If Women Ruled the World - Sheila Ellison (ed.) - Part 2

If Women Ruled the World - Sheila Ellison (ed.)

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 109

  April 19, 2017 

Book 32 - If Women Ruled the World -
How to Create the World We Want to Live In
Sheila Ellison (ed.) (2004)
 Part 2 - pages 49-92
Reading Time - 45 minutes

This section looks at Family. There are some good little stories in here. One of them suggests that if women ruled the world, we would cherish the old as well as the young. This speaks to me right now because of my aging parents. There is something wrong in our society where we shuffle the elderly off to care homes. Or where we send Home Support to help them at home but their days pass in Dailyness... one day looking just like the other. I'm not sure what the answer is... but there has to be a better way.

The idea that stay-at-home fathers would be commonplace... the equal parenting would be the norm instead of the exception. One story was of a couple who both worked. While she earned slightly less, she was expected to... or felt she had to... take care of the lion's share of the housework as well. Until... the husband lost his job and she got a promotion. All of a sudden, he became a stay-at-home house-husband and experienced some of the same things Betty Friedan was talking about in the Feminine Mystique. Lack of adult conversation and lack of fulfillment from an unpaid job. I can relate to that... it is a challenge to be the lower-wage earner, the stay-at-home person who takes care of home and hearth, as well as an aging parent. Again... if women ruled the world... there would be better supports in place for those who take care of the infrastructure of the country.