys around the estate, your men can finally just focus on being great fathers and lovers. Equity restored - win-win for all.

1) I asserted that we have already had a failed cycle of feminism, lasting roughly from the 1860s to the late 1940s, in which women were able to enter the professions. Scout replied: "I can't think of a single lawyer or doctor during this period. Perhaps Richardson could enlighten us."

So here goes. Let's take America as an example. The first woman doctor graduated in 1849. The first medical school for women opened in 1850 (in Philadelphia). In 1870 the first state university began accepting female medical students (Michigan). By 1884 four out of sixteen medical students at the precursor of Stanford were women. In 1899 it was 10 out of 34. In 1914 four of the 13 graduates at Stanford medical school were female. However, by 1937 the percentage of female students had fallen to about 5% and this figure was maintained until the late 1960s.

Lawyers. In 1870 there were only 5 female lawyers in America. By 1880 there were 75. Between 1880 and 1910 there was a "huge percentage increase" which no-one has yet tallied.

After the late 1940s women chose to enter the professions in much smaller numbers. I don't claim to be able to prove why in a scientific way. But there are two factors which I think are worth considering.

First, after WWII a large number of men were being demobilised, so there was no shortage of labour. Second, the first wave of feminism left a lot of highly-educated women unmarried and childless, just as the second wave has done. I have read articles from the late 1940s in which women asked "Was it all worth it?" and answered no. The mood seemed to shift decisively away from a destabilised family life; note too the shift from the androgynous fashions of the 1920s, to the wonderfully feminine look of the 1940s and 50s.

(continued next post)

2) Ena revealed a major contradiction in her thinking when she wrote that "We will not become fully human until we value the female experience of the world as much as the male." Is this the same Ena who went to such lengths to argue that there are no male and female qualities, only human ones? How are we supposed to value a distinctly female experience of the world if the categories of male and female are thought to be of trivial importance or, worse, are thought of as an oppressive, rigid, straight-jacket?

3) Laurie, Western women have never been "chattels". The word chattel means moveable property. If women had been chattels then there would have been shops or markets where women could be bought, sold or traded.

Nor do I believe that a young, hopeful person who has not been jaded by the coarseness and instability of modern relationships would settle for the kind of unisex "partnership" you speak of. For proof, see this survey of 5000 teenage girls:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1066298,00.html

In short, 90% of the girls surveyed believed that their future husbands should provide for them, and 85% preferred the idea of relying on their partner for financial support rather than being an independent career girl.

To throw my own experiences into the ring, I had the misfortune of circulating amongst arts degree women in the early 1990s, when feminism was rampant.

It's certainly true that these women were looking to stay independent and single, and I found them impossible to date. But fast forward ten years, when such women had turned 30, and things were very different.

They now wanted men with good jobs, and they wanted time off to raise a family. The "Neanderthals" like myself were now highly appreciated and the going was good. In fact, there weren't enough of us to go around - a lot of my wife's friends met these modern guys who strung them along as girlfriends, but who would never quite commit to anything more.

Mark Richardson,

I hope you realise how your comments could enrage our equitable sisters - feminists and females alike. I can almost see Scout’s psychopathic stare, dilated nostrils and the accompanying froth. R0bert as usual, will offer his metaphoric shoulder rubs while Maximus is likely to come out swinging with all that dangles.

No, indeed, women were not 'traded' in markets. But they were legally the property of first their fathers and then their husbands. (Or brothers/uncles/cousins if they did not marry). And dowries were, particuarly for upper-class women, a form of pricing and exchange. Further, things like the old theory that there was no such thing as rape-in-marriage show that women were the property of the man, that her original 'yes' at marriage was considered to rend her permanently at the mercy of her husband.

That article did not provide any rejection of the aims of feminism - the right to vote, own property, work in a relevant profession. It did suggest that young girls wanted to have babies and be looked after - but so what? I'm sure that a teen I too would have said I wanted to have babies by 25 and have a husband to provide for us when the bub was little - it seems a long way away then. As a teenager, even as a ninteen-year-old, twenty five seemed OLD!

But, in my group of male and female friends aged 22-30, all well-educated, the idea that either men or women should exclusively be the bread-winner is scorned. A friend who is pregnant at the moment (aged 27) is planning on taking four months maternity leave (her paid mat leave plus annual leave saved up), then returning to work. Her husband is taking a year off to look after bub as he has less stable employment. And no-one looks at this arrangement and considers that either of these people is somehow doing anything wrong. They seem to exemplify what feminism was meant to achieve (to me)- equality without strict gender roles, where both men and women can do what suits, not what is traditional.

Dear mark,
May i suggest you check your dictionary? Qualities and experiences do not mean the same thing at all, so there was no contradiction. Of course women have different experiences of the world - you know, like giving birth, breastfeeding, menstruation, menopause - but they do not necessarily have different qualities, gender specific ones, that is.
And Laurie is absolutely right about the - relatively recent - appalling legal status of women. Until the married womens property act in the mid 1800s, a woman had no right to her own money, no right to object to domestic violence, and, if she left an intolerable situation, no right to her own children- even to see them. Conjugal rights - a form of legal prostitution - where if a man had married a woman and therefore financially supported her, she had no right to refuse to have sex with him ( even if another pregnancy would mean her death - even when contraception was illegal) - were only abolished in the UK in the last twenty years.
And Glenwriter, I am sorry your marriage ended badly. Not all women respond to the same things anymore than all men do, and not all women are nice, or behave well, any more than all men are.
Maybe the two of you just weren't suited and, if she really didn't want to be married to you any more, sad though it is, sometimes you just can't make someone be happy with you, or content in their situation, even if you turn yourself inside out to please.

MarkRichardson thanks for the Google history of american womens' entry into the professions. I think your education would be more rounded by viewing the film "Rosie the Rivetter" which deals with the mobilisation of american women into the workforce in 1939 and the demobilisation of same in 1945.

As many a young gel can tell you almost all of the novels by Jane Austen were about the search for a husband who was kind and wouldn't squander her dowry or would accept a woman with a small dowry. Up until 1918 middle class Australianns waited till rich old aunt XXX died so they could marry.

Ever wondered at the origins of the term "RULE OF THUMB". A husband could beat his wife with a switch that was no thicker than his thumb. Its still on the Australian statute books.

Speaking of the "Rule of Thumb" Billie,
Ena did not mention THE great women's experience of quality or non-quality; the female Orgasm. She mentioned "giving birth, breastfeeding, menstruation, and menopause".
None of those includes her husband.

In Embrace the Change, this is what Jane says about husbands:
". . . it was women who sublimated their own dreams and ambitions for those of their husbands and, eventually, their children."
" . . . then back into the workforce as their children grew and, as happened frequently, as they left their unsatisfactory husbands."
"Women today, particularly women with jobs, husbands and children, are living life in an entirely new way."

The entire article is about "me, me, me" as a woman. It is not about "Us" as a couple, a woman and man together, an entity together, facing the world together for the best thing for their children.

Many couples are married but apart. There is a great gulf but it is not talked about. All they do is sleep together. And that is today's marriage. God who wants it. Intimacy is what real love and marriage is about but it does not exists today. Woman make sure it doesn't as they are looking after themselves. Maybe Jane should go home and say to her husband: "What do you think? . . . the world knows what I think but what does the man I married think?" Why isn't her husband's thoughts part of Jane's article?

hey Glenwriter,
read it again, carefully, then go back through the posts till you find the one where I explain that this is actually a heartfelt tribute to my beloved partner of 30 years, my husband, a man who gave me the room and the support and the space to grow and by doing so, taught me how to at least try to do the same for him and, most importantly, for our kids.

GlenW,
Are you not disposed to responding to my inquiry regarding your assumptions regarding me and my post? I can only guess they fall into the ‘too hard’ basket as it doesn’t fit into your world view.

Speaking of which, if I were to perform the same mental gymnastics that you did for me (that is to make a random guess at my life) I would have to say that from your posts, I am dealing with a somewhat angry man who lost out in a divorce and blames the woman for desiring more than he was willing to give or could give. For example:

“Why am I divorced Ena?
Because I didn't do all the housework to the standard she wanted?
I didn't listen to her whinges long enough and attentively enough? She was a schoolteacher and had to tell me about her 28 children.
And my arms and hands aching in massaging her?
Then she complained because I was dressed in an apron most of the time.
And what hapened after all that? She said I did not act like a man. We divorced.”

These appear to be the emotive comments from a man dealt a cruel blow. I sympathise with you GlenW but not every relationship (or woman) would be as you have described.

I can only wish you the best of luck in finding someone who you can relate to and find a true bond with. I would first suggest that you lose the ‘chip’ on your shoulder about women though.

All in all, the sooner we accept each other as equal and human – and reject stereotyping on gender and ‘roles’ – the better the world will be.

Reason,
I am a sub-editor and must correct what I see is wrong with English, composition and meaning.

Second,
My marraige lasted 29 years 10 months so that is why I feel that I am just like ena's husband. I had a wife who thought much like ena.
My marriage was successful until I decided that I too had a life to live instead of just for "the family".
Ena did not answer my question of asking her husband:
"What do you think?"
That is a very important question because i was not asked in my married life.
It was 'presumed' when I just agreed for peace and my three children.
It was later that I knew that i was selling my real self out.

Third, I am a human person who has worked with the disabled, the drug addicts, the homosexuals who are bashed and the derelicts in the street, the very, very bottom of society and worked with the Salvation Army. When you walk with the people at the bottom you realise that talk is cheap and how much a sham the world is. So I am angry. Isn't everyone including feminists angry. Anger is a motivator. Anger is used by all people including John F Kennedy when he took the world to the edge of nuclear war to stop the Russian missiles going to Cuba. At that point the world could have ended, when Kennedy got angry.

Fourth, feminism just does not see that young males in their teens are suiciding. That does not matter so long as feminism continues even when young males are forgotten in school but females are promoted. To bring one gender up means to put one gender down even at the expense of young men's deaths . . . and it is not seen.

Billie: You wrote, "Ever wondered about the origins of the term "RULE OF THUMB". A husband could beat his wife with a switch that was not thicker than his thumb. It's still on the Australian statute books."

This is one of those myths which is all too eagerly seized upon, until it takes on a life of its own. In fact, the origins of the term "rule of thumb" have nothing to do with punishing wives. It's thought to derive from wood workers who were skilful enough to measure using their thumbs rather than rulers.

As for a rule regulating the size of a switch for punishing wives, no one has ever found any written reference to such a rule in English common law. Quite the opposite: British law since the 1700s has prohibited wife beating.

Ena: you say that women had an "appalling" legal status when, after a marital separation, they had no right of custody to their children. Do you then believe that the past generation of men have had an "appalling legal status"? After all, hundreds of thousands of men have lost custody of their children over the past 30 years, and many men have been denied even occasional visitation because of a lack of effective court enforcement of visitation orders.

It's interesting that during the era when it was men who had custody rights men seldom separated children from their mothers. In contrast, almost as soon as the situation was reversed, vast numbers of women chose to separate fathers from their children.

Laurie, there is one thing you and your friends should be aware of if you are going to take the "female provider" idea seriously. There is a striking correlation between the percentage of income in a marriage earned by the wife and the likelihood of divorce.

As the percentage of income earned by the wife increases, the likelihood of divorce increases in a very steady line.

If a woman earns 60% or more of the marital income, the chance of divorce almost doubles. Amongst the wealthiest 25%, which would include many uni educated professionals, the chance of divorce soars if the woman earns 60% or more of the marital income.

The instinct of most women not to "marry down" (in socio-economic terms) is therefore arguably a sound one. The problem is, of course, that there is a decreasing number of men for uni educated women to "marry up" with - though the fact that many female doctors, lawyers, vets etc choose to work part-time after marriage and motherhood would effectively keep many marriages below the 60% female income line.

(Seeker, this is more provocation, I know, but it's presented in good faith.)

You know Mark, that does not bother me in the slightest. Because I believe that the situation there is caused by people having different 'norms' of behaviour. But I feel that the norms are changing, that men are expecting their partners to do as well if not better than them.

Perhaps I am foolishly young and idealistic. But surely it is better to be hopeful that the world is changing for the better, where men and women can both achieve their dreams, than to be bitter and wishing for a age that is long gone where the little woman would go and keep house after marriage for evermore.

Glenwriter- young male suicide rates are shocking. But the problems suffered by these men are not to be remedied by limiting the options of others. Also, I understand that young women actually attempt suicide more, but as they tend to choose less violent options (swallowing too many sleeping pills, as opposed to hanging or shooting themselves), they tend to be more likely to able to be rescued/revived than young men. Clearly, we need more effort in mental health and useful career/social pathways for people.

Ena's article has certainly brought out those who either have a chip on their shoulder or a longing for the 'good old days' when men were men and women knew their place.

Laurie, excellent points regarding youth suicide, it is significant that any social problem from divorce to mental illness is frequently posited as the fault of feminism. We, as a society, are responsible for all our members; it is simplistic to argue that people seeking equal status to others are to blame for every ill.

I commiserate with Glenwriter and Seeker as I too have suffered at the hands of an abusive, manipulative partner. Unlike them, I don't hold the entire opposite sex to blame and have managed to move on with my life; albeit with scars.

Richardson, longs for the days of arriving home after a long days work, demanding dinner and sheltered from his offspring 'daddy has worked hard and needs his quiet time' and of course when retiring to bed takes his full conjugal rights while his wife lay and thought of the good of the nation. I guess there were no back rubs to, er, 'get her in the mood'.


As for 'rule of thumb'; a broad term covering many uses with regard to rough measurement. As for whether the term was enshrined in law, it is unlikely, however British common law once held that it was legal for a man to chastise his wife in moderation (whatever that meant), interestingly there has never been a right in law for a wife to chastise her husband.

Christina Hoff Sommers explains the confused business in her 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women:

"The husband also, by the old law, might give his wife moderate correction . . . . (however) in the politer reign of Charles the Second [1660-'85], this power of correction began to be doubted; and a wife may now have security of the peace against her husband."

In other words, once upon a time in olde England, a man could beat his wife. But don't try it now."

And another historical correction, Mark, as I understand it, women who left marriages a century ago had no legal right to even ask for custody and, worse, no right to even see their children - at all - if their husband so decided, no matter what the circumstances - children, and wives, quite literally belonged to their fathers and husbands.
Whether the courts always award custody fairly these days or not, no-one has ever seriously attempted to enshrine laws that exclude fathers from their children in the way mothers were once routinely excluded.
You may hate what has happened to women's status in the last few decades, Mark, you may yearn for the past, but, rightly or wrongly, there is no going back. Women voted with their feet and their hearts, they want to control their own lives and make their own choices - just as men do. And, just as occurs with men, if those choices don't work out they are prepared to live with the consequences. I vastly prefer to suffer as a conseqence of my own mistakes than chafe against the misery caused by having to live under the yoke of mistakes made on my behalf by someone else.
And Glenwriter, whenever I write something, think something or ponder a decision, I ask my husband what he thinks, and I value his opinion. He read this piece - and the comments - and had some interesting things to say, in my support. That's why we are partners, sometimes he takes the lead on something, sometimes I do, depends on who knows more about it, who cares more about it and who is going to end up doing the lions share of the work.

I love this!
Ena wrote:
"Whenever I write something, think something or ponder a decision, I ask my husband what he thinks, and I value his opinion. He read this piece - and the comments - and had some interesting things to say, in my support. That's why we are partners, sometimes he takes the lead on something, sometimes I do, depends on who knows more about it, who cares more about it and who is going to end up doing the lions share of the work."

Now let's take a business or a marriage or any other partnership such as the Federal Coalition.
In all sincerity do you think the other partner would agree with this statement?

GlenWriter what is the bit that you don't like about Ena's comment?

What she proposes (if she means what I've read) sounds like a very practical and satisfying way for two adults to manage the most important partnership of their lives.

I was going to comment on what I thought to be your disagreement but I may be completely wrong about it so I'll hold off.

R0bert

I will second what R0bert says.

GlenW, can you explain what you do not like about ens’s last comment. It seems quite fair and reasonable (no pun!)

Robert and Reason,
When a couple comes together, one dominates. Pun intended.
It must be and it is just as certain as death and taxes. Two dominant leaders will fight such as Hawke and Keating did as well as Howard and Costello. There is no such thing as equality.

The two in a partnership agree that there is equality. That does not mean that equality is as true as fact. It isn't. It is just an agreement to keep the peace.

Ena says her husband takes the lead on some things and then she does and it depends on who knows more about it. No, that is not true. It depends on who is dominant at that time.
It is called "wearing the pants". Who wears the pants in a partnership is not about who knows more. One may take the pants off and let the other wear them, and then that person takes them off an let's the other partner wear the pants.

Whatever happens, one of the partners wears the pants more than the other. It is not the more intelligent, it is the more dominant who wears the pants more than the other while the other stands exposed. That is an agreement. It is not equality. Equality does not exist.
Difference exists. Viva la difference . . . or is that "le". There are many who know more than Kim Beazley. Julia Gillard for one!

Glenwriter, I think you mistake the meaning of partnership for leadership structure.
Neither Hawke or Keating, or Howard and Costello were/are partners. One was the leader one was his subordinate.
A marriage based on this kind of heirachy is going to end up being mighty unpleasant for the subordinate party eventually.
Perhaps you have never been lucky enough to experience working in a true partnership, I have many times. As an ad writer I always worked in a two person team with an art director. The best and most productive of those relationships was when neither tried to dominate but both appreciated each others equal but different talents and strengths and the relationship ebbed and flowed accordingly. My marriage has worked in a similar fashion. Perhaps such real partnerships are more creative than the old dominant/subordinate model. Who dominated in Rogers and Hammerstein or Merchant Ivory, for example? Most medical and science researchers work in partnership - as teams. i am now co-authoring books and it is wonderful to feel that neither of us must dominate, must ' control" things all the time. Oh, and this has worked in both male/female and female/female partnerships and I've watched it work in male/male too - professionally and personally.

GlenWriter, there is another alternative - one which will have times which don't work well but which better equips the participants for those times.

Working in partnership - the scenario ena described where the normal decision making process takes into account factors like
- who is best equiped to take the lead in making the decision
- who is most impacted by the decision
- what does my partner think of this

A mutual working together based on both people respecting the other rather than seeking to exert control over them. Admittedly a scenarion some people just don't want to try but one which involves far less conflict than one dominating the other.

I had a good example the other night of the power of this in a recreational situation.

We were playing with a Mensa quiz, 30 questions and if you can get 23 you are potentailly a genius. Apparently only two mensa members have only ever got the 30. I started on my own and stalled at a respectable number with a couple of answers I was unhappy with. Then two of us started on the remaining items, some corrections, a bunch of new answers and only one item without a viable answer. A couple of the new answers came from me despite me being stalled earlier.

Two of us working together did far better than either of us on our own could have achieved - (We were both wearing pants at the time if that is relevant).

R0bert

Ena,
The blurb here says:
"Jane Caro is a Sydney writer . . ."
There is a quantum leap from an ad writer to a writer.
Sssshh!

The world is more old-fashioned than you think, Ena, Laurie and Scout.

When I defended traditional marriage, Laurie wroted about me "wishing for an age which is long gone"; Scout claimed I was "longing for the good old days when men were men and women knew their place"; and Ena opined that I was yearning for a past, but that there was "no going back".

As it happens, I'm not "yearning" for traditional marriage, I'm living it. My wife often expresses her gratitude that she is not forced to go out to work and can look after our son full-time. We have a good life together.

Nor are we alone. All of the eight families in my wife's mothers' group (randomly selected) are broadly traditional. The men are all full-time committed careerists, none of the women are. Two of the women work part-time (one from home two afternoons a week); one works full-time, but only reluctantly as her husband's wage is limited by child-care payments to his ex-wife.

This traditionalist pattern confirms the research of one of your fellow feminist writers, Linda Hirshman, who tracked the marriages of some well-educated New York women and found that only five out of 30 were in full-time paid work, with over half not in paid work at all.

http://www.ozconservative.com/gettingitstraight.html

Laurie and Scout, I notice that you associate traditional marriage with female subservience. That's not how I see things. There are easier ways for men to dominate women than committing to a lifetime of work and family responsibilities.

If men prefer traditional marriage it's because there is a distinctly masculine role for them within such a model and because they want to preserve the connection between mother and baby for the benefit of both.

Even Germaine Greer eventually came to defend the traditional family on such grounds: she wrote in 1991 that "Most societies have arranged matters so that a family surrounds and protects mother and child" and complained, in contrast, of "our families having withered away" with relationships becoming "less durable every year".

Mark,
What most women do today and, indeed, I have done myself is work while young, take time out to care for their kids (I spent 5 years at home freelancing while my kids were small) then return to work either full time or part time.
40 years ago many women were locked out of work once they had kids and found themselves bored and frustrated with time on their hands once their kids no longer required their full attention.
Sure some women like being full time wives and mothers, just as some men may like being full time husbands and fathers, and that's fine, as long as it is freely chosen -not compelled, either by social or personal pressure.
But some women want to air force pilots, or brain surgeons or small business operators or uni lecturers, just as some men do, and what on earth is wrong with that? If you have a daughter who grows up with dreams and ambitions will you forbid her from following them, just tacitly disapprove or will you give her your full and wholehearted support? Could you even, as you would for an ambitious and focussed son, be proud of her? As proud as you would be if she chose a more conventional role? Could you be proud of a son who preferred to spend time caring for his children than making his way in the wider world, or would you feel a sense of something lacking? Sounds like your children are still small, maybe you think you'll never face these questions and maybe you won't, but what if you do?

Enaj, your view is that what matters is not so much what we choose, as that it's freely chosen. This view rests upon a radical abandonment of the idea of transcendent goods - in other words, there is a denial of the reality of "goods" existing independently of what I choose or desire for myself.

So it's going to be difficult for you to understand my answer to your last post. It is my role as a parent to guide my children to the more significant "goods" in life. I don't believe a man can even begin to approach such goods, without cultivating a strong sense of his own masculinity.

Therefore, I would certainly be disappointed if my son were to adopt a more feminine homemaker and mothering role within a family.

Similarly, I would not approve of a daughter placing herself in a position in which she would inevitably be masculinised - such as being an airforce pilot. I would want a daughter to be, above all, truly lovely - rather than to train to kill or to steel herself for a violent death in war.

Huh. Well, M.R. I think that's really sad. I always imagined that the role of parents was to support and encourage their children to be the best at whatever they wanted, whether that fitted in with traditional gender roles or not.

And while your wife's mother's group may be dominated by 'traditional' style families, I must confess that I only know one such marriage in all of my friends and family's network. That family (one set of my cousins) seems happy, but no more so than another set of cousins where the woman is the primary breadwinner and the man is the main carer of the kiddies. Its different strokes for different folks, and what set of genetalia you were born with should not dicate how your family/couple's power sharing, influence, finances, work distribution, etc, should be orgainised.

If power is how you define one’s masculinity, then I’m all for being less masculine.

Personally, I define my masculinity by the genitals between my legs. The rest of the definition of me relies on my character as a person – behaviour under pressure, thoughtfulness towards others and desire to leave something good when I pass.

If you require some sense of power to achieve masculinity then I would suggest you have a few personal issues to deal with.

Laurie,
Just how do parents "encourage their children to be the best at whatever they wanted . . ."
Just how do they do that?
First they act as roles models, so parents encourage each other.
That is the starting point to encourage their children.
Why are marrages breaking down.
Bec ause husband and wife and wife and husband are competing AGAINST each other instead of supporting each other.
First they must support each other to "encourage their children to be the best at what ever they wanted . . ."
That means the wife must support her husband in being the best husband and the husband must support the wife in being the best wife.
And that means instead of watching TV, they should be rooting like rabbits and that raises confidence. The reverse is the case. Headaches everywhere for the husband and wife and everyone gets cold and frigid.
The kids should be saying "hey where are mum and dad". They other one says "oh they are in the bedroom again."

Citizen wrote:
Since then i have been battling to get back into a real job with a Mr Mum cv. I drive a delivery truck and clean offices. How do you think it feels when I have to deal with affirmative action and the women's network (nepotism) even when the women who have an institutionalised advantage over me already have a well paid husband?

A man without a job, or a low pay, low status job, is condemned to a lonely life and has no power to choose because rich men don't give a damn about him and politicians have been intimidated into doing whatever the Women's Electoral Lobby etc dictate. It must be just ducky enjoying the fruits of woman's empowerment but spare a thought for the human refuse which has been one result of it.

My reply:
Poor little you. There are many women in your position - desperately trying to get a job with a Miss Mum CV. None of them have advantage over you as you suggest, job hunting is hard and companies do not want to give jobs to women likely to be taking a lot of time off with kids - so they are often forced into a part time work position. It is ludicrous to suggest that these women have a 'well paid husband', when many if not most of them are scraping by on minimal wages and boring work choices like yourself.

The day politicians are intimidated into doing everything the Womens Electorial lobby want will be the day pigs fly. Every battle for the improvement of the position of women is hard won and generally justified, correcting blatent discrimination.

Perhaps you are your own worst enemy, needing to get a bit more training and learn to get yourself ahead in life as do the rest of us, instead of trying to stand on the heads of hard working women to get a little leverage.

Er, whatever, GlenWriter.

I'm sorry but I fail to see how parents constantly shagging would be in any way linked to their ability to encourage their children to fulfil their dreams

GlenW,
So, soft porn should be shown on TV as it is a good role model for young kids (as long as the message is ‘its what all loving couples do’)? Really? Quite amazing. And should it only show the missionary position? Or should the ‘diveristy’ of love also be shown?

And how is a woman working not ‘supporting the husband’? If a woman supports her husband by staying home and keeping house, isn’t this the same as a husband doing the same? Or is it more dependant on whether there are dangly bits between the legs as deserving of more support than not?

Nothing you have written is based in any more than old age, religious dogmatic claptrap. Try presenting a logical argument based on the concepts of equality and responsibility. Or is your equality more Orwellian than you reveal?

Ohhhhhh, give me strength Oh Lord!

Neither Laurie nor Reason can accept the existence of masculinity. For both, gender difference is limited to the genitalia one happens to be born with.

I'm not sure how, on this basis, Laurie or Reason can explain the normal workings of heterosexuality. Why would men fall in love with women and choose to marry them, if the only difference between men and women are the organs between their legs?

Men obviously perceive something different about women, something admirably feminine, which orients them to women both emotionally and sexually.

I wonder too how Laurie and Reason reconcile their belief that gender difference is limited to genitalia with modern science. What about testosterone? What about the differences between men and women in the structure of the brain? Are we to ignore the scientific evidence in order to uphold a politically correct theory?

Laurie, whether you like it or not, we are influenced by gender and this means that women will never be the main provider in a significant number of families. In Australia today, even after decades of feminism, 50% of women with young children are home full-time and another 33% are home part-time.

Kim Beazley made a speech today in which he endorsed this pattern of family life. He said "A lot of women believe that the best thing for children is if they can be at home in the early years. Fair enough too. A good society is one which makes sure they can."

Laurie, we are a long way from a widespread role reversal within the family.

Mark:
So Kim Beazley said "A lot of women believe that the best thing for children is if they can be at home in the early years. Fair enough too. A good society is one which makes sure they can."
Kim Beazley must be John Howard's press secretary. Every time Kim opens his mouth he salutes the way John Howard rules the country.

Mark, you misunderstand me.

I am not looking for role reversal, with all men staying home with the kiddies while all women become the breadwinner. I'm looking for a situation where each family makes the decisions based on their own circumstances as to what suits them.

You say most women with young children stay home - so what? If this is their CHOICE, more power to them. If they are doing so because their partners insist that it is a "woman's place", then THAT is wrong.

I do not deny the existance of masculinity or femininity. I am quite a feminine girl, lots of skirts and high heels. But that dosn't mean that I should be EXPECTED to stay home and keep house when I have children. I may do so, but I suspect I'd be rather terrible at it, having no taste for cleaning and little skill for cooking.

I don't deny that many women wish to stay home with small children. Probably many men do also - if the current debarcles around child custody arrangements tells us anything, it is that men also wish to spend a great deal of time with their children. Why should they be denied by their "masculinity" from spending time with the kiddies, looking after babies etc?

I only seek to break down the EXPECTATIONS which people associate with male or female. So that women can stay home or go out to work. So that men can stay home or go out to work. Not one for one and one for the other. But what works for the couple.

Laurie very nicely put.

R0bert

Laurie,
What R0bert said - you put it beautifully.
Jane

I third the motion, Laurie. Summed up perfectly.

I wish I had thought of the words you did.

I am truly looking forward to the response from those who disagree and find fault with your summary…

I will use the last sentence of Laurie:
"But what works for the couple."
And just what works for the couple?
What does the hell does that mean?
Get the wisest people in the nation to interpret just what it means.
It means whatever the person says it means
One must dominate and one must be dominated.
THEY CAN"T BE EQUAL AT THE SAME TIME.
So I will demonstrate to your four who can not, and will not, and refuse to see.
There is someone worse that the blind person.
The person who refuses to see.
So, I agree with you Laurie.
I agree with you R0bert.
I agree with you ena.
I agree with you Reason
Now you win and I lose. I have compromised my position and you four win against me.
Now that works for the five of us hey.
It is just like what Laurie says "What works foir the couple.
Whoever says that statement is the dominant one because the other person can only say one thing for it to work.
"Yes dear!" "No dear" "yes dear" "Of course dear" "Yes dear" "That is right dear"

Glen, you might look at the other part of the issue - that Laurie, Ena, Reason and I all agreed, no losers amongst us.

The point which I think you are trying to make about the times that there is conflict is valid, hopefully we all recognise that those times will happen. Ena talked about the stuff she thinks is valid (who is most impacted etc) for those times. Not all relationships have to be primarily about win/loose scenarios, if two people are willing to work towards something better it can happen. If one insists on win/loose situations or dominating there is a lot to be said for so called "no fault" divorce.

R0bert

Of course they can be equal at the same time - that's what equal means - of equal value, of equal importance - even if they differ - even if one takes the lead on this area and the other on something else.
Lots of people mistake equal to mean the same, it doesn't. It means of equivalent worth. Is the grass worth more or less than the sky? Is red worth more or less than yellow? They are not the same, but they are equally important. Is your first child more valuable than your second?
I am your equal, but I am also different. The two are not incompatible, in fact, its what makes the world go round. Are birds more valuable than fish? Is the Barrier Reef more valuable than the Himalayas? They are all of equal importance, but they are not the same.

Yes, we are of equal value, but a true gentleman knows better.

Traditional gender roles are slowly undergoing change. This change is bringing about a vast number of positive outcomes for both genders including:

• freedom for both men and women to explore and develop new roles based on personal choices rather than gender stereotypes. For example, females can be independent, strong and successful; males can be nurturing, emotional and intuitive;

• equality of interaction between genders; and

• increased social, domestic and career opportunities.

It is not about win or lose, in fact with equality it is win/win for all.

Men do not comprise a uniform group, nor is it possible to speak of a single male role. Masculinity is not always equivalent to power. Men lead many different types of lives and have many different interests.
Social and health statistics show that life in Western society exacts a high price from men. Males are overrepresented among drug abusers and prison inmates.

The life expectancy of men is shorter compared to women. Boys exhibit more problematic behaviour patterns in school than girls, and constitute a larger proportion of the pupils requiring compensatory measures at the primary school level. The drop-out rate for boys is considerably higher than for girls.

The need for children need to associate with men as well as women in day-care institutions, schools and in family life has been well documented. There is general concern from a gender-equality perspective that day-care institutions and schools remain a female-dominated environment.

Just as women needed liberation from the narrow roles of mothers and nurturers, men also need freedom from the role of provider and protector – roles which are anachronistic today, where more women are becoming independent and able to look after themselves.

Continued...

continued...

It really is about choice for both sexes – if men want to work in nurturing careers such as nursing, social work or teaching, and we as a society would surely benefit from greater participation by men in non-traditional roles, then our view of these careers need to change. These professions are poorly paid compared to careers in stockbroking, investment for example – there is little incentive or respect for caring professions.

The changes in male gender roles not only involve men’s relationships with women, but also the manner in which they relate to other men, to new tasks and to important social institutions run by men.

Just as women have been denied rights which men have held in their traditional sphere of responsibility (protectors and providers), men have also been denied rights which women have held in their traditional sphere of responsibility (as nurturers and homemakers).

Just as women have had to shoulder the extra responsibilities of being society's carer’s, men have also had to shoulder the extra responsibilities of being society's protectors and providers. Both sexes have been denied rights and both sexes have been given unfair burdens of responsibility.

We can share our responsibilities without being straight-jacketed into roles that may not fit. Men can be carers and women providers, but we still have along way to go. There are plenty of women who see men as a meal ticket and, conversely, men who see women as objects to be kept and controlled.

It is all about balance and freedom of choice

Scout another great post. Thank you.

R0bert

Yes I agree. Another great post. We are all in agreement.
Just like being married isn't it?

Scout, you've got it wrong. When men give up being providers, they give up their other family commitments as well. They become demotivated. Statistically, the number of children they father drops dramatically, the hours of housework they contribute declines, the number of hours they spend with their children falls, and they lose their commitment to paid work (50% of men in female provider families are unemployed).

Why would women encourage a situation in which they are likely to end up doing everything, including the paid work, the child-care and the housework?

I'll post a link soon which will make it clear that a shift away from the traditional provider role is not liberating for men, and is the worst possible outcome for women.

You’ve earned that shoulder rub, Scout. Can I offer a foot massage?

But not before you tell us what the sisters plan to do about righting some of the wrongs that are preventing both genders from realising their potential in this age of enlightenment you speak of. Men as protector-providers made great effort to ensure other men toed the line. If we are to move beyond the current acrimonious impasse, what are our mothers, sisters, wives and daughters proposing in the interest of equity for the new caring, nurturing, men in their lives.

Will they be championing equal residency post divorce perhaps? Adding (not just taking away) equity in no-fault divorce? Promoting child support formulae that include an assumption of equal capacity to earn, care, responsibility for costs, accountability in spending?

Can we perhaps start with Paternity Fraud? What will women do to help stamp out this abhorrent practice? Acknowledging it as a serious crime, and supporting commensurate recompense, would be a significant step forward from the current strategy of playing down the single-digit estimated percentages - incidence rates that are somehow insignificant or justifiable. Let’s test for it at every birth, so that we all know how exactly insignificant!

People, can we all fast-forward to today (from some distant past where women suffered and men didn’t), try updating our laws and utilising existing technology to solve some simple everyday problems still seemingly classified as secret women’s business. What about reproductive rights? While 100,000 abortions take place every year, men are afforded no legal rights - either way! How could a man’s choice of equal conviction, be given no weight whatsoever against the mothers? This just sounds so archaic.

Perhaps some of these very things stand immovably in the way of progress for all.

Mark you ask:
"Why would women encourage a situation in which they are likely to end up doing everything, including the paid work, the child-care and the housework?"
Yes why would they . . . but they do.
They do because it is part of feminism.
Women can't pull themselves up without putting the man down.
I will repeat that because it is the essance of why feminism has been going now for 40 years and just what have they achived besides 42 percent of marriage breakup?
Yes what Jane?
Why did Jane write this article?
Would she have written it if women had achieved anything at all except positive things instead of destructive things.
The family? Just where is it today?
Out the door, that's where.

If the family can only survive by blighting the hopes and dreams of one half of its members, then there is something wrong with the family.
Fortunately, I do not believe you are right about the family - as an entity - being destroyed. Some families may have suffered, and some individuals may have too, but it was ever thus. Once, miserable families pretended all was well for the sake of appearances, once children and women suffered in some families all kinds of abuse with no way to escape it. We have started to change that. Change is always painful, not always fair and often clumsy, it is also inevitable.
Currently, I believe we are a society in transition, moving from a rigid, authoritarian way of living to another, hopefully more fluid and collaborative, way. transition is always scarey and painful because we know what we are leaving but not yet what we are going to.
like Scout, I believe the new way of being a man and a woman will ultimately be liberating for both sexes - not perfect, mind you, i am not so foolish as to believe that - but, at the very least, a more grown up and mature way for adult human beings to take responsibility for themselves and their own fates, both good and bad.

Thanks to R0bert and Ena

Richardson continues to (wilfully?) misunderstand. People are arguing for equality of opportunity. That's all. Not all men want to be the sole providers, some men desire to nuture their families - why should they be forced into roles they are unhappy with? The entire point of equality of opportunity is that it is NOT at the expense of half the population - be it male or female.

Seeker - I do not speak for any sisterhood. Any more than you speak for any brotherhood.

Only together will men and women sort out their essentially superficial differences. It won't be perfect; because human beings are not perfect, but at least we will have a chance for all people to aspire to the best of their abilities, rather than just one sex in power at the expense of the other.

OK Scout, but no foot massage from me.

Us blokes are unlikely to board the Titanic with the knowledge that not only are lifeboats limited to women and children, but that we’d be tied down for the duration of the trip. Bon Voyage.

Ena wrote: "transition is always scary and painful because we know what we are leaving but not yet what we are going to". Ena, this is too casual an attitude to social change - it is playing fast and loose with the society you live in. If you want to scrap a traditional institution, you do have to consider what the replacement will be, and how it will fit into a social framework.

Scout, a virtue of your writing is that you make your point very clearly. So it is certainly not the case that I misunderstand what you argue. For instance, you wrote: "Only together will men and women sort out their essentially superficial differences."

Scout, this is one of the most pithily anti-heterosexual sentences ever penned. Heterosexual men and women don't want to "sort out" their gender differences, they have a passionate regard for them. Nor do heterosexuals perceive gender difference to be "essentially superficial"; instead, the differences which inspire our love are felt to be profound.

And this is why I do not accept the feminist view on family life. It is not that I want to force anyone to live the traditional way, it is that I don't believe a family life which ignores the profound reality of gender is likely to work well.

I have already pointed out that when men give up their provider role, the divorce rate climbs until it eventually reaches double the rate of traditional families.

(continued next post)

What I can add to this is that when women earn more than a man in a marriage, men typically reduce their overall commitment to family life. I have just posted an article on this:

http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2006/08/role-reversal-in-family-what-does.html

Only 51% of men in such families continue to work full-time, compared to 96% of men in traditional families. Such men only spend 5.8 hours a week with their children, compared to 9.2 hours for traditional men. Such men only father an average of 0.77 children, compared to 1.7 for traditional men.

What's even more extraordinary is that in the small subset of families most committed to "gender equity" (in which there is a belief that men and women are interchangeable in family roles) mothers only spend 5.3 hours per week with their children.

So it is not just men who become demotivated when their role in the family is cut loose from powerful gender instincts - it appears that women also lose much of their commitment to motherhood.

Mark Richardson what proportion of women in the Australian work force earn more than their husbands? Very few.

Are you so miserable that you will stop an individual [of the female persuasion] reaching her full potential because it might puncture the delicate ego of a male?

F*#$ you!

You know, Mark, it is really about time that some men recognised that the responsibility it is really important they take is responsibility for themselves. We don't want you to feel responsible for taking care of us, especially if the unspoken down side of that bargain is that we must give up our hopes and dreams for ourselves and sublimate our will to yours.
If life deals with you badly, you need to deal with it, and stop blaming others - particularly women for your fate. The adult response to misfortune is to look at your own part in bringing it about and learn from that. Clinging to outmoded, rigid gender roles for fear of living a real life, for fear of what "might' happen if you change won't get you far, and may be part of the reason so many relationships break down. There has been some research done, actually, that says the more rigidly stereotypical the gender roles within a marraige, the more likely it is to break down traumatically.
If all of us took responsibility for ourselves instead of pontificating about others, perhaps we would all get along much better.

Ena,
Get divorced, take responsibilty for yourself and then don't complain in hundreds of words about men.
Then you will be able to write, I think.

Mark I've used this analogy previously but I think it is a good one.

Much of the turmoil we are experiencing is like the turmoil you get when you move house.

- It's hard to find things because they are still in boxes or you don't know what cupboard they have been put in.
- Your new house is cluttered with the stuff you brought from the old house rather than disposing of before the move but which is not needed here - you've got built in's here the old wardrobes are no use.
- One of the kids is having an ongoing hissy-fit because they liked the old house better and this new one is just no good.
- One of the other kids who was sick of having the smallest room is trying to get two rooms and make someone else sleep on the veranda.
- Your still not familiar with the route to school and work so sometimes you run late getting there.
- If you get up in the dark you bump into things because you don't know your way around like you udes to.

Society is changing some things which we had become familiar with, most of the family have decided that the harm to most of the family staying in that old place was not worth. The transition will not always be easy but for those willing to move on it will be much better once we get unpacked and work out where stuff needs to go.

The kid who continues to go on about how the new house is no good and that they liked the old one better was probably the one who had the best room at the old place and doesn't like the fact that the other all have similar rooms now. Time to get over it and start working out the best way to unpack.

R0bert

Glenwriter

1. Am not writing to win your approval, therefore loss of backrub, no loss.

2. About the "save the women and children" thing - I have never understood that. Sure, children first, but shouldn't that be with both parents?

Scenario: If I place myself on the Titanic, as a single adult (no children) I would ensure that my niece and nephew with their parents were on the lifeboats first. To lose an auntie is sad but to lose a parent would be a catastrophe. As a single adult I could take care of myself - along with the other single adults. It never made sense for the father to die - especially back in the days when the wives were totally dependant on hubby for financial support. I guess, today, my original point remains true - save the children, first, their parents, second and the rest can take care of themselves.

Richardson -

You are confusing sexuality with gender steroetypes and creating a straight jacket not only for yourself but (tragically) for your children. How can they reach their full potential as adults if you deny your daughter to fly a plane (if she has the desire and aptitude) or your son to become a nurse (because he has a deeply nurturing nature)?

Men and women possess the same skills to varying degrees - as humans do, for example I topped my class in maths, science, english and art at school. You would've limited me to a career focussing on writing and art simply because I am female. At Uni I studied landscape architecture (Bachelor of Applied Science) which utilises ALL my abilities.

R0bert -

Your analogy sums up the pain of change beautifully - however, the people to whom it is aimed have their hands over their ears and are screaming and stamping their feet. But don't let that stop you - I need to be reminded also, when I think there is no hope for we human beings, I know the one constant thing is indeed change.