Germain Greer in The Age 8 March 2010

Taken from: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/change-is-a-feminist-issue-20100308-pqs8.html

Change is Feminist Issue
Germaine Greer

If anyone reading this believes that I am disappointed in today's women, let me hasten to disabuse him. I have been talking to predominantly female audiences from one end of Britain to the other every week or so for the past 20 years, and they never, ever disappoint me. They are articulate, affectionate, independent, feisty, funny and brave. They are the best evidence that something fundamental has changed, but don't imagine for one moment that I believe that I'm the one who changed it.

If women had not been changing in 1970, my book The Female Eunuch would have sunk without trace. Of the original printing of a 5000 only 2500 were bound. There had been no hype, no publicity of any kind, yet they were sold out on the day of issue. So begins the long story of the making of a book by the women who wanted to read it. It was the best book I could write at the time; I have written better since. If I feel any disappointment at all it is that The Female Eunuch is still in print. A tide of better books should have knocked it off its perch within a few months of its first appearance.

The most important change in the past 40 years is the gradual and apparently irreversible collapse of the patriarchal family. This was not triggered by a book, but by economic change. Wage-earners found themselves unable to finance the improvement in their standard of living, otherwise known as the rise in their level of consumption. Hire purchase of vehicles, whitegoods, furnishings and the other trappings of the good life increased the burden of debt on every household.

Even married women of child-bearing age had to go to work to service the family debt. Most of the work they did was insecure, underpaid drudgery. Because the elite labour unions made no attempt to recruit female workers, let alone to support their struggles for decent pay and conditions, a vast pool of female labour began to form at exactly the same time as automation began to threaten the survival of the labour unions themselves.

In the '60s all single women worked. As the age of first marriage rose, they worked for longer and longer. They became used to handling their own money. In those days single women were denied credit and could not borrow the kind of money needed to buy a house or start a business.

Although their credit performance was far better than that ofmen of the same age, banks and building societies would not lend to them.

Eventually single women began buying homes for themselves. With every gradual increase in women's economic activity, the appeal of economic dependency shrank. The price for being a stay-at-home wife, that is, having to run to the male head of household for every cent of housekeeping money, pocket money and pinmoney, began to seem way too high.

Working for your living is part of an honourable grown-up existence. Nobody wants to be a parasite. Even though in Australia (as in Britain) women's workplace earnings are still significantly lower than men's, 40 per cent of women with one child will be working outside the home before the child is a year old. The Australia Institute reported last year that 400,000 married women would go back to work if they could find employment, even though the cost of childcare would eat up most of their earnings.

As women's economic independence increased, their tolerance of infidelity, cruelty, neglect and emotional and physical abuse on the part of their spouses dwindled steadily. Divorce rates throughout the developed world rose in unison.

The Australian rate plateaued at the current rate of about 40 per cent of marriages ending in divorce. The trend is now slowing, partly because these days 60 per cent of couples choose to cohabit rather than marry.

Many such couples have children, and will refer to a cohabiting relationship of many years as an engagement. One way of interpreting this trend is to see it as keeping the relationship in a state of constant negotiation, in which nothing can be taken for granted and both partners are equally involved in decisions affecting family life.

The prevalence of divorce is not something I predicted. The woman who opts to end her marriage after an average of seven or eight years, with divorce following three and four years after, is making a conscious decision to go it alone. She will almost certainly be earning less than her ex-husband; if she has children she faces 15 or 20 years of poverty and unremitting hard work, both inside and outside the home.

She will have no leisure, no spare cash, no money for luxuries such as nice clothes or a decent haircut or a safe car or holidays. Her chances of finding a new partner are much lower than her ex-husband's. Women who face this fate with equanimity have my unstinting admiration. They are choosing a tough but honourable life over a servile and dishonourable one. If they get it right, and their kids do well, they will get no praise. If their kids screw up, they will get all the blame.

Every new generation of women struggles to define itself. Very few young women want to turn into their mother, and even fewer want to be their grandmother. There is no need for today's women to march to a 40-year-old feminist drum.

Amid the seeming chaos of intergenerational conflict new lifestyles and family forms are coalescing. The feminist revolution has not failed. It has yet to begin. Its ground troops are fast developing the skills and muscle that will be necessary if we are to vanquish corporate power and rescue our small planet for humanity.

International Women's Day Celebration

A cultural Evening...

Resistance
Justice
Equality

6pm March 6
Art Gallery at the Addison Rd Community Centre
142 Addison Rd Marrickville

Hear from speakers from Palestine, Uruguay, El Salvador, Tamil Eelam and Guatemala about the struggle for justice and equality in Australia and around the world.

Entertainment includes; Women for Justice Dancers, Singers and Live Latin American Music.

Entry by donation, food and drinks available.

Join with Green Left Weekly, The Latin American Social Forum and other women's groups to mark International Women's Day. This event will follow the International Women's Day rally assemble at Sydney Town Hall at 11am Saturday March 6 for the march to Martin Place.

Any funds raised will go to community projects in Latin America and Green Left Weekly – alternative news.

Ph Brianna for more details 9690 1977 or 0439694505