Trying to Understand
Even before Trump won I did a lot of reading to try to understand why he would even get one vote, let alone millions.
There is literally an avalanche of analysis pouring out of the internet with thousands of writers doing the same thing I’m doing. Racism. White supremacy. Economic anxiety. Wealth inequality. Anti-establishment and anti-political-correctness.
I won’t try to condense this down to one reason, or a dot point list, or to try to explain away something so multi-faceted that it will take years, perhaps generations, to see what really happened. But I did find one insight necessary to highlight, because I think this one thing matters.
White women. Over half of them voted for Trump*. (*Half of the white women who voted, voted for Trump). Let that one settle as you ponder the photograph below.
It’s easy, as a middle-class, educated, professional, white, politically engaged, feminist, left-wing working mother to assume women everywhere would unfailingly support a female Presidential candidate. When I read Barbara Kingsolver’s impassioned plea for women to reject the Trump-bully, and to reject the notion that women aren’t really people, I felt a rage and a sadness that made me want to scream. But what we have learned from Trump’s victory is that one should never assume everyone thinks like they do. And one should never assume all women feel the same way about feminism as feminists do.
A small note now about fear and the rural versus city divide. I tweeted last night that no more analysis was needed about how Trump won other than to say Trump did a good job of scaring people, telling them he’d fix everything and, because they were too scared to need details or to think very hard about what he was selling, they all fell for it all hook, line and sinker. I stick by this short-hand analysis; fear was the basis of Trump’s campaign and he was very clever at exploiting many and varied reasons for fear in all voting demographics. Women included.
The rural and city divide is also important here. This analysis of the difference between rural America and city America is crucial to understanding Trump’s success. As an Australian who has never been to America, the America I thought I knew and loved, for the most part, voted for Clinton. The Hollywood, city culture, is the only version of American culture my experience can bring to mind. The ‘fly over states’, the red states, really are a different America – they’re miserable, poor, resentful, often unemployed, left-behind and incredibly easy to scare because their lives are, well, pretty crap. When Trump came along and said ‘I’ll make your country great again’, ‘it’s going to be huge’, they were desperate for him to be right, and this wave of desperation delivered city-dwelling-Trump electoral spoils even he probably didn’t believe were possible.
Now hold that thought when it comes to scared, white, rural females. What are they scared of in particular?
They’re scared of women like Hillary Clinton.
One of the hundreds of articles I read about the election in my quest to understand was this interview with Stephanie Coontz, a gender and economics expert at Evergreen State College. You can read it for yourself, but I’ll pull out the key points. Coontz says that it’s ‘women who have the fewest opportunities to compete successfully in the labor market’ who are ‘much more likely to support the policies and values that reward a traditional division of labor in the household’. It all started to make sense for me when I saw this. She went on to say, ‘Women with more social, economic, or educational capital are much more likely to support the activities of women making their own way in the world, to be proud when they see powerful women who stand up or who are getting ahead of men in any way’. Yep. And then this: ‘Women with less economic or personal autonomy are often drawn to a culture of family values that emphasizes men’s responsibility to look after women’. Are you with me now? Suddenly the abuse of Julia Gillard by Australian women made more sense. And finally, Cootz says that when women who emphasize their role in the family as nurturer, as the one who stays home to look after the children, when they see women like Hillary promising more rights for women, equal rights for women, they are scared because ‘women having all these freedoms from male control, they believe… it actually threatens women’s entitlement to male protection’.
If Hillary can be elected President, if women can get equal rights, if women are valued in the workforce at equal rates of pay to men, then, these women fear this freedom will lead to the end of their promised role in life as homemaker. They fear equality, feminism, will cause a shift in the culture where men will no longer hold the role of breadwinner, and the women will no longer be entitled to their self-identity as home-maker.
I’m not saying this attitude is the only reason the majority of white women, mostly in rural areas, voted for Trump. I’m not saying that his misogynistic, pussy-grabbing, boys-will-be-boys persona was totally ignored by women because they were more worried about what Hillary represented than what Trump did (a male culture, in rural areas, which these women are no doubt very familiar and comfortable with). I’m just saying, there is something to this. Many women reject feminism and reject female leaders and reject the notion that women should be equal to men in all facets of life, but perhaps don’t always understand, even in themselves, why this is so. In order to understand these women, we need to know these women. Somehow, Trump got it. His promises to ‘lock Hillary up’ resonated with women who wanted her to get back in her place. Now it’s time for those, like me, who oppose everything Trump is about to do to America, to start understanding this too.
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24 comments
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Annie B
Return to home pageI wish we could ‘have it all’. I wish young women had a choice (like I did) to stay at home with their babies as long as they ‘choose’ to. Financially, with the current cost of housing, this is not a choice for many young families.
But apart from young women being able to choose to be an ‘at home mum’ they do need the type of partner who can (and wants to) take care of them while they take care of the children. So, I do ‘get’ these women who voted for Trump. They feel he personifies the strong, authoritarian man whose job is to protect and support his family. He is old. He grew up when that was the role of a man.
Personally, I would prefer to be an equal in a relationship…but maybe they can’t see any way that equality is possible while retaining the support. I think it is possible so long as we have brought up our boys to be supportive and respectful of their partners, rather than the ‘boss’ of the family.
Michael Moore, the man who got this election right
The media got it wrong. The public pollsters got it wrong, so did the private ones. The Democratic Party got wrong. The Republican Party was wrong too. Five living presidents got it wrong. The betting markets got it wrong. The markets got it wrong. By many accounts even President-elect Donald Trump got it wrong.
One man got it spectacularly right, predicting not only that Clinton would lose, but where she would lose, among which voters she would lose, and why: the left wing documentary maker Michael Moore.
http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/
Catriona. Trump was a terrible father and husband. I cannot understand any woman who could possibly look on him with anything but disgust.
Interesting comments from his sons back in May….
Asked about what happens to the Trump Organization should their father lose the presidential race, Don Jr. says the company comes out ahead because of the enhanced name recognition.
Adds Eric, “I think he’s already won.”
http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/news/national-govt-politics/what-you-dont-know-about-donald-trumps-sons-eric-a/nrR5w/
This was all one big promotional exercise for Trump which has gone horribly wrong. At the age of 70 he has just just been thrust into one of the hardest jobs in the world which requires him to be on call 24/7 and to read an enormous amount of briefings, attend meetings etc. He can’t palm the work off onto his kids, more’s the pity because they appear far more capable than him, thanks largely to their mother and her parents by all accounts. One thing, I can pretty much guarantee he won’t bother standing for a second term when he realises the work load.
I have to truly disagree with this piece entirely.
I think the point has been truly missed.
Hilary Clinton and Julia Gillard, insult women.
Yes. They INSULT women.
You see strength, power and determination?
You see women for equality?
I see women masquerading as men.
I see women who lack the strength compassion and human understanding give them. I see women telling me i can’t be a woman, that i must be a man.
Equality? They dont stand for equality, they take away my choice to be a woman.
More child care facilities….better pay for working women… FORCING WOMEN TO STOP THEIR ROLE AS NURTURER and take up the roll as a man.
That is not giving me more choice, its condeming me for the choice i am making. It is belittling my need to look after my family, to raise my children in a loving caring supported passionate environment.
The pendulum has swung and now we have been pegged into another box…from you can only be at home to… you can only be valid if you contribute to society in the way i tell you too.
Equality is me being able to CHOOSE to be a mum… or to CHOOSE to go out and work.
My self and many women now have to neglect our own children and family to get into your box.
You do not value the nurturer.
You do not value the mother.
You do not value love, support and structure that this role provides.
YOU do not value the woman and her choice. Because you too remove that choice.
We are the carers of this planet,
AND we are too busy trying to compete for roles many of us dont even want to make ither people feel we are worth while.
I would never vote for Hilary Clinton.
Trump makes my skin crawl.
But sometimes the bottom must be hit for people to take a look around and care to fix the mess they made.
That is Trump.
While I agree with the general premise of your article,Victoria, being appalled at the women who mindlessly voted for Trump and their acceptance of what he reflects about society in his attitudes toward women, I cannot agree with your assessment of Clinton as a good representative of women. Margaret Thatcher was a woman and look our her leadership turned out for British society.
Wikileaks has shown, with the publication of ‘those’ emails how corrupt the Clintons are and how complicit in the continuation, and escalation of the wars in the Middle East.
We may just have dodged a major conflict with both China and Russia according to this analysis by John Pilger.
Or with Trump at the helm, maybe not.
I should imagine that the mostly lower class, uneducated white women who voted for Trump would read about his molesting of girls and women (that’s if they read about it at all) and would smugly conclude that “they asked for it”. They themselves being in similar situations would shrug and say, “What else would you expect from a man?”, this being normal for the societies in which they were raised…a society of crudeness, where sexualisation is these women’s only status in life. Can we educate these women to expect more, for them to note the style and class of someone such as Michelle Obama or to these women are such people still “uppity blacks”? To bring down rather than elevate.
What you said and what Van Jones called the “white lash”. The Alt Right and evangelicals have the US by the pussy.
Pre-election there seemed to be an agreed consensus that most women would vote for HRC because she is a woman. Even HRC herself leaned on it in speeches, talking about glass ceilings etc… While there is undoubtedly a percentage of sexist men out there who wrongly voted against HRC because of gender, it is equally wrong for any female to vote for HRC due to gender. Ditto with the Obama vote previously. Hopefully these opposing groups balanced itself out, but we’ll never know
Cornlegend
good spotting with the Michael Moore connection. The best clear explanation i have seen so far.
We have been fed a diet of FTAs here in Oz – and Trump questions them, especially where they interfere with local industry, such as cars. So we have dual attitude to China: use them for cheap labour, but fear them for their power. The Usa is deeply in debt to china.
Angry white men shouting at clouds are dominant in Oz. We had it especially with Julia Gillard. Miranda here on this site accuses Gillard of acting like a man; others in the past have attacked her for being unmarried, others for being “barren”. Yet Miranda demands that women be able to make choices – and what is stopping her? So in the USA large numbers of married men voted for Trump and women voted for the traditional role of women being supported by men. Here in Oz we have seen a great deal about misogyny and “identity politics”.
The “Hillary problem” is paralleled by the baggage carried by politicians in Oz. So Shorten is dragged before the TURC because he was involved with unions – but nothing brought against him. Similarly with Gillard, but biased comments made in the report.
Then there is the role of lethargy and lack of commitment and a reckless Brexit-like attitude to stir the pot, no matter what the consequences. We have seen that in Oz, too – with some weird results.
And one element not mentioned by Moore but noted by other commentators is the matter of racism. Trump is full of it. We can see it here in Oz as well. We even had people of ME origin in Western wanting to exclude others from the Middle East – and politicians talking about ME people clogging up the roads
There is a great deal we need to take note of in the USA.. Why is it that this country which plunders the world with globalisation (another cause of dissatisfaction) and interferes with global politics – think also Murdoch press and Fox news – is so unhappy. How is this great stalwart of democracy and capitalism so unhappy. Why do we in Oz have so many homeless and unemployed and disaffected and poor…?
What to do? Just vote for a wealthy billionaire who promises to bring the country together again? Will that work? Will it work in Oz?
Guest
“And one element not mentioned by Moore but noted by other commentators is the matter of racism. Trump is full of it.”
But it didn’t stop those likely to be persecuted from rallying behind Trump in their 10s of thousands
Social media was awash with this rubbish
“BLACKS FOR TRUMP
@BlacksForTrump
@BlacksForTrump @dembigmouthdems @realDonaldTrump – lets leave the racial divisiveness to the Dems, Trump is above that
@BlacksForTrump @realDonaldTrump he’s always been with us and as blk NYers we know that first hand- Thanks a million 45.
https://www.facebook.com/LatinosandHispanicsforDonaldTrump/
#LatinosWithTrump
Where in Florida the 29% of Latinos who voted Trump help win Florida
Then we have
Muslims For Trump @MNTrump
All #Muslims in US: Don’t you want-
1) Wars in M/East stops?
2) #ISIS destroyed?
3) Dictators Weakened?
4) US Safe?
#Trump2016 #VoteTrump
Muslims For Trump
@MNTrump
I’m Muslim & strongly feel Muslims Need #Trump2016 & Need to board #TrumpTrain Support 1) Temp Ban to find reasons for terrorism 2) Stop Wars 3) Destroy #ISIS”
go figure :-{
Miranda i think YOU miss the point. Its not about forcing women into roles they don’t want, its about ensuring there are opportunities for them, if they want to take them. As an elderly white male, i don’t support those who would disparage stay-at-home mothers. This should be a negotiated position within a family. However to suggest Gillard and Clinton want women to be men is drawing a long bow.
Dear Guest.
What stopped slaves from making the choice to be free Guest?
What stops coloured americans from getting good jobs?
What stops single mums from being great parents?
You want to know why i can’t make the choices i need to make?
Julia Gillard stopped me, and many other women doing it hard with Children.
Instead of taking from those who could afford it, the same people who lined the pockets of both of the major parties, she took from mothers and families.
She told us we would get our dignity only if we went out and got a job, advertised when our youngest turns 8, but it actually starts when they turn 6. She put single mothers on the dole. She took over 700million from single mothers alone.
With already rising unemployment rates, she put 100,000 women into job searches, women who already had jobs as mothers and the majority whom worked part time anyway. Competing for jobs that weren’t there against other people that didnt have families to take care of.
Yet Gina Rhinehart and the other Mining magnates working out of Australia get more than that in government subsidies and make BILLIONS AND BILLIONS IN profit.
So Julia watered down the super profits tax and turned it to the piss weak mining tax… and took what she needed from the poorest families in Australia!
http://thehoopla.com.au/mining-profits-facts/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/02/julia-gillard-single-parents-benefit
https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=julia+gillard+on+single+parents+going+out+into+the+workforce&cat=web&pl=opensearch&language=english
When these 2 women, Clinton and Gillard, talk about equality for women, they are talking about equality in the corporate world. They aren’t talking about actually equality for women.
As i explained in all the parts of my comment that you seemed to skip over The role of the mother and nurturer are not valued, yet they are extremely tough and important roles. Their version of equality has nothing to do with the majority of the women living day to day lives, especially family women.
I dont call Ms Gillard a man to make fun of her, I call her a man because she exhibits all the masculine qualities and denies the feminine ones. In fact she purposely puts them under the spot light and shows her distaste for them, showing the men who tell her she doesnt have the balls to be a leader, that she in fact does. No man could get away with what she did. John Howard got hauled over the coals for it and had to back down.
I am not an American, i didn’t have to vote for Trump or Hilary, but if i did i think i might have abstained.
Trump for many is a vote against the current corrupt establishment. They dont seem to see or hear too many of his words, just that he is stirring trouble within the mainstream, and the words communist, left and socialist are not aquainted with him ( the amazing Bernies biggest issues) because to Americans, these are the BIGGEST OF ALL EVILS.
“What stops coloured americans from getting good jobs?
What stops single mums from being great parents?”
Psst…the president of America is “coloured”.
And I know many single mums and dads who are great parents.
I have to agree with others that you that have missed the point Miranda – men and women should have the same opportunities to make the choices that suit their families best. You seem to think men can’t be carers and women who want to work are masculine. You seem to be the one cutting down choices and wanting to dictate roles based on gender.
Could you define for me the “feminine qualities” that you feel Julia Gillard should have shown?
cornlegend,
I am quite confused. According to Trump, Mexicans are criminals and rapists etc.They will be locked out by a great wall paid for by Mexico. LOL
Then we have the temporary ban on Muslims while the US investigates why there is terrorism. Do you think they will find that interference by the West in the Middle East, including by the US, is the problem? And will he stop at the destruction of ISIS? Will he be so isolationist that he will not be aggressive towards China or North Korea or Russia? Is he so completely separate from Republican aggression that he will not consider the nuclear button to protect US interests? Remember Reagan’s Star Wars program?
Trump is fearful of China. He blames a good part of the US’s problems on China – and the US owes so much of its debt to China.
Remember that the US President who led the West into Iraq was George W Bush, a Republican
We also see how the Republicans blocked Obama. That the Republicans did not accept the presidency of Obama is seen in the hounding of him with regard to his religion and his citizenship.
That Trump’s lack of concern for the rest of the world – for non-Americans – is seen in his plan to tear up the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
Tweets that certain groups are for Trump can be done by any trolls who seek to influence voters.
The idea that a white male billionaire, obsessed with building walls and towers, has any concern for minority groups is yet to be seen.
Miranda,
I must apologise for my ignorance about the Gillard single parent payments. You have explained it at length and with justified passion. It was a Labor policy which sounded horribly like a Hockey Coalition policy.
But I cannot see how voting for a Trump would stir things to the advantage of everybody. Voting for Abbott and Turnbull has not solved the problems in Oz, and I am sure that protest votes for Pauline Hanson will only strengthen the Coalition’s austerity program.
Think about the Coalition’s reduction in company tax but not for you. Think about Reagan’s Reaganomics trickle-down-effect in the US that did not work.
You are right. Politicians have blind spots, male or female.
I am grinning because a middle-class, educated, professional, white, politically engaged, feminist, left-wing working mother just used photos of a middle-class, educated, professional, white, politically engaged, feminist, right-wing women with cool boobs to illustrate a gender fuelled vote compass.
Because “they’re miserable, poor, resentful, often unemployed, left-behind and incredibly easy to scare because their lives are, well, pretty crap.” is exactly the kind of way the alt-right describes blue cities (Detroit, Chicage etc)
Because ‘Women with more social, economic, or educational capital are much more likely to support the activities of women making their own way in the world, to be proud when they see powerful women who stand up or who are getting ahead of men in any way’ is much how the women you are decrying now would describe their political opposites in ’08 (Palin)
“His promises to ‘lock Hillary up’ resonated with women who wanted her to get back in her place” because they saw her place as being in lock-up
His promises to ‘lock Hillary up’ resonated with women who wanted her to get back in her place.
Miranda
“Equality is me being able to CHOOSE to be a mum… or to CHOOSE to go out and work.”
That isn’t equality that is choice.Not all are in a position financially to CHOOSE to stay home and be a mum.
Am I missing something in your point?
Some mums need to combine the roles of parenting AND work
Geographically speaking, Trump won at least 80% of the Nation. The only states Hillary carried are Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.
https://mishgea.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/geographic-landslide1.png
Umm… Seems ‘John’ needs a basic geography lesson.
It sounded like a hockey policy, because it was actually a Howard policy, that he was blasted for trying to put through, but then Gillard took up his baton! Penny Wong gave a fantastic speech when Howard tried and failed to put it through. well worth taking a look at it.
I dont understand why people applaude Gillard for the amount of legislature she got through a hung parliament, like its a good thing, when if they take a good look alot of what got through was recycled Liberal policy, or watered down labor policy, to make it advantageous to the liberal party. How else do you think it got through!
Personally for me, ive no idea who i would have voted for if i was an American, as an avid voter and someone who believes in the power of voices united, it pains me to think i may not have voted at all. But as to why vote for Trump? i think there are a few reasons, obviously not everyone would feel the same.
Hilary doesnt threaten women… women don’t truly think and work like that, not the majority, that’s a very masculine view.
‘Women with more social, economic, or educational capital are much more likely to support the activities of women making their own way in the world, to be proud when they see powerful women who stand up or who are getting ahead of men in any way’.
Because they see themselves in her… they see her achieving what they want, and thats why the love and support her. Her shady dealings and the devistation and corruption is put to the side, because she is a mirror for who and what they want. and the worst parts dont touch them as much as the nurturing women. ( see below) She validates the choices (and sacrifices) they have made.
‘Women with less economic or personal autonomy are often drawn to a culture of family values that emphasizes men’s responsibility to look after women’
Now this is BULLSH@@
Cootz says that when women who emphasize their role in the family as nurturer, as the one who stays home to look after the children, when they see women like Hillary promising more rights for women, equal rights for women, they are scared because ‘women having all these freedoms from male control, they believe… it actually threatens women’s entitlement to male protection’. If Hillary can be elected President, if women can get equal rights, if women are valued in the workforce at equal rates of pay to men, then, these women fear this freedom will lead to the end of their promised role in life as homemaker. They fear equality, feminism, will cause a shift in the culture where men will no longer hold the role of breadwinner, and the women will no longer be entitled to their self-identity as home-maker.
This is what i talk about when i talk about Hilary and Gillard not standing for equality, they stand for themselves and their ilk. THe ilk of the “masculine” woman. ( I am not going to call it a working woman, because it plays to much into the current stereotype that nurturers or home mothers do not work and are lazy welfare bludgers)
When they fight for child care facilities, and equal pay, they arent fighting for equality for women, they are fighting for the need to feel equal or superior to men, and to have the means to do it, and at the same time they distain and even in Julias case destroy what really matters to many women, who do not want a corporate/masculine life. In the 40s and 50s where numbers of women wished for the freedom of men, while they were forced to stay at home and play mum and house wife and subservient woman…. they fought for the choice to be equal to men, to choose to go out and work, if thats what they wanted, but now it has swung in the opposite direction and women who stay at home and look after their kids are looked at with distain and abasement. We are caged again, but the older generation who fought so hard to work, have no idea truly what their very one eyed view has done to those WHO DONT HAVE THIS AMBITION, or whose ideals have changed.
Imagine going into a high school in 1940’s asking which girls wanted to go out and work for a living, do you think you would get anyone brave enough to put their hand up?
Now imagine walking into the local year 11 class asking so which of you ladies want to go and get married and have kids as their life goal?
Now many would argue that that is because women now have freedom and can choose what they want to do, but thats horse shy@#
If any girl put her hand up and said yes i do, she would be ridiculed, belittled and asked, but what is your actual job going to be?
Our freedom of choice has been relinquished. Or we never really had it to begin with. Sliding from one set of controlling boxes to another.
THen they (women like Hilary and Gillard) stand up high and say they are working hard for womens rights, but they dont care about all womens rights, just the ones that suit their own world, they insult and distain women who CHOOSE to continue the role of nurturer, women who take pride in their homes and children, and the new generation of well adjusted, happy human beings they are trying to churn out.
(this lack of stability in the home and support in the outter community is also causing many of the social problems we see in our societies today)
Now i said above, many city women with children, dont get touched as badly by the alternative side of Hilary Clinton. Their kids mostly grow up get jobs that are available in their cities and repeat the circle. Women in these poorer areas, they dont have such great opportunities for their children, many join the armed forces. And who is it that is arming the enemies shooting their kids?
Not only is she the friend of the banks repossesing their houses, or the corporations taking the jobs and sucking the life from them, she is also the woman taking their kids away from them and telling them their lives are not worthwhile.
I can understand completly how women throughout the USA could vote for Trump. When the opposition stand against everything they are.
Trump may be a chauvanistic pig, but he said the right things and expecting that from him is the norm, having one of their own do that, is not, and then have her show herself as the paragon of purity, and someone to look up to when corruption bubbles from every orrifice…
Clinton and Gillard invalidate and demeen many women.
One of the most important jobs in human existence, and we become nothing.
This isnt about loosing bread winners, being threatened to a “womans entitlement to male protection” that is such a masculine way of thinking or a work orientated womans thoughts ( masculine)… its about insulting the hard work that mothers do. Its about insulting and insinuating that they arent good enough because they dont pay tax dollars.
Its about the intense and important unpaid work they do keeping the next generation happy, healthy, sane and loved that goes completly invalidadted and then they have the gall to tell us to leave our children at 6 to go out and get some real dignity by washing someones dishes for the night using that money you make to pay for the childcare or babysitter you need to get to watch the kids.
Nurse1968… what do you think equality is, but the ability to make choices based on your own internal/external needs and desires, not being dictated your place by others.
And not being ridiculed or marginalised for it.
Imagine going into a high school in 1940’s asking which girls wanted to go out and work for a living, run a company… do you think you would get anyone brave enough to put their hand up?
Now you would say but that’s changed now, because of equality and feminism?
We are better off? More free?
Now imagine walking into the local year 11 class asking so which of you ladies want to go and get married and have kids as their life goal?
Same box, different view.
miranda
Who finances your ““Equality is me being able to CHOOSE to be a mum… or to CHOOSE to go out and work.”?
If you have the financial means to chose then your “equality” if within reach.
For those struggling to meet the day to day costs of living the opinion is chosen for them, male and female alike
Unless somehow you feel entitled?
If socialism is considered “the biggest of all evils” then we wouldn’t be assisting anyone whether they are parents, unemployed, sick, students, carers or anyone else.
It astonishes me that people consider socialism and feminism to be evil yet happily accept the benefits provided by both. I should add unionism to that as well.
Fascinating comments here – – – good article by Victoria.
I am feminist – to a degree. As in so many life situations, there are differences and levels within a group – be it in the work environment, a neighbourhood, beliefs ( religious or not ) – in families, and certainly in political groupings … and in the feminist movement. …
Putting it simply, in any grouping, the level of involvement could be seen to be on a scale of 1 to 10. … 1 being the quieter, passive, less passionate of a ‘group’, and 10 being the most avid, pro-active, and dominant member. I would put myself at about a 5, as far as being feminist goes.
In every household / domestic situation, there are different forces at work. Classifications if you like.
The couple with children, the couple without children, the single parent situation ( by choice, need or sad circumstance ) – the health of a domestic situation ( decency and respect, or degrees of domestic violence ).
No matter what a womans’ situation in life – she always – but always, has a choice. .. In the case of financial hardship, her choice is decided after deliberation with her partner / husband – and hopefully that comes to fruitful, non-violent conclusion and decision making. The womans’ input there, is still choice, with a voice. If she is partnered to a good and decent man – she is fortunate. If she is partnered to a brute, she still has a choice ( to leave ) … but so often does not choose that avenue, because she deludes herself into thinking she can ‘change him’. However, I have digressed a bit.
From a feminist viewpoint, or in fact, simply a ‘fairness’ viewpoint, it should be / must be, equal pay to all who do an equal job, that is most important. My partner works part time, and apparently ( from research ) for every dollar he earns, I would be paid only 83c – for doing exactly the same thing. Never mind if I could do the job better than he could !! ( and pssst … I believe I could – 😉 ) …. that structure of descrimination is appalling. .. So I am all for equal pay for equal job input. .. .Also, along the same lines, any woman who ‘chooses’ to make her way up a corporate ladder – and can do so successfully, should be applauded – without any reference to her ‘trying to be a man’. Sadly, some people ( both genders ) see a woman in that situation as a threat, as an attempt at dominance over males, as someone letting the side down. … which brings us back to equality of pay, equality of recognition, equality of ability. If a woman can do the job, then she should be 100% acknowledged, and respected in every way, accordingly.
I do not disparage however, the woman who wishes to stay at home by choice ( that’s given enough financial security is present ). It does not make her any less of a real woman, and certainly not ‘less than’ a feminist. A woman who chooses to stay at home, may well be a feminist in many other respects – but can rejoice in the fact that she does HAVE a choice – and furthermore – MAKES the choice, which is her right in an equal situation.
There seems to be a mish-mash of reasoning (?) floating around, about what a mans role is and what a womans role is – in any given situation. No blame can be laid at any door for this unfortunate turn of events. ..But it sure has put the cat amongst the pigeons, on so many occasions – across the board of human endeavour and humanity in general.
Perhaps we should all laud “Vive La Difference” … and consider ‘acceptance’ of humanity, rather than an ‘us vs. them’ mentality.