Why do so many modern women whole heartedly embrace roles we struggled to escape in the 60s and 70s?
by Barbara Maclean
Planning Beyond Capitalism | March 30, 2019
Orientation:
For a number of years now I’ve been confounded by watching many of the straight upper-middle class women in the United States appearing to slide backwards in time into much more traditional roles. Why do so many women still do the heavy lifting of childcare, grocery shopping, housekeeping and cooking? Why do so many of them put the needs of their male partners and bosses first and their own needs last? Why have so many of them whole-heartedly embraced sports when I doubt that most of them were not sports fanatics before they were in relationships with men who are? These were the roles we struggled to break out of in the 60’s and 70’s. Yet in the seven cases I will present I will describe six women who consider themselves feminists. How can we explain this?
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The Most Revolutionary Act 
This is an interesting subject, Stuart. I am looking forward to reading the original post. 🙂
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The sad tale of our slide backwards as successful women.
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Yes, you’re right, Rosaliene. It is very sad.
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I read now the more than 4,000 words of this article and
I looked the following up about the author:
“Barbara MacLean has worked as an academic and career counselor at California State University, East Bay (CSUEB), Merritt and West Valley Colleges and as a career counselor and manager of the Oakland One Stop Career Center, a public career and jobs center in partnership with EDD. She is a co-founder and editor of Planning Beyond Capitalism.”
https://planningbeyondcapitalism.org/about-us/
In “Planning Beyond Capitalism” there are some more interesting articles to be found. I think that any successful women in the Western societies somehow have to deal with the demands of capitalism and to what extent they can perhaps distance themselves from these demands. My question is: Can feminism and capitalism go hand in hand?
In this essay “Sitting Pretty on a Sinking Ship: Neoliberal Feminism” Barbara MacLean seems to point out by citing what she kmows about the life of several middle class women is like. She knows these women, and she says that they still do mainly what their family wants them to do rather than doing what they would prefer to do.
In my experience it does not always have to be like this. 🙂
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Very astute summary of the article and the author’s background, Aunty. Thank you. You’re right. I do encounter women who live fully autonomous and independent lives. However I have found them to be quite rare.
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