The Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano, has published an article by Giulio Galeotti that has feminists up in arms. (The article is in Italian, but if you copy the text - it's not long - and paste it into Google Translate or a similar service, you can read the original in English. I recommend it.)
To summarize it briefly, Ms. Galeotti argues that the washing machine did as much as any other modern innovation - including working outside the home, the Pill, and women's liberation - to emancipate women from the drudgery of household work and their enforced domestication. She also laments the loss of the 'communal aspect' of laundry, where women would gather and exchange news and gossip as they worked. To me, it appears a confused sort of article, although that may be an impression conveyed by the translation software's shortcomings. It may even be an attempt at satire.
Be that as it may, newspapers all over the world have picked up on this article. (See, for example, the English Daily Telegraph.) It's drawn predictable hoots of outrage from feminists everywhere. Some of the commenters on the Huffington Post have been vitriolic, to such an extent that I can't reproduce their words here. A few of the milder ones:
What else would you expect from the most malevolent, longest-standing patriarchal establishment in existence?
Only a bunch of men, who SAY they aren't getting any, could come up so something so utterly ridculous and stupid.
The way the washing machine is more liberating then the pill has to do with sitting on it while it "vibrates"...
Let's see...what's more liberating, being able to wash clothes for your family of 12 OR having 1,2, or no kids at all? hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Leave it to the vatican't to use a reference to servitude to illustrate a point.
With access to birth control, it's even better still because there not that much washing to be done!
I didn't know the Pope was a Republican.
I have to admit, the Vatican did ask for it, publishing an editorial like that . . . but there is, I submit, a wider point to be considered, even if their approach might seem parochial and narrow-minded.
The question is: what, exactly, were the major contributors to women being 'liberated' from what amounted to domestic slavery, and allowed to live a fuller life as human beings, in equal status with men?
I'd argue that it was a combination of the following factors:
- The need for women to enter the workforce during World Wars I and II;
- Advances in medical science, particularly contraception, but also general health care and cures for many common diseases;
- A rising standard of living, permitting the purchase of luxuries for the first time in many families (including washing machines);
- A higher standard of education, equipping society in general (and both sexes) for more intellectual pursuits;
- Inflation, which made it harder for families to live on the salary of a single breadwinner and simultaneously purchase the new consumer goods flooding the market;
- The rise of a 'pressure group' in entertainment, the news media, etc. that publicized the 'women's liberation' issue, and actively campaigned for (i.e. marketed) the notion that women were somehow 'left out' or 'incomplete' if they weren't competing in every field with men, on an equal footing.
I'm not sure that all of the above were good things, or even morally right: but I think they were all factors.
What say you, readers? What have been the major factors boosting the 'liberation' of women during the last century? Have I left out anything of importance?
(Of course, I'm irresistibly reminded of an old codger I knew some years ago, now deceased. Tyrel was a veteran of World War II and Korea, and was generally an irascible old coot at the best of times - a lovable one, though. He used to maintain, loudly, that the real mistake hadn't been giving women the vote. It had been teaching them to read and write! Of course, when he said that, his wife would slap him upside the head and tell him a few things to his advantage - then they'd smile lovingly at each other.)
Peter
9 comments:
I think advances in both medicine and technology have helped tremendously.
Surviving child birth being a big one.
But as the electronic age came into being, even women that weren't "Rosie the Riveter" material could now enter the work force en masse.
I would like to see the rate of inflation of housing separated from everything else vs the rate of women in the work force over time....
Heck with that, let's look at the basics: indoor plumbing. For those of you who've lived without, I'm preaching to the choir. For those of you who've never lived without running water, much less _hot_ running water, you have absolutely no idea how incredibly advanced and awesome this idea is. Combined with sewage - oh, that beautiful idea that means you can't smell a town by its, ah, night soil, and vastly reduces the number of diseases that are clustered and spread around - this is really, truly, the hallmark of civilization.
Once you have indoor plumbing, this vastly reduces the hours a day spent fetching, straining, and boiling water, and keeps you so much healthier that further advancements - like the cotton gin and mechanical looms removing the need to spend a large amount of time making clothes, or the washing machine and dishwasher removing vast amounts of time and back-breaking labor while improving the health of the household - can follow.
Then there are the utterly cool things like canning, and the near-miracle of central heating (do you know how much work it is to keep a wood-fired house warm, or cook a meal over a wood-fired stove?), and the utter and abounding joy of refrigeration, freezer, and nigh-instant food preparation afforded by stoves, oven, and microwaves.
When you don't have to spend every resource, every waking moment, every penny, on planning for staying fed, housed, clothed, and hopefully getting ahead enough to remain so for the winter, then there is plenty of time to leave the house, to read, write, join the workforce, go to space, and surf the internet.
After that, the factors you mentions were free to combine and give rise to the modern woman.
Widespread literacy. Long before it became fashionable for upper and upper-middle-class women to get a college education to be "interesting" for their husbands- which I would argue lead directly to Betty Friedan's generation of bored, frustrated housewives that KNEW there was something more out there they were being denied- there was letters and print. As it did for Frederick Douglass and any other determined minority intellectual, it let them make their arguments heard on the strength of their own merits.
Your friend Tyrel had a point of sorts. Not a new one, of course- the cultured Athenians used to look especially down on Sparta for teaching women to read and write, so that they could run their husbands' side of the family while the men, dedicated warriors all, were off at war...
I found your blog through the "Weekend Wings" posts, and I have come to appreciate your wit and provocative insights on a wide range of subjects. To the point of having your blog on my dayly reading list.
As a single father, and second career law student, I just wanted to share a rhetorical question posed by a mature classmate during our Human Rights course: "We have a Human Rights Declaration. We have a Childrens Rights Declaration. We have a Womens Rights Declaration. And there are also Animal Rights. But where is the 'Declaration of Men's Rights'?"
As I know from painfull personal experience, the family courts in Paraguay (with a very strong catholic background and influence) is dominated by female judges, DA's and clerks who consider the father, husband, male, as a priori guilty of irresponsability, violence and abuse, and unfit for parenthood. Even in spite of overwhelming proof to the contrary.
Sure, there is also a very strong cultural background going back over 500 years to the "Conquistadores". But even today the modern mothers continue to perpetuate this attitude in the way they educate theire own sons and daughters in completely separate ways.
Domestic violence is rampant. With subtle psychological abuse of the wifes against the husbands, provoking these to physical violence against the wifes. Who then cry "foul" and report the men to the authorities as innocent and defenseless victims of domestic violence.
Who is the victim? And who is the victimiser?
Where are the biblical principles of marital/parental responsibilities and obligations?
Mario
Domestic violence is rampant. With subtle psychological abuse of the wifes against the husbands, provoking these to physical violence against the wifes. Who then cry "foul" and report the men to the authorities as innocent and defenseless victims of domestic violence.
While I actually agree with you that the subject of men's rights is a sadly neglected one and there are serious inequalities in family courts...
Are you seriously arguing that a physical beating is a remotely appropriate response to "subtle psychological abuse", i.e. verbal abuse? Your use of the term "defenseless", as though the two forms of abuse were equal, sure seems to indicate as much.
The sticks and stones phrase may be inaccurate in that words can hurt, but they for damn sure can't put you in the hospital or the grave and this is an EXTREMELY important distinction. Nothing can undermine your own cause more than ignoring it.
The sticks and stones phrase may be inaccurate in that words can hurt, but they for damn sure can't put you in the hospital or the grave and this is an EXTREMELY important distinction. Nothing can undermine your own cause more than ignoring it.
You have a valid point there, LabRat. I did not want to "abuse" Peter's blog argueing all the subtleties of definition. Though I am testament to the fact that words can indeed be cause for hospitalisation. Since I agreed to hospitalisation for initial medical anti-depression treatment after 5 months of psycho-therapy.
Are you seriously arguing that a physical beating is a remotely appropriate response to "subtle psychological abuse", i.e. verbal abuse? Your use of the term "defenseless", as though the two forms of abuse were equal, sure seems to indicate as much.
Thank you for seeking clarification on my use of terminology (English is my 3rd or 4th language - German and a local dialect come first, and Spanish is the official language of Paraguay).
I am definitely NOT saying that a physical beating is appropriate. But rather that it tends to be the "natural" result when males feel impotent or loss of control.
In hindsight, I should have put quotes around "innocent" and "defenseless" in order to make my intention clearer. [grammar?]
How ever you look at it, the children are the biggest victims and losers when family problems go to court.
Peter, sorry for these long comments. And thank you for offering this forum of discussion.
Mario
All right. Just wanted to clarify the point.
Like I said, I really am deeply sympathetic, if only because I saw that scenario play out with my stepmother. My father never raised a hand to her. He also committed suicide.
There were many advances that markedly decreased the need for a family member to be responsible for all household chores including (in no particular order): washing machines, electricity, indoor plumbing, refrigerators, freezers, sewing machines. The products had to be available to allow a rising standard of living.
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