What do you think about housewives and feminism?

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Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986) was a French feminist who opposed traditional gender roles for women.

She wrote:

No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one." - "Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma," Saturday Review, June 14, 1975.

"A parasite sucking out the living strength of another organism...the [housewife's] labor does not even tend toward the creation of anything durable.... [W]oman's work within the home [is] not directly useful to society, produces nothing. [The housewife] is subordinate, secondary, parasitic. It is for their common welfare that the situation must be altered by prohibiting marriage as a 'career' for woman."[1]

I don't need to agree with Simone de Beauvoir in order to call myself a feminist. Her disdain for the work of housewives was probably due to resentment at feeling forced into that role.

The post was not targeted at you (believe it or not, my Middle-Eastern underdeveloped brain can differentiate between mainstream Feminism and radical forms of feminism) -but I am pointing that this view on housewives exist among some people.

My mom had it somehow, she was always used to view housewives as lazy and having it easier.

I believe there's also classicism thing in all this too(and sometimes classist envy), at least where I live and in the current economy, the women who can afford an urban life as "housewives" are usually of the high class and married to wealthy men - the childcare and house chores are often taken care by migrant female maids who are exploited to the bone (hint: it's more slavery than a legit job).

So it's not surprising why many local feminists don't like those "housewives" (hint: they don't respect them at all) - not just because they view them as women choosing an easy life by depending on men's wealth or viewing them as the least vocal when it comes to women's rights...but also because they view them exploiting and mistreating other women directly.

I do think it's a bit lazy to have no job, and then to hire maids and nannies. I mean, what exactly are these people doing with their time? Still, if they have the money and that's what they want to do, that's their business. Maybe some of them do charity work or attend classes or something.

And obviously keeping people in virtual slavery is horrible.

They go for a run in every morning, they stay like 2 hours to gym per day, they go regularly to beauty centers to stay looking as young as 25 years old - all this because, like my friend put it once, to keep the most important asset they have in life: the husband. They are aware if they lose the man, they lose everything - and they are aware that a wealthy man usually wouldn't have a hard time to find another younger and hotter sugar baby.

Some of them might do some "charity" activities showed all over the media - usually in the prestigious - because a genuine humanitarian act shouldn't be boasted in the media, at least this is what I think.

And there's *plenty* of abuse cases of maids/nannies by male employers and their wives - work exploitation, appalling racism, bad work conditions and in worse cases physical and sexual abuse.

There's about 200K migrant maids here for a population of 4M - basically that's the number of all higher class people.

That lady explains their work abuse situation:

https://youtu.be/rZ8hkYhb5ik?list=PL9PY ... yhAw&t=360

https://youtu.be/rZ8hkYhb5ik?list=PL9PY ... yhAw&t=503

That sounds like a sad, loveless life.

OOM

Who cares what these b*****s think, right? Do what is best for you and your household. If they don't like it then they can stick it up where the sun don't shine.

Working is overrated, feminism is confusing. I am a SAHM. I put in the hard yards while the kids were little, but now they are all at school I kinda feel sorry for my husband working so hard while I get so much free time to do stuff I love like reading, going to the movies, shopping. I guess I was never one to derive my identity from work tho. Tbh I work part time. Mostly as a favour to my employer. Though I like my job I'd be quite happy without it.

And for that reason, there will always be a wage gap.

And the feminism-SAHMs conflict is inevitable.

It's women's fault they get paid less for the same work?
Well, that's a very convenient argument for men.

Actually the pay gap is misleading. The reason why the average woman's wage is lower than the average man's wage is because of a few reasons. Firstly, women are less interested in the highest paying fields and more interested in the lowest paying fields. The highest tend to be engineering firms, while the lowest are in care. Women are also more likely to work part time or shorter hours than men, and more likely to take a career break to reproduce. Why they are busy with their spawn, they are out of work and thus missing out on chances for promotion or pay rise.

But if you compare the exact same position, where they have the exact same job security, been in the position for the same time, work the same hours etc, guess what? It's about equal. Actually young girls are getting paid more than young men for the same job.

So yeah, pay gap is by choice of the women.

No, sexism is one factor but the huge gap in number between housewives and househusbands is another.

In any advanced country, for a married man there's 40% chance that he's the sole earner - while for a married women there's only 2% chance she's the sole earner.
This has a huge impact on how employers view married men vs married women, don't kid yourself otherwise.

I have explained earlier how it happens in the real world:

An employer - who is often a man - has a monthly budget $8000 for two employees: one married man, one married woman.
The employer would assume the married woman can afford less because she has another earner ,(her husband), he'll give her a less portion (ie. 3800)- while there's high chance the married man is the sole earner.

That's one of the reasons why there's also a wage gap between married men and adult single men.

The solution? the househusband must become more common and a much more socially accepted role.

Ok Face of boo, feel free to "be the change you want to see in the world" then. When it comes to women and work (especially those of us who have children), you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

This may still happen in the real world but has no basis in equality. Equal job, equal pay, no excuses. The example you have given is due to discrimination.

I wouldn't mind to be a housedad - if - I find a wife who would accept that arrangement, which is an unicorn case to be honest. And I am just one man.

This huge difference of numbers between housewives and housemen start from the dating stage: a lot of men would date non-working women (I think men should be little pickier here); while only very few women would take a non-working man - regardles if they are working themselves or not.

The general view on a non-working male partner is still of a lesser catch.

If these general dating attitudes won't change then so the roles in marriage arrangements.

Believe me, this how employers (of medium sized companies at least) divide the salary budgets - they would take the marital status of the candidates into account, they would also assume that the single man will be convinced by a less salary (regardless of the equal work).

There are papers on this out there if you don't believe me.