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Comment by trealira | Hacker News Reader

Feminism arose in the US during the 1950s in the first place because a significant amount of women were not satisfied with being stay-at-home mothers and wives. Even if the world were suddenly taken back to the 1950s, the same thing would happen again eventually.

Also, if half the working population stayed home, the economy would be half as productive. Wages won't automatically increase; business will just go to some country or region where comparable labor is more abundant, and the country's economy becomes less competitive.

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> Feminism arose in the US during the 1950s in the first place because a significant amount of women were not satisfied with being stay-at-home mothers and wives. Even if the world were suddenly taken back to the 1950s, the same thing would happen again eventually.

I don't think anyone is advocating for returning to the 1950s status quo. We should, however, do away with the delusion that couples can have both two careers and raise children. Sheryl Sandberg sent this message to women quite a while ago at this point, she just tilted it toward "give up on the family and focus on the career".

We can create incentives that allow it to make sense for a family to have a single income, and a mother to raise her own children again, without telling women they're required to do that. Right now there's not much of a choice at all. Couples are forced to have two incomes because they can't make economic ends meet otherwise. Giving women real choice is a whole lot better than what we currently have and better than the 1950s. Women who wants careers can have them, and women who wants to be full-time mothers should be able to do that without it meaning being destitute.

I agree that being able to have children on a single income without 1950s gender roles would be the most ideal outcome.

Like I said, though, I kind of wonder how a country could get there. If it became more common, the country would become less "productive" in the short term, because we don't count raising children towards the GDP, even though we should. So, in the short term, if voters and politicians keep chasing short term GDP growth, they'll never try to make the ideal outcome a reality. That would only start doing so when population goes down and immigration can't supplement population growth anymore, but by then it will be too late.

> If it became more common, the country would become less "productive" in the short term

technology and education already solved this. We're not in the 50's anymore with a Ford-esque assembly worker chain dedicated to pushing one pencil each. One modern 2020's man can do the work of 10 minimum wage men back then. So why does he have less earning power than his grandfathers?

we're plenty productive, and the govt. shouldn't treat their people like a tech company does chasing "infinite growth". pay people a living wage, give them choices in lifestyle (part time, full time, contract, etc.), invest more in training and growth so each worker can do more, because to be frank we don't need a single cashier dedicated full time to checking items out anymore (as one example). If that training is valuable enough to poach, bring back proper bonuses and other retention incentives (but let's be real, most of that training these days is in college).

And come down the other way too. Stop letting housing rent for people who are actually living in a place get out of control. Same with food (and it'd be a nice bonus to subsidize more sustainable, healthy foods while we're at it).

You’re making it sound like feminism is the cause for our current dire situation and I’m not completely sure that’s true.

Isn't feminism and the women's liberation movement what caused women to stop becoming stay-at-home mothers and enter the workforce instead?

I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would. Otherwise we land at “feminism ruined America”.

I don't think feminism ruined America.

> I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would.

I thought it was common to teach that women's employment rose with second-wave feminism in the 1960s.

My background knowledge: after WW2 ended, women were fired and replaced with men. The average age of marriage dropped, and the portion of women attending college descreased. Housewives were increasingly dissatisfied, which drew them to the second-wave feminist movement. This is why the book The Feminine Mystique sold well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique

>I thought it was common to teach that women's employment rose with second-wave feminism in the 1960s.

that would time well with being one generation removed from the one that lost 400k to war. the 60's would be when boomers would start entering the work force.

I'm sure some of the silent generation women also entered, but they wouldn't lead the bulk of the workforce shifting by the late 60's/70's.

> I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would.

That doesn't track the reality of the timeline of women in the workforce. Women temporarily worked during WW2, and after the war things returned to the previous status quo. Women weren't common in the workforce until the 1960s. It wasn't until 1967 that women's labor force participation broke 40%[1] but then it pretty quickly hit 50% by 1978.

"Women's liberation" is what brought women into the labor force. That doesn't mean it "ruined America", it just means the approach had flaws that need to be iterated on.

1: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002

Cottage industries from at least the time of Queen Elizabeth did have women working though. It was just that there were no factories until the industrial revolution, so that industrial activity remained in the home "the cottage", for both husbands and wives.

Feminism and women's liberation resulted in the waterwheel and steam driven textile factories being majority staffed with women during the industrial revolution?

Invention of dish washer, washing machine, supermarkets (A&P) where you can do all your shopping in one place, they freed up the women labor force. Then WW2, men went to war, women started filling in some of the roles.

I don't think any progress in women can be attributed to feminism. They still don't have any ownership of their own bodies (abortion, sex work), their bodies are controlled by 80+ year old white males running the govt.

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