My mother is 98. She must be one of those dreadfully downtrodden women, as she did not work from 1936, when she & dad married, until 1972, when she took a part time job. From 1946, after WW11 my father was a shoe shop manager, so we weren't rich.

For those young ladies, who can't understand how good she had it, I'll give you a picture, of her life then.

Friday. Dad would come home, with his pay packet, [remember when you got your money before the bank], unopened. They would open it, give me my 7 pence pocket money, & dad his. His payed for house maintenance, & later car stuff, when we finally got one.

I saw the same pay packet thing at many mates houses. That was what happened in most families.

Saturday. Mom & dad played tennis, saturday afternoon. They would entertain friends, or be entertained at night.

Sunday. We would generally walk to the beach, [no cars yet available] while the big baked dinner cooked. This was Tounsville for god's sake. Dad, & later, I would chop the wood for the chip bath heater, & the washing copper.

Monday. Mum would go into town, bank whatever money they banked, do a little shopping, then play bowls in the afternoon.

Tuesday. The lady came to do the washing, & the fruiterer, softdrink, & butcher deliveries came.

Wednesday. Tennis in the afternoon, & a movie at night.

Thursday. The ironing lady came in the morning, & cards, at the bowls club, in the afternoon.

Friday, some shopping, food deliveries, & it all started again.

I know most of the ladies are now crying for my poor mum, it was tough. Most of them will have to work for 40 years, before they get to retire to get it so good. The ridicules thing is, they can't see how they have been conned.

No wonder Ruddy can get awway with his CTS con, most of the blokes aren't much smarter.

No one seems to be disagreeing that pre 60's society was patriarchal and that women were to a degree oppressed. The crux of Mr. Holden's arguement is that women are still oppressed, not so much by men anymore, but by circumstances both economic and social.

The question being asked is whether fact that some women may not have realised, or perhaps felt that they were oppressed, made them better off than their current day counterparts? Is ignorance bliss?

It comes down to choice. In 1960, women's options were few. There was an expectation that a woman's life would follow a certain path, the expectation as much by themselves as by men. Once she started down that path, there were few forks in the road. Good or bad, that was likely to be the way things were for life.

That is not so anymore. Women no longer need feel that they have no choice. It doesn't automatically mean that life is better. As Mr. Holden points out, there are a multitude of stresses that confront women today, and in many ways it is a more difficult life. Families still need to be raised and cared for, economic imperatives mean that work is a necessity, stability of relationships is much more difficult to achieve etc. I guess that's the price to pay for self determination and freedom to choose.

I think that's what the original "women's libbers" had in mind. Not an easier life, just one where women could make their own choices, good or bad.

Au took a wrong turn in the sixtees. Women and money are a bad mix.
Never before has au had so much debt, so much devorce, so many bastard children, and so much family violence. Marriage is seen as something that might happen after we have some kids of course.
40% of women do not know who the father of their kids are, genetics shows this up.

Family violence is a one-way street according to the law.

What would you do if you were woken up by some shadow fallen across the needlessly left-on hallway light by the maritial bedroom to open your eyes to the sight of your loving wife poised in mid-air across the bed with a 12" breadknife clenched between her hands and her eyes focused on your heart and a new and never-before seen grimace in her jaw?

Would you report her to the police after defending your life?

lilsam,

That's a pretty good response. I would have to agree with most of that.

A few things.

1. Brian, you're a silly old bugger. I'm sure your attitudes reflect the times you were brought up in.

2. Not ALL women were oppressed in the society Brian was brought up with, and a hell of a lot of marriages were a partnership where both parties saw each other's role as valuable, and a lot of women were happy with their lot. Just ask a lot of old couples. Quite often when I hear feminists talk, it's almost as if EVERY family consisted of a drunken abusive male and a trapped female with no way out, who desperately wanted a career. It's rubbish.

3. It's actually turned nearly full circle now. Women were trapped in marriages (as were men due to societal expectations but obviously at least had financial independence), but now a hell of a lot of men are trapped as they see that in a divorce, most likely, they will be leaving the family home and only seeing their kids every second weekend. It's not as bad as for women before feminism, but I'd say it's hard to dispute that men have more to lose than women these days in a marriage break-up.

4. At the moment, we are forcing a lot of women into the workforce who don't want to be there, who if they had a richer husband would not be there.

What is needed really to make it all work is for Men to be allowed (By their wives primarily, their bosses secondarily) to have equal share in child raising. Then women would have better super, and men would get to see their kids more often, and when a marriage breaks up, it would be hard to justify women getting the majority of custody.

I dare say less marriages would break up if both men and women could have better chance of obtaining a better work life balance.

Subsidised childcare for the middle class encourages couples not to do this.

When I see women trying to act like men, when I see women refusing to mother their children, when I see women portrayed as purely sex objects, when I see women killing their unborn, I see as much 'liberation' as the Muslim women to whom most feminist ignore. The biggest losers from the feminist movement have been women themselves.

Thankfully despite decades of propaganda and brainwashing many women love being mums, wives and feminine.