Women, it seems, have lost the plot. Just when we had the male species on the verge of submission, ready to cave in to generations of feminist agitation, we decide to take our feet off their throats and nip out for a pedicure.
The feminist movement is waning because we are too busy waxing our legs, our hardwood floors, our top lips and our silly pink Smart cars. Our pursuit of professional fulfilment has been abandoned in favour of a bubble-headed concept of femininity.
At least, that is what a growing number of feminist commentators would have us believe. Heading the campaign to get us back on message are two Irish women: former president Mary Robinson and Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist and daughter of west of Ireland emigrants.
In a polemic entitled Are Men Necessary?, Dowd complains that modern females are squandering the achievements of the women’s movement by carrying on like flibbertigibbets, obsessing about Botox and designer shoes and texting their boyfriends.
Last week Robinson took up the theme, arguing that well-educated women who stay home to look after their children are “copping out”. The most alarming aspect of this trend, according to Ireland’s high priestess of feminism, is not that women are being forced to become home-makers, but that they are choosing to do so.
“I am very concerned in US society at the numbers of bright women graduating with masters degrees who actually say, ‘When I get married and have children I am going to cut out of the workplace’,” she said. It was “quite worrying”, Robinson continued, that they were leaving the workplace rather than “seeking to have society adjust to let them continue to fulfil their potential”.
In lamenting this apparent reversal of feminist fortune, both Robinson and Dowd appear to be ignoring the possibility of choice, something I thought the movement set out to achieve in the first place.
Just over 30 years ago, this country operated a labour restriction known as the marriage bar. Once married, women were forced to leave their public service jobs, whether they wished to or not. While some certainly would have felt resentful, there was no doubt that many others were happy to go.
What was objectionable about the marriage bar was not the inherent concept of women giving up work, but the fact that they did not have any choice in the matter. Thanks to the efforts of generations of articulate feminists, including Robinson, we now have those choices. But they are of little value if exercising those choices in a particular way is seen as treachery.
Feminism was about securing for females the potential to be chief executives, prime ministers and merchant bankers while functioning as wives and mothers as well. But somewhere along the way, these options seem to have turned into obligations. Now, if you pursue the logic espoused by Dowd and Robinson, we have traded one form of tyranny and enslavement for another.
Be clear about what they are saying: giving up your executive position and Harvard education to change nappies does not mean you are exercising a hard-won choice — you are letting the side down.
It is almost possible to forgive Robinson for being a little alarmist. She has had plenty of opportunity, as a former United Nations high commissioner and in her current role as head of the Ethical Globalisation Initiative, to witness at first hand the extreme results of gender bias and oppression.
Neither should we be complacent about the permanence of the advances won by feminism. We still earn less than men and are not as well represented in the top political and corporate echelons.
Robinson is correct when she complains that part of the reason for this absence is the choices that women are making around the issues of their families and relationships.
There is certainly more that can be done to facilitate those women who want, or need, to work and take care of children as well. There is also an onus on women in the workplace to do all they can to modify existing structures so as to facilitate those coming after them. But that is quite a leap from arguing, as Robinson does, that educated women have an obligation to disregard their own wishes in order to stay in the workplace and force these changes.
It is bordering on fantasy to suggest that with the right legislation and the right liberal culture, trade-offs will never have to be made. Trade-offs will always have to be made. It is impossible to have a full-time, high-powered career and still be on hand whenever your children need you. If women are settling for less demanding jobs, it is because they are making choices that allow them the income and the fulfilment they need from work, as well as a reasonable amount of time with their families.
Getting to the top involves a huge amount of energy and time. To make that commitment, to work late nights and weekends and travel abroad at short notice, you need either a battery of nannies or a very supportive partner.
Most people want the best for their kids, and most often it will be the mother who supplies it. Rail all you want at the economic inequalities and social expectations that make it more likely women will take that step, but there is still a large element of choice involved. Even if both partners were earning equally, chances are the mother would opt to stay home.
One of the more curious aspects of Robinson’s remarks is the implicit belief that it is only in the workplace that a woman truly fulfils her potential. The notion that women are not fully equal until they are competing with men on a masculine level is not just outdated feminist claptrap, it’s downright unhealthy.
Hand in hand with the right to challenge a man for the job of president or taoiseach or firefighter or attorney-general goes the equal and opposite right to say you don’t want to be head of Microsoft after all (but thank you for asking). And having the right to wear dungarees, comfortable shoes and a faint moustache — another outdated feminist cliché — carries the equal and opposite right to wear outrageous heels, slinky pencil skirts and hydraulic bosoms without being dismissed as featherbrains.
Robinson and Dowd claim we have lost the plot but I’m not sure we were ever in on it in the first place.
