It's always amusing to watch the feminists going hammer and tongs and Jessica Rudd's piece in Australian Vogue is a typical example. Since Naomi Wolf wrote the Beauty Myth the old guard have been looking at young women and found them wanting. While the younger feminists wail back, "You don't understand us."
Of course the old feminists understand only too well. They understand that they have failed. Western women are exactly where they would be if there had been no feminist movement.
Ms Rudd is thankful that she doesn't have to put up with
the grubby office come-ons daily on Mad Men
but are the grubby office come-ons worse than the abuse doled out by Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It. Progress. Both Mad Men and The Thick of It are fiction, in the real world the come-ons still continue, though maybe less grubbily to avoid being sued.
In the real world women would have made the inroads that they have made without feminism. Labour saving inventions have meant that "men's" work no longer needs the strength of men. Most jobs are white collar and can be done equally well by women. Women were already being educated, hence all those women already in university starting up the women's movement. Women were entering the workforce because they needed to. Women have always worked outside the home. Only women of a certain class have had the luxury of not needing paid employment. That is still true today. All feminism did was make these women feel guilty for taking this option.
The other innovation that freed women was the pill. The pill was not a feminist invention. It did however put women in charge of their reproductive capabilities. They could choose, to a greater degree when and if they would have children. Those old feminists must be shaking their heads in horror at the number of teenagers choosing to be unmarried mums. Progress.
These things pushed women into the workplace and sheer numbers would have pushed them up the ladder anyway. There was no need for feminism and the fact that young successful women who have had all the so called feminist advantages still choose to dress sexily rather that comfortably, to get married and look after their children rather than climb the corporate ladder shows that the paradigm that feminism was trying to dismantle still exists and therefore those old feminists failed. No wonder they're disappointed.
By way of disclosure, I am disqualified from being a feminist on the grounds of my conservatism. This makes me a dispassionate observer.
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