Hypothetical
Jun. 12th, 2003 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdSo, the hypothetical came up: What if women were forbidden to work outside the home, and prohibited from starting their own businesses within it?
My immediate thought was “There will be a lot of suicide, and a rising alcoholism rate. The economy will plunge into chaos. Employers would have to pay men a living wage for this to be anywhere near feasible.”
Consider, if every woman quit working tomorrow…
Most schoolteachers, nurses, domestics, janitorial staff, wait staff, retail clerks and librarians will be gone. No school. No hospital care. No motel rooms or malls getting cleaned. Noone working behind the counters in shops. No one waiting tables. No daycare workers, but then, no one needs daycare if women aren’t working.
Would every male in America go out and get a job? There would be plenty going begging.
Then comes the wide-spread poverty. In some places, women are the community. Men are the predators around the edges, useful only for sex before they are hauled off and incarcerated.
If women are unemployable, girls will marry much younger. A way of getting out of the house. Of course, if wages don’t go up, men will quit marrying and having children, since they can’t support them. Especially since the daughters will live at home until they are married. And if the girls are being policed by their families (who don’t want “soiled goods” which will be impossible to get rid of, and/or an extra mouth to feed), sexual outlets for men will be greatly reduced. Prostitution could reach heights unknown since the Victorian era. Since they would be the only women who had money, it would be a popular dumping ground for the spoiled girls.
Divorce would have to be illegal, just for the women’s protection. After all, if she can’t work, she can’t support herself, and divorcing her would be tantamount to killing her by starvation.
I think it could be significantly uglier than it was during the last couple centuries. Even then, women worked, usually lower class ones, and there were always the unconventional and adventurous. (Husband’s grandmother was the first female optometrist in OH) But were convention given the weight of law, I think it could be a nightmare.
Much of this is my response to a man who claimed the divorce rate skyrocketed when women started being educated and able to support themselves, and that literacy for women should be illegal. The worst part is, he was serious. (His own wife has an 8th grade education, does not drive and will be hard-put when he leaves her)
My immediate thought was “There will be a lot of suicide, and a rising alcoholism rate. The economy will plunge into chaos. Employers would have to pay men a living wage for this to be anywhere near feasible.”
Consider, if every woman quit working tomorrow…
Most schoolteachers, nurses, domestics, janitorial staff, wait staff, retail clerks and librarians will be gone. No school. No hospital care. No motel rooms or malls getting cleaned. Noone working behind the counters in shops. No one waiting tables. No daycare workers, but then, no one needs daycare if women aren’t working.
Would every male in America go out and get a job? There would be plenty going begging.
Then comes the wide-spread poverty. In some places, women are the community. Men are the predators around the edges, useful only for sex before they are hauled off and incarcerated.
If women are unemployable, girls will marry much younger. A way of getting out of the house. Of course, if wages don’t go up, men will quit marrying and having children, since they can’t support them. Especially since the daughters will live at home until they are married. And if the girls are being policed by their families (who don’t want “soiled goods” which will be impossible to get rid of, and/or an extra mouth to feed), sexual outlets for men will be greatly reduced. Prostitution could reach heights unknown since the Victorian era. Since they would be the only women who had money, it would be a popular dumping ground for the spoiled girls.
Divorce would have to be illegal, just for the women’s protection. After all, if she can’t work, she can’t support herself, and divorcing her would be tantamount to killing her by starvation.
I think it could be significantly uglier than it was during the last couple centuries. Even then, women worked, usually lower class ones, and there were always the unconventional and adventurous. (Husband’s grandmother was the first female optometrist in OH) But were convention given the weight of law, I think it could be a nightmare.
Much of this is my response to a man who claimed the divorce rate skyrocketed when women started being educated and able to support themselves, and that literacy for women should be illegal. The worst part is, he was serious. (His own wife has an 8th grade education, does not drive and will be hard-put when he leaves her)
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 02:16 pm (UTC)However, this was spurred by 2 discussions: one with an older Catholic gentleman I work with (I said "So, it's all a ploy so you can run the whole library alone?"), and one with a fundy whackjob.
Benjamin wasn't willing to keep the women illiterate. Chris was. After all, why do they need to read anything more complex than a recipe.