rebuttal

Here’s a reworking of some ideas I was trying to express in a response to brandistrand’s post on motherhood and gender roles.

While ‘defining feminism’ wasn’t the point the post at all, the post intrigued me and made me think about two misconceptions of feminism (or at least feminism as I know it) that really bug me.

The first is that “feminists think there are no differences between men and women.”  And the second is that “all feminists think stay-at-home mothers are unfulfilled and should be working.”

There are feminists out there who believe men and women should be equal in every way, but I think it’s a misconception that all feminists or many feminists do think this.

For me, feminism is not about proving that men and women are exactly the same, but much more about equality of outcomes for men and women.  So, for example, in Australia, women earn on average 17 per cent less than men.  82 per cent of sexual assault victims are female.  There’s obviously inequality where women consistently earn less than men, where being female is the highest risk factor for being sexually assaulted.  And for me, this is the inequality that feminism is trying to address.

I also believe feminism is about making sure that women are free to make their own choices without being discriminated against in any way.  So if that’s a woman who wants to work full-time, feminism is about making sure that she earns as much as her male colleague who’s doing the same job.  If she wants to work part-time, feminism is about making sure that she can ask for part-time work and that childcare is readily available and not too expensive.  And if she wants to stay at home to care for children or the elderly, feminism is about supporting her choice of a caring role and making sure that she’s not financially worse off.

Sadly, I think there are some people out there who have valued a ‘working’ choice for women over a ‘caring’ choice, and perhaps this is the origin of the perception that feminists despise stay-at-home mothers.

Certainly for myself, and I’m sure many other feminists out there, that’s not true at all.  Women and men should be free to choose working, caring, or – the best – a bit of both!