15 January 2008

Having Enough of Having It All


Who told women they could have it all? The person ought to be shot.

Statistics reported in The Independent today raise concerns about the rising age of motherhood. This is – rightly – presented specifically as a health issue, rather than a social concern. However, the article includes the annoying bleatings of a couple of (educated, middle-class, affluent, career) women, bemoaning the double standards of a society that pats Rod Stewart on the back for reproducing in his 60s, but cautions women over the age of 35 against having children. A female gynaecologist was even forced to apologise for urging women to bear children before the age of 30. Based on the available research and statistics of the health complications involved in older mothers (not to mention the strain placed on the NHS), her advice seems very sensible to me.

It is also important to separate these findings from the social implications of the female backlash to such caution. The director of a fertility clinic (gender unspecified) is quoted in the article as saying that society is imposing a “massive strain” on women by “forcing” them to choose between family and career. I disagree. I think that the pressure women feel under to “have everything” comes from women themselves, and that actually, “society” has been more than generous to women who choose to actively raise children and pursue a career.

The idea that women can – and should – be able to have children and take time off work to bring up their families, while at the same time enjoying the same privileges and opportunities as those in the workplace (male and female) who prioritise their careers is seriously misguided. It also serves to undermine the feminist cause from which it originated. First, because it posits an unachievable ideal (no one can have everything), and secondly because why should women who choose to be mothers be entitled to more than everyone else? As time has evolved, the concept of maternity leave has become unhelpful to the feminist cause (whatever the hell that is these days), because the benefits available to working women suggest a societal prioritisation of female biological destiny. Neither does it serve to promote the ideal of overall equality in the workplace: who else is allowed to take paid time off work to pursue their narcissistic desires?

Equality should be about generating choice and options for everyone, not privileging one group of people above another, and certainly not putting so much pressure on one group that you end up taking away their choice. Let’s be realistic: no one can have everything, and it is symptomatic of a very specifically western capitalist greed to expect otherwise.

Am I still a Feminist?

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