Reading Geeta's position I felt strong agreement but I think the
current problems are best viewed in historical context if we are
not to despair..
My own research has outlined how the many forms of 70s early 80s
feminism (which I was part of) narrowed to two major efforts.
These were
1) respecting women's diversity of 'race' class sexuality etc - a
crucially necessary development, but one that sacrificed much of
the primary thrust in the unifying idea of "we are all women and
as such, oppressed, and can work together for our common needs"
which had sparked the 2nd wave of feminism. I think we are now
absorbing diversity and beginning to refocus our unity.
2) breaking down the barriers to public voice, participation and
ownership by women, so that we could use these resources to
create better social justice.

As I see it there was no alternative to fighting the lads at
their own game. Most women were then firmly held in home based
work with little or no power in their communities. Women who had
to either get the consent of their men to attend a women's
meeting!!! or deceive him on what they were doing!!! or lived in
constant strife designed to exhaust and subordinate them in the
home - such women were the majority and had pathetically little
power to change anything in public society. Not least we had to
fight the insidious idea that "women can't ..." - not so much for
the benefit of showing men that women CAN, as to show *women*.
We just *had* to get our own money, control over our bodies, and
learn how to handle committees and other public organisational
roles.

Well, we have come a long way - no sarcasm here. I'm not denying
a lot is still to be done and that new complex problems have
arisen.
But as a middle aged woman I look back on a girlhood in a world
where NO ONE had safe reliable birth control, NO ONE had legal
safe abortions, where women were dying for lack of these things
not only in the Majority World but in the richest most civilised
nations in existence too.
(When I was little my own mother lay dying of an illegal abortion
and if her own brother had not risked being struck off as a
doctor to treat her she would have.) When she was then defined as
risking her life if she got pregnant she could not have a
sterilisation without her husband's signature.
There were NO women's refuges and if a wife asked for police
support against a violent husband they didn't even bother to come
out to her house. I was among the first young UK women to buy my
own home without the cosignature of a male guardian, with my own
mortgage. A married woman could only hold a job if she did very
lowpaid menial work like cleaning, or of she could keep it a
secret that she had married. Men routinely interrupted a woman's
speaking and expected to continue talking. A man doing housework
was not just rare, but unheard of (my father did some secretly
which was never mentioned outside the family so as not to shame
him)
Etc etc.

We HAD to get a presence in the world outside the home and family
in order to effect change. It is not surprising that 30 years
effort to achieve this has involved a narrowing of feminist
outlook to a mere "equal rights" feminism many of us never
intended. Achievement means focusing effort, which has a
narrowing effect.

Now it's well time WITH the power and influence we undoubtedly
have, to widen our aims once again. Like Geeta I have pride in my
gender and have no wish to be a male lookalike or functional,
clone.

Recently I attended a large international academic conference at
Leeds and observed the sleek well dressed women from all the
continents meeting, dining together in considerable luxury, and
commanding the best conference facilities the university had. It
lasted several days and involved about 50 talks. These were
mature women used to handling public status and authority, and
they were comparing notes on how it worked.
Through it I kept remembering the other time I attended a
conference in Leeds. Two days of struggling on cheap buses,
walking miles in the rain, eating jam sandwiches and drinking
mugs of tea. All of us were UK, all under 35, mostly students,
keenly aware of how powerless we were. A small stuffy hall with
splinters in the floor and one microphone.
Both had their problems. Both threw up fear and sensitivities.
The recent one was glaringly as much about individual power as it
was about women. But there is no denying that a lot of those
women held power and were creating change with it.

Karen I'm not at all sure if there is a significant abdication of
responsibility by men. A large sector of men are comnparatively
worse off than women on getting paid work. Employers prefer women
because we are cheap docile labour (we don't unionise or talk
back so much) and we're far more willing to take menial work,
part time work, and short term contract work. There is also the
growth in the service sector economy, which women are trained/
socialised to and men are not.

In some areas of Britain there are more women in employment than
men, for these reasons. Men also lose confidence much faster than
women because they are so dependent on the breadwinner self
respect and without it they have no other avenue to self
confidence. Family work just doesn't signify a vital dignity to
them as it can to women. Once these men give up any effort
appears pointless so they become more and more unproductive.
There is also a great deal more support now for women wanting to
divorce, or run a family alone from the start. So men lose access
to families (either deservedly or not).
Finally there was always a sector of men who dumped their
fathering duties when it got inconvenient. I don't know any
research at present that shows this sector has increased.