Superwoman Isn’t Real

Feminism. First there were the ripples, as women lucky enough to learn how to read and write began chronicling their oppression. Next came the waves, as women lucky enough to not be chained to the kitchen sink went out to demand the right to vote. Then there was the waterfall — hormonal contraception being made commercially available (in the UK) in 1961. The last one sounds a bit different to the first two, but it’s not. Let me explain why.
Feminism’s original aim was to liberate women from the patriarchal oppression of men. Over time, this has become interpreted to mean ‘women should be equal to men’ rather than ‘women should be made free to be who they want, just like men are’. Whilst the former is well-intentioned, it ignores that women experience things that men don’t, like pregnancy and childbirth. The invention of the hormonal contraceptive pill was supposed to remove that final barrier to equality: reproductive capacity. But what happens when a woman decides to reproduce?
What happens is that inequality smashes through the window and takes them by surprise. The pill has conned women into acting like they now have something over men, even though social discourse shows that they don’t actually think they do — and the statistics back it up. Ask a woman about single parenthood and she will talk about single mothers living in poverty and absent fathers making no significant contribution [https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/what-we-do/media-centre/single-parents-facts-figures/] [https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/policy-campaigns/living-standards-and-poverty/]. Ask a woman about staying with an abusive partner due to financial restraints and she’ll talk about a desperate woman and an exploitative man [https://www.forbes.com/2010/09/02/women-money-domestic-violence-forbes-woman-net-worth-personal-finance.html#1a464be91047]. Ask a woman about domestic abuse and she’ll talk the fact that pregnancy is a trigger for beginning or increasing infidelity and abuse for many men [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3818138/]. What makes all of this possible? Pregnancy, and the resulting dependent child. It is still a lot easier for a man to just walk away than it is for a woman. Female biology makes us vulnerable.
Feminism has improved the lives of women. It has given us the right to make our voice heard, both politically and socially; to no longer be seen as property, and also to own property ourselves; to enjoy the same legal protections afforded to men and have our unique experiences recognised institutionally (such as with maternity rights and services). It has undoubtedly lifted many terrible weights borne by the women that came before us, and I am truly grateful for that. But it has made one major mis-step that is currently poisoning the happiness we have fought so hard for: because it hasn’t made things truly equal, it has actually made them much more difficult.
If you think of pre-feminist life as being divided into the two spheres of adult existence, work was the man’s place and home was the woman’s place. The responsibilities of life were, for better or worse, pretty evenly split. In this post-feminist world, work is still very much a man’s place, but now the woman’s is both work AND home. Once we get coupled up and have children, society expects that we will work at least part-time and do the lion’s share of domestic work — and, for many, this is all without the almost-ubiquitous support of the close-knit community that most women pre-feminism grew up with. In short, modern women are exhausted, struggling, lonely, unhappy as fuck, and feel totally unable to admit it for fear of sounding like a failure — all thanks to the advances of the movement designed to liberate us. (Let’s not forget the internalised social pressure that weighs down far more on mothers than it does fathers, too: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/07/06/the-better-mother-how-intense-parenting-leads-to-depression/#7df872e376b2.)
Why am I saying all of this? Because I’m living it. I moved away from the city I grew up in for uni, met my partner, and didn’t go back home. I chose a theoretical degree only useful to aspiring teachers and as such am still working in fast food, which has necessitated starting study again aged 26. Along with my choice to have a baby at 25, I am now working, studying, raising a child, running a house — my only saving grace is that I am still with her dad, but our relationship has suffered, largely due to my inability to muster any enthusiasm for life (other than going to bed). I’m lonely, stressed, and probably pretty depressed — and it’s making me feel like a big feminist failure. It seems to be accepted as part of life by the women that I know, perhaps because it might mean criticising the outcomes of the equality that we all wanted so badly.
This is no simple solution to this. I would never advocate for some weird dystopia where reproductive systems are genetically engineered out and all (now sexless) babies are grown in labs, so it means women having to truly recognise that the equality offered by contraception only lasts until you stop taking it. After that, you might just be on your own — except for the small human being that is now totally dependent on you for everything.
