The
Captain recently looked at the feminists who are "
East coast, liberal, feminist woman who lives in New York and pines about socio-romantic topics, as well as politics."
He was interested in how successful those women have been in achieving their goals.
His opening disclaimer is very appropriate for this post.
This post is intended to help all women, but primarily women under
the age of 30. I cannot emphasize enough how sincere and honest I am
about this statement - this post is intended to help you. It may
not seem it at first, but if you can permit yourself an open mind and
hear me through you will see that not only is that my intention, but the
post itself will actually prove helpful, especially to younger women.
I want to understand if women favoring work over being housewives is a good idea. I am not trying to make some point. I want fill out my thoughts on the subject to see where the holes in my thinking are, and where we end up.
Is having lots of women work outside the home a good idea?
At first it seemed to me that having more women in the workforce is good because it means more workers, and therefore means more competition among employees, and therefore lower wages, and lower prices on goods and services. More workers should also mean that we have more goods and services produced.
More, and less expensive, goods and services is certainly a good thing. But that includes more potential workers, which means that their employers need to pay less. An employer that can easily replace one employee with another need not overpay like an employer who needs to do all that he can to attract good employees.
There is an easy way to determine if our economy has too many potential workers, not enough potential workers, or just the right amount.
If employers give large "signing bonuses," pay for relocation, and offer large salaries to new employees, then we don't have enough potential workers.
On the other hand, if many people who want to work cannot find an employer, then we have too many potential workers.
During WWII many men were not productive workers becasue they were off fighting a war. At that time more workers were needed.
What is the situation now?
A
7.8% unemployment rate would suggest that their are more potential workers than there are jobs. This means that employers can hire workers cheaply, and goods and services are cheaper than they would be if there were not enough workers.
Because 7.8% is a high rate of unemployment, we can conclude, from a macroeconomic look at employment numbers, that our employment situation would be improved if more potential workers did not need to have jobs.
Next, let's look at the effects of women workers on the roles of working in married couples.
Years ago a man worked and his wife stayed home and took care of the house and kids.
The work responsibilities for the man would be something like 100% of work at a job, let's call that 100 work units. He would also need to do some stuff around the house, like mowing, shoveling snow, evicting mice, etc, let's say that that's 15% of the house work. So that man had 115 works units to take care of. His wife would then, generally, take care of the other 85% of the house work, 85 work units.
Now many couples have two people work at jobs outside of the house.
The work responsibilities for the man are still 100% of job work. Unless a part-time job would be acceptable. He will also need to do more of the house work, to do a more equal amount of housework. We also hear lots of complaints that men don't do enough around the house. Let's say that modern men are now expected to do more like 35% of the laundry, cooking and cleaning, etc. So a modern man is expected to do significantly more work than our fathers and grandfathers had to do. Our wives also work outside the home now. The last pay discrepancy I heard was that women make 77% of what men do. More women work part-time, work around school schedules and some stay at home. Let's say that the average woman does 77 work units outside the home and the remaining 65 inside the home.
With out current dual income lifestyles men need to work 135 work units and women now do 143.
- from 115 to 135 for the man
- from 85 to 143 for the woman
I realize that these are nearly useless, made up numbers, but any way you look at it, a woman working means that both she and her husband need to do more work then they would have to if she did not work outside the home.
We could look at the cost of day care, too. What's the point of making, say, $15 an hour and then paying the daycare $8 for those same hours? The extra work that you do will gain you a fraction of what you think and for which you pay by having your kids grow up with minimum wage employees raising your kids as much as you do.
***
Before I looked into the subject, I would have said more women working means more goods and services provided at lower costs. While that is still true, we loose some as a society when women leave the home.
Judgy Bitch isn't thrilled with the idea of women working either
here and
here.
Free Northerner says that we have the society that feminists demanded.
In exchange for not being dependent on a man you, women, work more, can't find desirable men to marry, are more likely to be single mothers, have given up chivalry, etc. I don't see where a women, if given the choice, would take our current society over one where they did not think that they needed to work.
Being a housewife was probably not as bad as the feminists claimed. For example, not doing the dishes or laundry one day and eating a frozen pizza for dinner is not the worst thing, not doing your job outside the home is how you get fired.
Judgy Bitch again:
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2010/07/27/where-women-work/
So, let’s see. Women found being a housewife so terribly dull and
dreary and oppressive that they flocked to the labor market to teach
children their alphabet, tend to the sick, fold clothes, care for the
elderly, cook food, fetch food, clean house and take care of small
children. And that’s just all the ladies who couldn’t find a cushy job
organizing a man’s professional life.
Organizing, tending, fetching, wiping noses and asses, cooking and cleaning.
Wow. Those are some pretty big ambitions. Kinda makes you wonder,
doesn’t it? If it’s not the actual JOB that women dislike, since they
clearly don’t mind doing those things for OTHER people, what is it that
women didn’t like?
Hey feminists, you got what you said that you wanted; when will you stop complaining and making more demands on men?
