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If fifty/fifty is the goal, what is the obstacle? Mothers; in particular, every woman who makes motherhood her primary vocation, whether or not she works outside the home. There is no way that fifty/fifty can be achieved if a substantial portion of women choose not to work full-time.
The Beijing draft document referred to motherhood negatively and did not contain a single program for women who are full-time mothers and homemakers. This was not an oversight.
The platform accurately reflects the feminist attitude to the family and motherhood. Feminist Jane Flax compiled a "survey of contemporary feminist thought on the family." She notes that the major feminist writers, Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Juliet Mitchell, Gayle Rubin, Dorothy Dinnerstein, and Nancy Chodorow, all see the family and, in particular, mothering, as the source of women's oppression (J. Flax, "The Family in Contemporary Feminist Thought: A Critical Review," The Family in Political Thought (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), quoted by Letty Cotten Pogrebin, Family Politics (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1983), pp. 22-24].
According to feminist theory, mothering causes class thinking, and classes are the cause of all evil. The only way to save the world is to eliminate mothering. The feminist theorists offer various solutions for the problem: "better jobs and education so that women can `have it all' "; "a cultural revolution" and "altered social consciousness"; "test tube babies" and diffusing "childrearing responsibility among many households°; "full involvement of fathers in child care" [Pogrebin, p. 22-24]. It should be pointed out that while radical and gender feminists believe that the role of mother and wife is stultifying, if they have children, they love them, and there is no evidence that feminists are bad mothers. Bella Abzug is a proud mother and grandmother. But, this does not prevent her and other feminists from viewing mothering as a political problem.
While radical and gender feminists oppose the traditional family, they recognize the word family cannot simply be junked. Like equality, they want the family redefined. Christine Riddiough suggested using gay/lesbian culture as a means of redefining the family.
According to feminist Ellen Herman, feminists don't want to eliminate families, but to redesign them:
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(Young feminists) . . . wanted the freedom to design their present and future families in myriad ways, without penalty: to love women or men, to have sex with one person at a time or several, to live with or without children, to participate in parenting without necessarily participating in reproduction. Only when they could invent families of all kindswithout fear of ridicule or self-loathing-could women hope to attain genuine individuality, rather than categorization as captive members of a sex/gender class. [Ellen Herman, "Still Married After All These Years," Sojourner: The Women's Forum (September 1990), p. 14s]
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Nancy Chodorow calls for shared parenting to overcome the oppression of "the sexual division of labor in which women mother." The Beijing platform incorporates the theme, referring repeatedly to "shared family responsibility." Paragraph 181(d) specifically calls on governments to "[c]hange attitudes that reinforce the division of labour based on gender in order to promote the concept of shared family responsibility for work in the home, particularly in relation to children and elder care."
For feminists, changing the division of labor in the family is key to their revolution. The classless society requires abolition of the freedom of couples to decide for themselves how to organize their families.
Profamily advocates do not believe that every mother must stay at home or that fathers should not be involved with their children or help with housework. They believe that individual couples have the right to divide the work of the family as they think best. If both husband and wife want to share equally in work outside and inside the home, they should be free to do so. But, if they want to divide the work differently, if the mother wants to stay home with her children, the government should not interfere or penalize that decision.
The promotion of "shared family responsibility" is not about fairness to women, but part of the strategy to promote statistical equality. According to Vigdis Finnbogadottir, the president of Iceland and an active advocate of the gender perspective,
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As long as the private sphere remains largely women's concern, they will be much less available than men for positions of responsibility in economic and political life.
Among the strategies, mention might be made of the generalisation of parental leave, shared between mothers and fathers, greater availability of childcare facilities, care for the old and encouragement for men to participate in housework. [Council of Europe, Equality or Democracy: Utopia or Challenged Reports from Discussion Groups (Palais d'Europe, Strasbourg, 9-11 February 1995), p. 38]
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Several Nordic nations have tried to find ways to force men to take parental leave. To agree that fathers should take an active part in the raising of their children, however, does not mean that fathering is the same as mothering. Children may need different things from their fathers than from their mothers. The promoters of the Gender Agenda aren't concerned about the psychological needs of children, but in transforming the relationship between men and women.
Finnbogadottir's speech reveals that the real enemy of the Gender Agenda is not men, but women-women who want to make motherhood their primary vocation. The promoters of the Gender Agenda understand that if women choose motherhood in significant numbers, they will not be available to achieve statistical equality. Even the most ardent advocates of the Gender Agenda do not pretend that they can induce a significant number of men to make full-time childcare their primary vocation.
Fifty/fifty by 2005 requires zero full-time mothers, and the Beijing platform is the blueprint for reaching that goal.
ECONOMIC EFFECTS
One of the arguments made for all women in the workforce is that in order to develop economically, societies need to take advantage of the talents of all citizens. Full-time mothers find this kind of argument insulting. The clear implication is that women who work within the home are wasting their talents and education. Making a human being is the most important work in society, and devoting one's talents and energies to this task should be considered as productive as working in a factory or office.
New research on the brain reveals that the crucial time for the development of language, emotional stability, and reasoning ability occurs from birth to five years. A child who does not receive the proper input during this crucial period is forever handicapped. The child's brain needs precisely the kind of oneon-one interaction that a mother provides. It is interesting that an article in Newsweek discussing the discoveries that led to this conclusion makes almost no mention of mothers as the suppliers of this interaction. Instead, it discusses the need for "intensive early education in a day-center from 4 months" [Sharon Begley, "Your Child's Brain," Newsweek, 19 February 1996, p. 61].
While well-paid mother substitutes could supply the input needed for brain development, the cost would be prohibitive. A woman who works at a low-paying job can't afford to pay a skilled professional to do her mothering. Those who want all women in the workforce recognize this and call for government-subsidized day care, but where would the subsidies come from? Taxes on families-taxes which force more mothers into the workforce.
Babies come with committed day-care providers who are willing and able to supply the one-on-one interaction needed for brain developmentmothers. Mothers don't need a master's degree in education to learn how to talk baby-talk to babies. Furthermore, babies already have a fully equipped day-care center right at home. And, babies are better off if they are not exposed to sick children, particularly since frequent ear infections in infancy are now blamed for later language problems.
Feminists complain that women are made to feel guilty when they put their children in day care, and this is probably because most women know that even the best day care is a second-rate imitation of a home and mother. And, very few working mothers can afford the best.
Profamily lobbyists argue that instead of subsidies for daycare and childcare tax credits for working mothers, there should be tax credits for all children, or better, significantly lower taxes on all families, so that mothers aren't forced into the workforce.
This solution would not be acceptable to radical and gender feminists, since their version of empowerment requires that all women be employed in paid work and be economically autonomous. The definition of empowerment as economic independence ignores the reality of women's lives. Pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood affect women's workplace participation. When a woman is not employed because of family responsibilities, she depends on her husband and the father of her children for economic support. This "economic dependence" empowers women to make the choice of motherhood. The emphasis on paid work ignores the desires of women. The profamily position supports the woman's right to decide for herself whether she will work full-time, be a full-time mother, or choose parttime work so she can devote her energies to her family.
Forcing all women into the workforce has other economic effects. It increases the supply of workers, thereby lowering the demand and lowering wages. If men are unable to support their families on a single paycheck, more women are forced into the workforce, setting off a downward spiral. When women in poor countries are recruited into the workforce for extremely low wages, jobs move to these countries, and the ability of men to support their families deteriorates further.
When both parents are forced to work, the stresses on the family increase. School-age children receive less supervision. This increases the need for various kinds of government programs and the taxes to pay for them.
One way families cope with these stresses is by limiting their families to one or two children. While most people believe that the world is suffering from an uncontrolled population explosion, the major economic problem in the next century will be the birth dearth. An aging population dependent on expensive government health and retirement programs will demand increased subsidies from a shrinking pool of workers. This further increases the tax burden.
Feminists insist that women who work outside the home gain economic autonomy, but if the majority of a woman's salary is eaten up by higher taxes, day care, and the cost of additional services, a woman may be only marginally better off. Some women argue that a woman at home has true autonomy. She is her own boss, running her house, organizing her time, and making her own decisions. Very often, she manages the family income and makes most of the spending decisions.
Feminists are very concerned with who makes decisions. They want fifty/fifty quotas on all decision-making positions, particularly high-level decision making. But, most women do not feel more liberated if the bureaucrat or politician making the decisions that influence their lives is a woman. What they want is to make their own decisions, or to have decisions made at the lowest level of government where the voices of ordinary women can be heard.
The big government solutions envisioned in the Beijing platform take decision making away from the local level and invest power in bureaucracies. Power is taken from the people and given to the government. Mandating quotas on bureaucracies will not return power to ordinary women.
TRADITIONAL ROLES
Of all the paragraphs in the Beijing Platform, the one that profamily women found the most offensive was the gratuitous insult in paragraph 77, which condemned school curriculum for showing men and women in "traditional female and male roles." The paragraph says that "traditional female and male roles . . . deny women opportunities for full and equal partnership in society." ,
Profamily women reject the idea that full-time mothers are second-class citizens trapped into subordinate and subservient roles, waiting to be freed by full-time employment so that society can take advantage of their talents. "We have not been denied opportunities," one of the profamily women pointed out. "These feminists seem to think that we don't leave the house. We are here in Beijing."
Typical of the profamily women in Beijing was Cecilia Royals, mother of eight, who founded the National Institute of Womanhood and organized the Well-being of Women Caucus. Cecilia cannot be classed among the rich and privileged. Her husband is a teacher in a private school. Three of her children have serious birth defects. Her activism does not detract from her commitment to family, precisely because she doesn't also have to work outside the home. Visitors to the Royals' small but neat home just outside Washington feel as though they have stepped into a scene from a Louisa May Alcott novel. The children help with dinner, and the meal is followed by a piano recital and poetry reading.
Karen McNeil, a lovely wife and mother from Memphis, has taken an active part in the life of her community and church, organizing a group which helps pregnant women find ways to have their babies and supporting the battle against sexually oriented businesses. When she heard about the Beijing conference, she felt called to attend. She raised the money by speaking to groups in Memphis. Karen, a real steel magnolia, had been concerned about the risks of going to China, but when the time came to take a stand, Karen joined five other American women who stood up with a banner in silent protest to the U.S. failure to support families and life. As a result, she and the rest of the women were taken into custody. Their credentials were confiscated, and they were placed under house arrest in the Catic Hotel. It is interesting to note that when lesbian activists staged a noisy protest at the conference, they were neither arrested nor penalized.
Full-time motherhood doesn't mean that a woman has no time for anything else. Besides homeschooling two of her four children, Genevieve Kineke edits Hearth magazine from her family room. She is currently developing a home page on the World Wide Web for the Alliance of Catholic Women. She prepared lobbying materials for the Cairo and Beijing conferences which included the following Motherhood Manifesto, which was circulated to delegates at the PrepCom:
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The Motherhood Manifesto
- Every woman who believes her place is in the home should be able to be there.
- Women shall not be forced to work outside the home, whether by law, economics, or social pressure. Mothers who do work outside the home shall have sufficient leave to recover from childbirth, nurse their babies, and care for sick family members.
- Governments should protect the economic security of women who work within the home.
- Everything possible should be done to protect a woman's potential ability to bear children.
- No woman should be forced, coerced, paid, or bribed to surrender or endanger her reproductive potential through sterilization, contraception, abortion, or sexual or reproductive servitude.
- No woman should be forced, coerced, bribed, or paid to kill or sell her children either before or after birth.
- Abortion, whether legal or illegal, poses a danger to a woman's physical, psychological, and spiritual health. Abortion has been linked to breast cancer and increased risk of miscarriage. The easy availability of abortion lowers respect for women, children, and life. Therefore, abortion should be discouraged and governments, families, and communities should address the problems which lead to abortion; namely: sex outside marriage, poverty, and the loss of respect for human life.
- Marriage is the best protection of the rights of the mother. A woman's rights in marriage should be protected. Governments should enact social legislation and tax policies which support marriage. No woman should be forced to marry against her will.
- Male infidelity and promiscuity spread sexually transmitted diseases to chaste wives. All sexual activity outside marriage should be discouraged by law and social pressure.
- The sex industry poses a threat to marriage, to women's reproductive health, to the financial security of families, and to societal respect for women in general. All aspects of the sex industry-prostitution, live sex shows, pornography, explicit films, and videos, including rock videos and advertising which exploits women, should be legally banned and discouraged by social pressure.
- Every mother, in union with the father, should have control over the education of her children.
- Women should receive education which recognizes the diversity of work inside and outside the home which they may perform during their lifetimes. Women's education should recognize the special work of women as educators of their own children.
- Mothers should have time to educate their own children within the home, particularly in matters of religion, family traditions, and cultural heritage. Formal education should not be so demanding on the time or draining of the energy of the children that their family life suffers or that family-centered education is impossible. Public schools should recognize that parents are the primary educators of their children and that the schools are servants of the parents.
- Parents should have the right and economic ability to choose the education they deem most appropriate for their children, including religious education and singlesex education.
- Women should have the right and opportunity to engage in social activism, particularly in those areas where they perceive a threat to themselves, their children, or their families, including the threat of sexual exploitation of children and anti-family media. Freedom of speech and the press shall not be a defense for violations of the rights of parents to protect their children from what the parents determine are pernicious influence or dangers to their children's religious upbringing, innocence, or health.
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A real partnership between men and women doesn't require statistically equal housework and employment. Full-time motherhood gives women freedom to control their time and energy, which working mothers often don't have. The division of labor in the family is efficient. Husbands, free from everyday household concerns, can devote their energies to their careers. Well-organized women can manage the housework and childcare, even of large families, and still have time and energy to make an additional impact on society. Women want the freedom to decide what is best for them.
Many women want to be home, but have been forced into the workplace. What women are often not aware of is that the economic pressure on women comes not from inexorable market forces. Someone has planned this, orchestrated it, and is pleased that women are being forced into the workforce. The gender feminists say, "Today women have to work." What they don't say is that they have been working to make sure that every, woman has to work.
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