Feminism In Retirement
There are studies that show that married women live an average of 10 years LESS than single women.
Men who are married live 10 years LONGER than men who are single.
Did the feminist movement really help women?
Yes, we stormed into the work force and demanded equal pay which we are still waiting for. But as we left the home and entered the work force, nothing changed in our personal relationships. Most of our men never picked up any of the slack.
Men watched the movement, but men never joined the movement.
It’s the patriarchy at its best. Women stood up and said, we want the opportunity to have careers and fulfilling lives outside the home and men sat down and said we will not do a damn thing to help you.
Bill Burr who is not particularly known for his sensitive side, talks about feminism in his comedy. He wants to know why men are required to be part of the feminist movement. He says women don’t support each other. Women wonder why WNBA players aren’t paid as much as their male counterparts, yet women never show up for a game. He says women should be filling the stadiums supporting female athletes. In some ways this made sense to me- until I thought about it.
Guess what Bill? Women don’t HAVE TIME to go to a basketball game because our husbands don’t cook for our kids and don’t help with homework or do much of anything to support us!
Yet men just walk out the door to go to baseball games, or watch football at the bar with their buddies while their wives are at home taking care of everything that matters in this world.
This is precisely why men need to be a part of the feminist movement, and why the feminist movement hurt women as much as it helped them.
The real beneficiaries of the feminist movement are men.
Most wives still clean, cook, do all of the childcare, shopping, doctor’s appointments, and school support, and now bring home a salary on top of it! The feminist movement put women further into servitude, especially women who had children. Gloria Steinem was asked about the uneven distribution of the family workload and the burden the feminist movement essentially placed on women and her reply was, “We didn’t know.”
I asked my 78-year-old mother what progress she saw women make in her lifetime. She told me that until the mid 1970s she was not allowed to wear pants to work. We weren’t ALLOWED TO WEAR PANTS!
I asked another older woman what she thought about the feminist movement and she said, “One of the worst things that ever happened was when washing machines for the home became popular. Before that there were women whose job it was to wash, press and mend people’s clothes. Then the washing machine moved into everyone’s home, and it eliminated jobs for thousands of women, many of whom were widows or single mothers who needed their job, and put all of the laundry work on the back of every single woman in America.”
I am 54 years old. My last child just moved away to college and I am doing a total re-evaluation of my life. I am taking stock of the life I have lived and what I want my future life to look like. I have been a mother for 28 years and I was 100% responsible for raising 3 children.
My husband feigned incompetence in cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, the list goes on. He gave the kids a bath sometimes, which consisted of letting the kids sit in sudsy water and play with toys. He never removed a splinter or attended a doctor appointment. He never took one single day off from work to care for a sick child.
It makes sense that I would die 10 years earlier than unmarried women.
I can’t help but wonder if it’s like smoking. Once you quit, your body starts healing and in a certain number of years your risk of dying gets less and less. If a woman becomes single after 29 years, how many years does it take for her to shake off the negative effects of marriage?
My husband and I are planning our retirement. I asked him, “What does retirement look like to you?” He said, “Traveling, spending winters someplace warm and spending more time in my workshop.”
“How about you? The kids are gone, what will you do?” he asked.
I am flooded with emotion. The kids are gone, but that is only half of what my “job” is in our mostly patriarchal life.
My husband’s impression that I ENJOY housework and laundry and cooking etc. is the underlying problem here.
Because in his retirement plan he didn’t say one word about equal distribution of labor, he said he wants to pursue his lifelong interests. He may be shocked to know that cooking is not interesting to me.
It is now or never.
I have to clearly lay out a life plan moving forward that respects us both.
“My retirement looks like traveling, spending winters someplace warm and us taking turns cooking dinner. It looks like you doing your own laundry and me doing mine, splitting up all of the vet visits and daily medical care for our 15 year old dog, splitting up the house cleaning duties, home maintenance, doing the grocery shopping together etc.
The fantasy of you sitting on the front porch sipping a sweet tea while I cook every meal will not be happening. WE BOTH GET TO RETIRE.”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” he said.
Yes. Yes it is.