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This article demands a very deep reflexion from american women and men.
Why?
1) Betty Friedan is supposed to be the one who ignited feminism here with a book where she said that women should not stay home and have the right in the name of equality to work on the work market.
This article shows that on the contrary, russian women want to stay home with the baby and the father should work outside. Nothing mentioned about his right to father at home.
Why not the father stays at home and the mother goes outside to work( of course they could be both at home, for a while and then the women could work outside)But then there is the particular socio-economoics conditions in Russia.
2) This refers also to the phenomena of enclosure described by Andrew Kimbrell in his book: The Masculine Mystique. Before the enclosure in England, men were cooperative generally, they were having enough food, clothing and housing with their work in the global commons.After the enclosure, they have been forced to work in industry; they then lost their economic independance,and their role as father near the home and teacher to children of skills to survive.
3) The article also reminds me of the point of view of Jed Diamond who says that for millions of years, women and men were going along fine. Women were expecting men to earn well what is needed for a family and men were expecting women to look good, to have nice and healthy babies.
Now we can see through different lenses:
Russian women do not request what Betty Friedan thought women should request: leave home and enter the workforce in the name of equality. They seem to prefer to stay home and take care of the baby,which is fine. Why don't they want to work outside the home? Perhaps because there is no outside paid work to do? Or they simply do not agree with NOW american feminists who want women outside the home?
And what about the men? Now that they have been displaced from their ancestral land to go to work in industries, and that these industries are now closed, men are disposable as Farrell says.
And what about their role of fathers? Can they enter home to reunite with their child and spouse?
But how to sustain life then?
I have more questions than answers but there is plenty to reflect and say in relation to this article.
What Russian men would say if we and women would listen to them( if they dare to express themselves, but we should think of asking them)??
claude saint-jarre
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I would like to add two more thoughts on this subject.
1) Overpopulation and individual potentials:
We could ask, aside from personal freedom to have a child, whats wrong with not having children, in this epoch where almost every ecologist says there is too many people on earth.Québec is special in relation to this too: this francophone group( describing themselves as a nation sometimes)does not reproduce itself these days. It appears sad locally but might be OK in relation to the overpopulation problem.
I recall reading Barbara Marx Hubbard, a futurist, who said women are called to actualize their true potentials in this moment where they are not obliged to be mothers.
2) Jeremy Rifkin wrote a book: The End of Work?
Is it a timely book? Perhaps.
But on the theme of work there is the difference between paid work for corporations or unpaid work( volunteer) that has to be done anyways. There is plenty of work that needs to be done but for which there is no jobs.( ecological restoration, mentoring the youth, parenting)This is sad but a reality. Once more we should put the question of work on the agenda: full employment or not, full employment of what, of who? For what purpose? Should we do the work we love or what we must do?
claude saint-jarre
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I reject the concept of marriage in which the relationship is premised on a form of slavery in which the man's only purpose in the relationship is to satisfy and promote the economic, social, and cultural of his wife. The "slave like" premise of this relationship, that men are and should be exploited by women and subservient to women financially,precludes any ethical mutual respect and responsibilty as it's foundation is not based upon the same. Rather, despite all of the religious and cultural dogma to the contrary, it's basic lack of fairness promotes a distinct mutual distrust, lack of shared obligation, and promotes the aggressive domination by the woman of the man.
For the above reasons, modern marriage and the laws and customs upon which it is based,is the anti-thesis of what marriage was once, a relationship based upon mutual respect rather than financial exploitation.
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