Conservatives’ sad attempt to manipulate women

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Does feminism teach us to put capitalism over family? Why I reject this reproach against the women’s rights movement?

Yesterday, a Muslim friend of mine shared a picture in his story that said:

Feminism is the idea that women are free when they serve their employers, but slaves when they serve their husbands and children.

I don’t even get into the usage of the word “serve” here. This terminology just sets a negative tone to this entire statement right away, where women are being seen as servants of the family instead of equal members.

Two questions arise in my head when I read arguments like the one I cited above:

• If a woman’s value comes from serving her children and husband, taking care of them, loving them, and being their peace, then what values does family provide back to the woman? Isn’t the fact that the family sees the mum as a servant, as the caregiver rather than an individual with dreams, ambitions, and suffering, showing that women are tremendously undervalued in family structures?
• If having children and being married would indeed make you happier, then why shall only women receive that happiness? This is something conservatives cannot explain to me. If having a career is so bad compared to educating children, then why are men not doing it? Why does the woman have to do it? Well, I guess some of you are going to tell me that men are sacrificing themselves so they can provide for their families. Yeah, but what if the woman wants to take this duty? Why does it suddenly change everything?

While I agree that family is important and that motherhood is perceived as too negative in modern times, I think conservatives weaken their position by making this whole debate gender-centered. Another issue is the critique on capitalism here that I heard many conservatives make.

Yes, capitalism made family life very hard because it requires workers to work long hours and perform well, especially compared to their coworkers. Capitalism pushed greed for status as well. Many people are having a career, not to be creative and to have money so they can travel and invest in themselves, but they are having a career for status so that they are respected.

Great, so Liberals and conservatives could agree on this. The only problem is that most conservatives are against social market economy structures and pro-capitalism. So they are approving of a system that caused us to weaken family values.

Let me explain. If we had family-friendly economic structures (in the US people don’t have that, for instance) if middle-class families could already provide decent housing and saving and a good living standard with travel options, good educational resources, and affordable free time costs, and if we had more capacities to bring our children to work with all required like whereabouts for the children in the company or changing tables, then why should people be so afraid of having children?

As a woman, I always thought that motherhood makes women strong. When we are in a relationship with a man, we like home to protect us and care for us but the great ambivalence of women lies in their capability to switch from the protected to the protector and great strength lies in women who have the take responsibility, it might be children, but it also might build up society after the war or providing for a family member in need.

But we never made use of this strength of women. We made for centuries family life a prison for women, where they couldn’t strive and couldn’t build, and then some men have the audacity to tell us it was they who had built this country. Right, it was men building the economy, and therefore we see today that this economy was made for men, who didn’t have to take part in family life and thus no effort for making working family-friendly was ever made.

I think many conservative men ask women to trust them while they do absolutely nothing to win this trust.

Most people suffering from elderly poverty are women since they took care of children and didn’t pay for rent. Studies show that women (even though they entered the workforce) still do most chores and take more responsibility for child raising on average. More and more women resent their lives as stay-at-home mums.

Yes, having a career can make you a slave to your employer and socialists want to change that, but having a career also provides lots of benefits, especially when you are opening your own business.

• the obvious benefit is that, unlike child caring, you get actually paid for your job in the economy, which allows you to pay for rent reinvest in yourself and build a higher living standard
• Studies show that building a business can increase your cognitive skills by setting goals, being creative, solving problems, finding good ways to communicate struggles, etc. Especially as an intelligent woman, this can provide great satisfaction and happiness to you since you can live your creativity and receive recognition and money for that.

How much recognition does a woman receive from her husband compared to the recognition she receives from society for being a successful and respected business owner?

And of course, family and career do not have to exclude each other if we make the right changes as I mentioned earlier. But even if we make these changes, to find our family values in this modern time of age, conservatives have to reinvent their perceptions of the role women have in families. The reason why many women reject the naturally beautiful duty of motherhood, is because men and even children indeed see their mums as servants and weaker than them, but mums are strong, they are not servants they are rulers, they are not financially dependent on the husband but always having their own money in case they have to jump in as a provider. Because it turns out that some men get fired, have diseases, or die, and then women have to take the job as providers and because of our ambivalence, we can.

I know I can’t change my friend’s mind about this. He convinced himself that Islam and conservatism would provide all the happiness to women they need and all the freedom.

But what conservatism really did was shamelessly destroying motherhood and I hope as liberals and feminists we can bring motherhood back with a new perception of women in families and a new economy.