This is why I get so fucking mad at the tradwife Tiktok people, who go “Oh feminists are forcing you to go to work, I miss the good old days!”
Like no you fucking don’t, in the “good old days” since the industrial revolution anyone who wasn’t rich had to work their ass off in shit conditions, including women and children. These people never read The Jungle (that shit was horrifying in middle school, and I only read an excerpt), or saw the pictures of coal kids, or the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire back in 1911 that killed 100+ women and girls.
You get to pose for the camera with a full face of makeup and hold your soccer team of kids because your husband is rich and thinks you’re hot. Full stop.
Worst part about the Triangle Waistshirt factory fire is that the owners actually chained the exits and many of the fire exits were so poorly maintained that when the workers tried to escape using them, they collapsed and many fell to their deaths… and when a lawsuit was filed, somehow the judge believed that the whole thing was a whiny conspiracy and they ruled in favor of the owners.
The ability to have that 50’s housewife was due to a single earner economy. You could be a bagboy at a supermarket and support a family of three … possibly even own your own home.
You’re not responding to my comment, just throwing in your extremely simplistic agenda. Your suburban american 50’s dream was a blip in time and space that is meaningless to most people.
I mean that’s just not true. I thought everyone learned about how WWII offered women the opportunity to join the workforce in mass numbers for the first time because of the crucial roles that were left open by the men who were off to fight. That’s what sparked the transition toward women’s right to work at all. Before that, there was no such right. Unless you are counting cooking and cleaning at home, or tending the family farm, as “work”, but I don’t believe that’s what people mean when we are referring to “a woman’s right to work”.
Cooking, cleaning and tending the family farm are all examples of work. As are making, washing and mending clothes. Teaching, nursing, bookkeeping, sex work and running a large household (or working in one) are also jobs. Helping to run the family business, whether a farm, a bakery, a church or a blacksmith, is working. Women did not just sit around embroidering things, and those who did sold their embroidery for money. You should also realise that all the men going to the office/factory every day is a recent development. My grandmothers both held gainful employment before world war 2.
Sure, but women still did all of those activities in the 50s. That didn’t change. And none of it is the same as holding a job. There were a small array of activities available to us, and we were expected to give most of them up upon marriage or at the latest pregnancy. And you couldn’t have a bank account or keep your earnings in any meaningful way. So the 50s were no different from the 30s or 10s in that regard, EXCEPT that women were entering the paid workforce in greater numbers than ever before, which is the opposite of your original point to which I am responding.
This is fairly inaccurate, as well. Paid work was certainly lower, but prior to the Industrial Revolution merely putting clothes on your back was a fairly labor-intensive task. One estimate puts it at 10 spinners to supply one person on a loom, and this work was often done by women at home, and was generally paid work in the Middle Ages. A British census in the mid 1800s, which over-represents unpaid work in domestic services as laborers (I’ll let you decide if that counts as women being part of the economy or not), still had about 50% of women in the census as employed.
This is why I get so fucking mad at the tradwife Tiktok people, who go “Oh feminists are forcing you to go to work, I miss the good old days!”
Like no you fucking don’t, in the “good old days” since the industrial revolution anyone who wasn’t rich had to work their ass off in shit conditions, including women and children. These people never read The Jungle (that shit was horrifying in middle school, and I only read an excerpt), or saw the pictures of coal kids, or the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire back in 1911 that killed 100+ women and girls.
You get to pose for the camera with a full face of makeup and hold your soccer team of kids because your husband is rich and thinks you’re hot. Full stop.
Worst part about the Triangle Waistshirt factory fire is that the owners actually chained the exits and many of the fire exits were so poorly maintained that when the workers tried to escape using them, they collapsed and many fell to their deaths… and when a lawsuit was filed, somehow the judge believed that the whole thing was a whiny conspiracy and they ruled in favor of the owners.
Too many people don’t understand that politics decides whether or not they’d be a bonafide slave.
Without laws in place there would be slaveowners today. Jeff Bezos? Elon Musk? They’d own slaves if they could.
Musk and his family owned slaves in South Africa before the apartheid government was overthrown. They fled to Canada.
don’t use tiktok
I’m right there with you. Women have always worked and the 50’s housewife in the US is a historical blip that women fought to escape.
No, you are wrong and need to understand why.
The ability to have that 50’s housewife was due to a single earner economy. You could be a bagboy at a supermarket and support a family of three … possibly even own your own home.
This was taken away. Perspective
You’re not responding to my comment, just throwing in your extremely simplistic agenda. Your suburban american 50’s dream was a blip in time and space that is meaningless to most people.
Edited to add: The labor force participation rate for women in the US in 1955 was 34.5%. Women even worked in the 50’s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002
I mean that’s just not true. I thought everyone learned about how WWII offered women the opportunity to join the workforce in mass numbers for the first time because of the crucial roles that were left open by the men who were off to fight. That’s what sparked the transition toward women’s right to work at all. Before that, there was no such right. Unless you are counting cooking and cleaning at home, or tending the family farm, as “work”, but I don’t believe that’s what people mean when we are referring to “a woman’s right to work”.
Cooking, cleaning and tending the family farm are all examples of work. As are making, washing and mending clothes. Teaching, nursing, bookkeeping, sex work and running a large household (or working in one) are also jobs. Helping to run the family business, whether a farm, a bakery, a church or a blacksmith, is working. Women did not just sit around embroidering things, and those who did sold their embroidery for money. You should also realise that all the men going to the office/factory every day is a recent development. My grandmothers both held gainful employment before world war 2.
Sure, but women still did all of those activities in the 50s. That didn’t change. And none of it is the same as holding a job. There were a small array of activities available to us, and we were expected to give most of them up upon marriage or at the latest pregnancy. And you couldn’t have a bank account or keep your earnings in any meaningful way. So the 50s were no different from the 30s or 10s in that regard, EXCEPT that women were entering the paid workforce in greater numbers than ever before, which is the opposite of your original point to which I am responding.
That’s the narrative, but it’s centered around middle class white women.
Source
This is fairly inaccurate, as well. Paid work was certainly lower, but prior to the Industrial Revolution merely putting clothes on your back was a fairly labor-intensive task. One estimate puts it at 10 spinners to supply one person on a loom, and this work was often done by women at home, and was generally paid work in the Middle Ages. A British census in the mid 1800s, which over-represents unpaid work in domestic services as laborers (I’ll let you decide if that counts as women being part of the economy or not), still had about 50% of women in the census as employed.