When Bill Clinton was elected President, he and his wife Hillary tried to tell the world that they were "getting a two for one deal." I think this was a mistake.
I imagine a lot of women don't much like Hillary Clinton. Her claim when Bill Clinton took office that Americans were getting a two for one deal actively pissed on every first lady that preceded her as well as every woman on planet Earth who put family first and never got a "serious career" -- other than wife and mom, which is a respected career in some places, just not the US -- whether they wanted one or not.
She implicitly and explicitly believed that she had more to offer than previous first ladies because of her paid career. Manners and respect for other women not being among the assets she imagined she had.
I suspect the American practice of expecting the first lady to play hostess at the White House started innocently and organically back when homemaking was still a respected profession. When George Washington took office, the country was far smaller and this likely just happened at a time when a wife supporting her husband's career in this fashion was normal, natural and expected.
We still have the expression "my better half," a saying rooted in the idea that you marry for life -- until death do you part -- so a married couple was assumed to be a package deal AND people understood that a man's career was partly made by having a good woman behind him.
This is no longer necessarily true. The world has changed and it's possible to be a bachelor and have a real career, so "successful career" for a man is no longer a reasonable proxy for "Obviously his wife also kicks ass, she just plays a different role, a more private role, but most of us understand she's HALF of why he is who he is publicly."
My father was born in the 1920s and his mother cooked constantly. This meme that currently appears in movies etc. that women have it made in the shade if they marry well is pretty new.
Historically, women's work was quite time consuming and even very wealthy and powerful families had to have a wife who contributed in some way and wasn't merely a bauble on his arm (code for sex object). If she wasn't personally cooking and cleaning, then she was playing hostess to visiting business contacts and the like which takes time, effort and skill.
The concept of idle rich is relatively new in the grand scheme of things. Kings of old had big palaces etc. because there was no phone, internet, etc and they had to have a place for foreign diplomats to physically reside when they visited, which was necessary for brokering peace etc. and they had to be fed etc. while there.
However, at this point I wish the US would discontinue this practice of expecting the wife of our president to play an official role without pay and without being elected by the people nor vetted in any way for the position. No matter how innocent or organic its origin story, I feel it is holding the US back with regards to gender equality.
We are actively creating a schism unnecessarily in this country. And we are also screwing over our children -- our future -- to do it.There has got to be a better way here. Europe apparently sucks less than this on this topic from what I gather.
When two cultures interact, like at a border town, you see a lot of funky stuff happen where the rules and expectations of one side interact with the rules and expectations of the other side. It can foster some good things but always also fosters some bad things.
The expectations of one side often implicitly take advantage of what is a broken social contract. It works great to do X because you are oblivious to the implicit assumptions and agreements people in the other culture have, so it ends up being a lot of "free stuff" because you aren't paying for that in the ways they expect.
This is problematic enough when it's two cultures that both exist in the here and now. It gets thornier when it's a future culture we are trying to give birth to and current reality interacting.
The lyrics for the 1950s song You don't own me capture that dynamic for post WW2 emerging ideas of women's rights.
The woman objects to being treated like property and told how to behave, how to think etc. but the language used in the song and the culture of the era paint a picture of a woman expecting freedom and rights which she's only thought halfway through and she is implicitly getting a free ride from men who have reason to resent this emerging concept that breaks with tradition.
She expects to be able to go out with other boys and not be treated like property. She says nothing about paying her own way.
You can infer that her idea of "freedom" as a 17 year old girl is "Dad pays for a roof over my head and other essentials, boys pay for my entertainment and I owe none of them ANYTHING in return."
What a sweet deal for HER.
Going Dutch -- each paying their own way -- seems to be getting more common as women more routinely have full-time jobs and often serious careers. But when that song was written, it was a new concept that a girl could have a mind and life of her own and all the details of the social contract surrounding dating practices and why men paid and then had certain expectations weren't thought through yet.
Career women often come across as screechy, strident, etc. and frequently seem to view homemakers and moms as the enemy and it was worse in the past.
I don't think this serves women or society well. In fact, I think career women are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
A LOT of career women got where they are because a female relative provided daycare for their children, so it was almost as good as if mom stayed home and the supportive relative may have worked for free short term (say post partum) or for some really sweet deal long term (room and board, "because we're family and I love you"). And such women have no obligation to keep giving generously of themselves while you piss all over them, broadcast your opinion that what they are doing for you and your kids is worthless and you have zero god-damned respect for them nor a drop of appreciation.
So I imagine some career women take supportive female relatives for granted and then further alienate them by trying to insist they are OBLIGATED to continue being underpaid, disrespected CHUMPS only to find the gravy train has suddenly come to a screeching halt and I imagine a lot of them are MYSTIFIED by what went wrong that their very privileged lives suddenly stopped working, their career has stalled and they can't fix it.
I believe this friction between "serious career women" and the rest of us grows out of society expecting women to choose between career and children and I believe it does that largely because heteronormative culture designs serious careers with an expectation that they are held by married men supporting a wife and kids and implicitly assumes you can't succeed if there isn't a little wifey cooking your meals and cleaning the house so you can give your all at work and go home wrung out, flop down in your armchair EXHAUSTED, bellow "Woman, bring me a beer!" and wait for dinner to be served. And then do the same tomorrow, giving your all at work with nothing left to give at the end of the day.
We shouldn't still be doing that. At this point, it harms more people than it helps.
Women and society need new paradigms that allow a person to be both a good and devoted parent and have a meaningful career which helps them adequately cover the bills.
There are many moving parts here that need to change, from how we prepare food to what we see as good housing for small households.
It's far more than a single blog post has any hope of covering, which is why I have myriad entire blogs and various Reddits devoted to different pieces of the puzzle, none of which seem to be accomplishing fuck all frankly, not even paying my bills by serving as ENTERTAINMENT for people to point and laugh at but tip anyway.