Five years ago the people of Ireland voted, through a referendum, to allow some legal abortions. The procedure is still not as easily available as its proponents would like, but there is more to women’s rights than abortion rights.
Take the issue of liberating women from the obligation to make homes. The advent of second wave feminism saw a general revulsion about the role of housewife. Women read Betty Friedan and threw off the shackles that bound them to their stoves and their laundries.
The result, dare we mention it, was a slew of broken homes. And, fewer people were getting married. The new customs threated the nuclear family, as it had never been before. Apparently, American people and people in most of the Western world had overcome their misogyny and no longer saw women as potential or actual housewives.
Women were free to pursue their careers and household chores would be divided equally between spouses. A new era had dawned. Hallelujah!
Or so we all believed, until we read a column in the Financial Times, by Pilita Clark. She was reporting on a referendum that took place in Ireland, regarding female equality. Referendum proponents wanted to scrap Ireland’s constitutional affirmation of women’s place in the home. No more would housewifery be written into the nation’s constitution. I imagine that you did not know that it had been so inscribed.
Now, you would have thought that the enlightened inhabitants of the Emerald Isle would have rejected misogyny and embraced the new language. In fact, however, they did not. They voted to keep the constitution as it was. Clark calls it a blow against female equality.
This month, the people of Ireland did something shocking. They voted overwhelmingly not to boost female equality. On March 8, International Women’s Day, a resounding 73.9 per cent voted against changing a part of their 87-year-old constitution that in effect says a woman’s place is in the home.
The offending section declares: “The State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.
“The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home”.
I cannot tell you what the polls were predicting. I cannot tell you about the public debate in the media or on social media.
In any case, Clard adds that the Irish public also rejected
a more woke redefinition of marriage:
Voters were asked to scrap this archaic guff and approve a new clause saying the state would aim to support caregiving “by members of a family to one another”. But voters did not.
A slew of explanations have been offered for the biggest No vote in Irish referendum history. There were fears the change would cement the idea that caring is an unpaid family responsibility with no guarantee of state support. The amendment was tricky to explain. The Yes campaign was uneven.
And 67.7 per cent of voters also rejected a separate amendment that would have recognised families were based on “durable relationships”, not just marriage.
In any event, the Irish people voted for traditional marriage. It does not seem like a freakish accident. It happens at a moment when young American women are rediscovering the role of wife, which they call being tradwives.
This is more than passing strange.
Now, Clark considers that the issue is equal rights. One might also suggest that the issue is the traditional household division of labor. Recall that Emile Durkheim argued in his book, The Division of Labor in Society more than a century ago, that marriages needed a division of labor in order to function.
Are we living a reaction against feminism? The movement against it seems to have taken root around the world. It’s not just about Ireland.
When it comes to giving women equal rights with men, a sobering 53 per cent now think things have gone far enough in their country, up from 42 per cent in 2019. The swing is evident from Thailand and Peru to Sweden and the UK. Nearly half the British population agree it is job done on women’s equality — up from less than a third who thought that five years ago. Worse, 47 per cent of Brits think we’ve done so much to promote women’s equality that we are discriminating against men. A similar share thinks that way in Ireland (45 per cent) and globally (46 per cent).
As it happened, the younger generation, the one that was raised in a culture that most closely embodied the division of labor, is most likely to favor a return to more traditional roles. If feminism wrecked your parents’ marriage, you are less likely to feel like you want to overthrow the patriarchy.
Clark is surprised. As are we:
It turns out someone in Generation Z, who has yet to turn 30, is much more likely to hold these views than a boomer twice their age.
Those who have lived under the new regime are most opposed to it. What are we to make of all this?
Consider the following line of reasoning. The breakdown of the division of household labor was first promoted and proposed by one Friedrich Engels. He wanted women to become part of the vanguard of the Revolution. To do so they would need to throw away their aprons and cease making dinner for their children.
Even today many feminists insist that they are promoting the Revolution, whereby they will overthrow the patriarchy and demolish capitalism.
One hates to be the bearer of bad tidings, but during the twentieth century we saw several radical and grandiose efforts to produce a Workers’ Paradise, following strict Marxist principles. And we ought to know by now that these efforts failed miserably. More than a hundred million people died for this bad idea.
Does the vote in Ireland tell us that people are discovering that these grandiose schemes and efforts to reorganize everyday life have produced nothing but calamity.
It is well past time that people give up their adolescent dreams about the Heavenly City, and get down to work. Beginning with a sane division of household labor.
Think of the differences since the 1960s Feminine Mystique:
- Women can work at any job they qualify for. No more institutional laws/rules keeping them out.
- Women can keep their own credit, buy a car or a house without a husband (whether because she doesn't have a husband, or because she chooses to keep her money separate). I have bought cars and a house on my own, despite being married for many years. It was easier, as he was in another state (waiting for the paperwork to retire to make its way through the system).
- Women control MOST of the family's financial decisions. That's for two reasons - many women bring in a significant part of the family's income. And, less wonderfully, no one wants to have to be the person doing the shopping, bill paying, and other tedious activities.
- Women can choose to have a child - or not. And, that doesn't depend on their marital status.
- Women can choose to marry - or not.
- Women can still choose to become a housewife. Most men who choose Stay at Home spouse are criticized. No such detriment for the women.
Work for women at home has lessened to the point of almost disappearing.
No longer is washing the family's clothing a full-day job of drudgery. With automatic washers and dryers readily available, and most clothing being nearly wrinkle-free, it's a breeze to manage - and, by 5-8, most kids can handle their own laundry.
Cleaning a house, with not only vacuum cleaners and Roomba's, not to mention lightweight floor moppers that are disposable, is a quick job.
Most food that comes into the house is pre-cut, packaged for quick cooking, and easy to clean up after (dishwashers, a relative rarity when I was young, are common in homes). Think of it - garbage disposals throwaway paper towels, plastic wraps/containers/ziplock bags - out with the waste, quick put away for the leftovers - which, when reheated in the microwave, will not dirty another dish.
Cheap styro plates! Uber Eats! Fast food for pickup or delivery!
Online shopping! Groceries selected by an unseen minion, and dropped off at your waiting car!
Disposable diapers! Wipes for the messy children (OK, and some messy adults)!
A quick trip to an urgent care center for a sick family member! No waiting, and for only a small amount over the old family doctor's visit!
Appliances and cars that tell you when they're in need of service, and often identifying the problem!
To be a trad wife and mother is never completely easy, but it's a WHOLE lot better than when my mother was young (for that matter, paper diapers were just starting to be widely available, and they leaked like a son-of-a-gun).
Couple that with online assistance to make the job of educating yourself and the kids a snap, machinery that cuts lawn care to a fraction of what it was, and it truly is a tremendous time to be a woman.