Ever Changing Gender Roles

Ok, so Rosie Boycott, who started a feminist magazine in the UK in the 1970’s, wrote an article in the Daily Mail about how terribly treated men are now that feminism has taken hold and how much nicer things were before women got all uppity and went and got jobs. Seriously.

I think that her point is that we need to have a larger societal shift to go with the progress that women have made, but instead of making that clear she seems to hearken back to yesteryear when men knew who they were because they were the wage earners.

What she blatantly ignores is that women have always worked outside the home. Women have worked in factories and at newspapers and as teachers for many years now. What has changed is not just an expectation that the man, the father might want to have an equal responsibility in taking care of the home and the children, but also a desire by the men to have an equal responsibility.

She refers to a recent survey that says that men are unhappy because they feel they have to live by women’s rules, but she never references the survey, so we don’t know if it is a survey done on 4 men outside a pub who were drunk or what the other findings were.

I agree that we need to have a societal shift that accommodates the way families are now structured, but I have no illusions that men or women were happier when the men were just in charge of going to work and the women were home. There is definitely more negotiation now, but I think it is all for the good.

I am also more optimistic about the future than Ms. Boycott. I think that this may be a rough patch and require more negotiation between men and women in marriages, but I also know that our children are growing up with women in a wide variety of roles and while men may not have an equal share of household responsibility, they have more than before. Our children will be better able to negotiate these roles, because for them they won’t be new.

I do think it is important to pay attention to how societal changes affect those of us living in the society. However, I think that the answer has more to do with all of us advocating for changes like national child care, or health care that will help everyone adjust rather than just giving up on the progress because it has become too difficult for some, or not. I still can’t find the study.