A friend once wrote that the only solution for women is to climb up the corporate ladder.
No, that is wrong.
Different women will want different things. For some the solution is to have a career; for others the solution is to raise a family. Most women will probably want both.
One problem is the hostility between the career-minded women and the family-minded women. The first see the second as “breeders” and the second see the first as sinners. Of course there is a need both for raising families and for work.
So these women should be doing a better job of getting along with one another. Neither speaks for all women; they speak for some women. There is very little in common between Catherine McKinnon and Phyllis Schaffly. Both of these are women who claim that they are speaking for women. Yet they advocate for completely different things.
Is climbing up the corporate ladder the solution for women? Clearly it would be a solution for some. However so would raising a family. However I would like to warn the women who take the career path that they will be dealing with all sorts of bad people, and that in many cases their lives would be worse than even if they were to find themselves in an abusive relationship.
Can love go bad? Of course it can. So can anything, including the corporate world. I will want my daughter to understand the dangers in either situation. I expect that she will want both a professional life and a family life. Which means that she needs to know what she will be dealing with in both family and career.
I had a girlfriend, raised by a single aunt, who told me that she prefers male authority over female authority because in case of male authority there is often erotic attraction, whereas with female authority it is “what do you cow know about.” Not all of Eminem’s audience were violent men; it included a lot of women. These women preferred violence by mean but sexy young men over emotional bullying by mean unattractive older women. And there are plenty of the latter in the world.
The main conclusion to be drawn from recent feminism is that neither men nor women are good or bad. Both are capable of both. And it can be quite demanding to figure out who is good and who is not. Clearly Eminem is not a good person. But neither is Catherine McKinnon.
I anticipate different women choosing different things. Some will want careers; others will want relationships. Most would probably want both. There is no inherent antagonism between family and feminism. There are many feminism-influenced women who raise families; and they don’t do it out of servility to men but as living beings that, like most living beings, simply want to have children.
There are things to be said for there to be a greater mix between career-minded women and family-minded women. Both have useful things to offer one another. The career-minded women may be useful in helping the family-minded women to stand up to abusive men, and the family-minded women may teach the career-minded women how to be kinder. Supporting feminism-influenced women in having a family life will make it possible for these women to pass on their values. And that is probably the best thing that can be done for women’s rights.