Is life for women better after the feminist movement?

Question

Being a working woman, I have to wonder. I wish I had been around in the days when men supported their wives and families. Women had their jobs and men had theirs too. Now we have to work all the time and make all these decisions. Call me old fashioned, but does anyone else long for the days when life was more simple for women?

Answer 1

no i love my life the way it is and i love making decisions. I wouldnt change a thing.

Answer 2

I think women worked harder back then. Think about it, cloth diapers, no convenience food, etc. It was just a different type of work.

I really just want to be Carol on the Brady Bunch. (remember she had Alice)

Answer 3

Life's worse for women...much worse. I long for the old days too! I want to go back to the time when women wore dresses all the time...and were allowed to be feminine without people telling them there is something wrong with them for wanting to be what they are.

Answer 4

Is life better -  yes it is.    Back when men supported their families if he decided you did something wrong and chose to push you through a wall- police just looked away - that was a family matter.  If that's the "more simple"  life you want - you may want to reconsider.  

Answer 5

No. Giving people choices regarding how they want to live their lives is never a bad result.  

Answer 6

This is a question of perspective and circumstance.

I may not enjoy working and I may appreciate having someone support me if it meant being able to spend more time with my family and loved ones, but I'm not sure I appreciate the trade off of not being allowed in public without a chaperon, and not having the agency to leave an abusive relationship because I'm a dependent.

Also, keep in mind that women have always worked and that women in the workplace is not the result of feminism but of poverty.

There are many women still today who may agree with their husband to stay at home while he works to provide for the family, but this is increasingly difficult due to the increased cost of living.

In any event, feminism has never forced women to work, but simply made it more acceptable.

Since I am not married, I appreciate that I was able to move away and go to school rather than marry the first man I met. If I had, I may still be confined to that abusive relationship. I consider myself fortunate that I can work and support myself and get to know my current partner before being married. I'm glad that it will be my decision and not my father's and that I can marry someone if I see fit and do so based on my own criteria of someone who loves and respects me. I'm also grateful that if I choose a more traditional lifestyle one day my partner and I can agree to do that, and I'm glad that if we did that and were tight on money I would still be able to work and help him provide. I'm glad that as a woman I don't have to get married and can choose to be single and focus on a career if I see fit. This also means that if I do get married and my husband if ever ill I will have the right to work and support him, or that if we wanted to we could both choose to work less and be with our kids so that he can participate in his children's lives if he so chooses.

Is life better for women after the feminist movement? I think so. But like I said, it's always a question of perspective and circumstance.

Answer 7

Nope, because back in the day when life was most "simple" for women it was a lot harder to gain the respect of most men. Because of the fact that you where a woman there where men (and still are men) who did not see you as worthy of paying the same respects they gave to most men. And remember, even though many of you believe that life was lot more "simple" for women, life itself was not as simple as you think. They didn't have the advancements in technology that we currently have to date. You can be old fashion all you want too, but me personally I enjoy things the way they are.

Answer 8

I think that the women who fought for women's rights have screwed us over even more. Now, instead of being limited in what we CAN do, we are expected to do EVERYthing. Not only am I the cook, cleaner and child raiser, but I am also in a full-time job and expected to out-perform the men (who are increasingly in office positions). And what do the men do? Pretty much what they've always done.

Now... I do have great appreciation for the women's movement (dont get me wrong - i'm glad we have more health care options etc) and I don't think that they predicted what would happen. I just think that the women's movement is far from over.

Answer 9

Back in the 40's and 50's before the women's movement most women stopped work when they married or when they had children and stayed at home to look after their families.  

At that time contraception was not readily available and many women had no choice but to have large families, if a man beat up his wife the police would not get involved as it was "a domestic" divorce was unusual and could only be obtained in cases of cruelty, desertion or adultery.  

Unmarried women in the UK who became pregnant were considered a disgrace and coerced into marrying the father or into having the baby adopted, sometimes kicked out of the family home and even in some cases committed to mental hospitals.

If women did work employees were legally permitted to pay them less that a man doing the same job.

In 1954  an article headlined "Girls Brainier Than Boys". informed its readers that too many girls had been passing the 11+ exam and education authorities  decided to limit the number of girls who were given passes. It's now estimated that without the quotas, in mixed grammar schools, two thirds of all the classes would have been occupied by girls. The quotas persisted in Birmingham and Northern Ireland until the late eighties when the High Court ruled them discriminatory.

In one way I do agree with you and it does seem that the women's movement has given women the right to have two jobs instead of one but to resolve this we need to get our men to do more of a share of the chores and childcare when we also work.

It is easy to look back and see the past through rose tinted glasses and in some ways life was better but I question whether it is womens rights which have made life worse.

Answer 10

Of course it's better, if women want to start acting like men because they think it's easy and they've been oppressed... let them do it!

The feminist movement is becoming more and more extreme though (which I'm not saying is a bad thing), they want more and more and many want to see the removal of men altogether... which goes against the original idea of feminism... but the fact is feminism IS and always has been run primarily by lesbians... what does that tell you?

Answer 11

I just know I love the freedom of being able to choose what I do and don't have to answer to a man. But I am still a little on the old fashioned side also. I am on both sides of the fence I guess.

Answer 12

I think in a lot of ways it is and in some ways it isn't.  Women* today are equal and that's cool.  Working class & poor women don't have the option to stay home with their baby.  That's bad; we are raising the most neglected and violent generation ever.

Romance has largely disappeared.  

Also women & men are now competing against each other.  Today people are more isolated, paranoid & ready to give up a relationship more easier.

You have to be colder to suceed today than in the past.  

Answer 13

No. I'd rather work all my life and make all my own decisions than ever let a man support me. Economic policy is mostly responsible for this shift, not feminism.