What do you think about housewives and feminism?

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In any country with modern employment legislation, the situation you have given above (married man vs married woman receive different salaries) is discrimination.
In the UK a single person has a higher tax allowance than a married/partnered person which will offset some, or all, of the salary difference.

I'm not saying that I don't believe you, or that it does not happen, but that this is an unacceptable practice.

Don't married people benefit from joint assessement and lower insurance risk?

I think I have got that the wrong way round.

You don't seem to want to discuss the inequality of salary between men and women though?

I highlighted the parts that show it is the employer's sexism that is to blame.



The solution is that employers should stop paying women less because of sexist assumptions.

That would be too off-topic.

And to be honest, as a single man, I care much more about discrimination toward single men - to each his cause, hm!

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 19 Sep 2015, 5:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Employers pay single men less because of Singlism against men - single men are perceived to be in lesser financial need.

Women get discriminated the other way: working married women are paid less than working single women - because - working married women are perceived to have a working partner (which is true in most of the cases....it's there why the *popular* Housewife role (around 40-50% in most countries) and the almost total absence of housedad role (1% in most countries) are harming feminism) - hence perceived in lesser financial need.

The most victimized in all that are the single mothers.

Let's take the US case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pa ... ge_premium

Ohhh---- many will get furious at this post but I will spit it out anyway.

On individual level - it's unfair to pay less for working married women (as I showed earlier, they get penalized) than the working fathers (who get a salary premium).

But what would be fair for the quality of life for children in the society as a whole?

A child of a housewife mother, is way more likely to be benefiting only from one income earner: the father. So the premium the dad takes, has a huge impact on the child.

While a child of a working married mother, is 98% likely to be benefiting from two incomes earners: the dad and the mom. So the salary penalty the mom takes, won't be much of an impact, as long the dad is making money (and who would probably get a salary premium, so it would offset the disadvantage the mom takes).

So if we create an enforcement law that enforces employers to divide their salary budget 100% equally to fathers and mothers, don't you think that the children of the middle-class Housewives would be the most harmed by it? Those only had one income source anyway, not two.

As I said, for the society to change, and to reach total equality - either the Housewife role has to disappear completely or the Housedad should become as popular as the Housewife role.

How about if employers pay according to what the work is worth, rather than trying to guess who needs money more?
Gender, marital status, and whether or not someone has children shouldn't be factors.

Those guesses and perceptions, fair or not, are consequences of social realities, Yippy.

Only a total reform of gender roles (ie. its elimination) would change this, and this would take generations.

Those guesses and perceptions should not be dictating wages. If they are, then the fault lies with the people setting the wages.

I am not professionally qualified and if i go out to work i will be earning less and end up paying more to servants, daycare and tiffin companies

So i would hardly be saving anything.

Many of my working friends have told me to take up a job. But after being badly bullied in my last job and abused and forced to resign

I have been at home from around a year and more now.

My PTSD doesnt allow me to function normally in workplace either way.

Household work is lot of energy consuming the washing, cleaning, dusting, cooking and running around to market to buy vegetables, fish, stationery, grocery.

The work gets monotonous and physically exhausting i get bored of it but no choice.....

Yet for some a major reason to become a housewife is that they can't afford to pay for the daycare they would have to pay for if they worked. In other words they would be working just to put their kids in daycare cause that's where the money would all go.

Thats classism not feminism though. They are jealous of women who can afford to do what they can't. I can't do that s**t but I'm not jealous of it nor do I begrudge people of it who can do it. I have no problem with people getting to enjoy the things I cannot. Maybe that makes me weird or something, but I worry about living my own life and making myself and my family happy and don't sit around wishing I had everything I dont and never will have. It does nobody any good and ruins the time I do have.

I'm a housewife too. I was totally bowled over by having a baby and dealing with health problems. Now I've been out of the job market too long and I have trouble finding a job.

I get it that for women to have influence in the world, women need to work. What I have a problem with is the one-size-fits-all approach to any lifestyle choice. One of the most peculiar things in the world is mommy blogs, where women battle it out in the comments fields. It doesn't matter whether they are feminists or traditionalists, as long as they are some kind of -ist they want everybody to live the same life.

I find there are single working mothers who really hate me for living like this - but I really don't think I am responsible for their relationships not working out or their jobs being demanding.

One thing I find really strange is overworked people who hate unemployed people. Next time someone bothers me about that I will offer to do half their job for half their pay

Feminism is often utilized to market the wishes of industry. it seems like you can call anything female empowerment these days and get women to dispense of their instincts for self preservation, up to and including prostitution and wage slavery. I've heard a lot of feminists say that the very concept of the housewife is anti-feminist. That may be, by somebodies machiavelian definition of feminism, but so what? I don't think in those terms. I think if you can sustain it, and all parties are happy with the situation, then it's nobody else's business.

Yes.....but isn't that an extreme version of what has been traditionally done to men? Sometimes it boggles the mind what a lot of men will put up with from their bosses as long as they are tricked into believing that they are doing an important job and that they are fulfilling the masculine ideal.