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April 5, 2016
I beg your pardon, Fay Weldon?
So over the course of this weekend feminist author Fay Weldon, 84, has been causing up a storm in the news with her controversial comments (to say the least) about women and men in today’s society.
Just to bring you up to speed on Fay-she is a best-selling author famed for her strong female characters in bestsellers like The Life and Loves of a She-Devil and The Cloning of Joanna May. This weekend she caused upset over comments that she made in a recent interview about women in society today. Fay made the following statements:
“Men do more work and invent things and an all-woman society would have resulted in lots of nice cushions and no television “
“Women play the victim and now have it better than men”
“I think you can have two out of three – a family, a career and a love life – but very seldom three,”
“Career women may have a family but aren’t likely to have a love life because they are too busy.”When I read this on Sunday I literally sat there on my sofa in silence for about 5 minutes to process all of these comments. I was in complete and utter shock as I could not believe such a prominent ‘feminist’ would say such things. I took a step back and began to analyse her comments and actually thought does she have a point about a few or is she completely bonkers?
Let’s start with her thoughts around women, babies and career.
“I think you can have two out of three – a family, a career and a love life – but very seldom three,”
“Career women may have a family but aren’t likely to have a love life because they are too busy.”
This quite frankly scares me. As a woman who has a busy career, I and many other women I know want to have children AND a loving relationship. What bothers me is that men seem to never have to deal with the risk of not having it all-but why is this constantly shoved down women’s throats? We don’t tell men to choose 2 out of 3 so why should women have to just because biologically we HAVE to give birth to children. Futhermore, how does this then translate to not being loved and not having a career?
I can tell you right now that I want all 3 and I think it is achievable. I do believe that women can have it all BUT not all at the same time. There will be times when maybe your career is on a low but your love life is amazing and vice versa- that is called life. I think what women need to be told is that
“choosing your partner, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend or however you roll, will be the biggest career decision you will ever make”
Those women who say you can’t have all 3 maybe just don’t have the right partner. If you are a Girl Boss you need to make sure you pick a supportive partner who is willing to share the load of family duties with you. Choose someone who is not going to expect you to do everything on your own and who you know will actually be a “partner” and you will be a “team”. Last time I remembered it takes two people to make a baby so why the hell should one person be expected to raise them? Why do we as women always have to choose and give up something?
“Men do more work and invent things and an all-woman society would have resulted in lots of nice cushions and no television”
This is bull-I spent about an hour today having a meeting with a pretty awesome FEMALE software engineer who is launching her own app tomorrow-certainly not a nice cushion. There are plenty of female engineers and tech gurus around the world, many who have invented so many great apps like Whitney Wolfe who co-founded Tinder or Angela Benton CEO of NewME Accelerator and is recognised as a one of the Internet industries influencers.
The problem is not that women have no skill at all-the issue is comments like these discourage young girls from entering careers in the Tech sector. Women should be making apps and products not cushions! (No offence to any designers who make cushions I love them)
“Women “play the victim” and now have “it better than men”
In a recent report published in 2016 by PwC it showed that women are likely to earn £300,000 less than men over their working lives.
In the UK the pay difference between what a man earns vs a woman is at 19%.
Fay, take several seats this is not better then men. If I am losing £300,000 over my working life I have been robbed.
Vanessa Sanyauke
Follow her on Twitter @vanessasanyauke
Picture Credit: The Guardian
References:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mothers-under-phenomenal-pressure-mothers-7689908
