r/TwoXChromosomes: You are the community. You have all the power of the internet to mold it.

Is something I often see on anti-women’s rights posts, and I want to scream at the top of my lungs “NO, DUMBASS, WOMEN HAVE ALWAYS WORKED.”

And no, I don’t even mean in the semi-woke unpaid domestic labor sense, I mean this in a very literally “women had jobs, and took home a paycheck” sense.

There is an extremely brief period in time in which the middle class had enough money to support a household with one income, but that was never going to last, and it sure as hell didn’t apply to everyone.

It’s not like most of our ancestors were Bridgerton-looking ladies who inherited estates and could afford a full set of staff to manage the home making and child care. Many many many of our ancestors were the staff in charge of the cooking, cleaning, book-keeping and child care for the Bridgerton looking ladies.

Our ancestors were school teachers, washerwomen, butchers, bakers, computers, maids, private tutors, shopkeepers, seamstresses, hair stylists, midwives and more! Have you heard of the oldest profession in the world? I don’t think men were doing that job.

Have you heard of weekends, and child labor laws? Yeah, unionized women helped fight for those.

And statistically, sure, if you look at labor force %, it looks relatively small. However, that’s still millions of people. And there were a lot of male-owned small businesses where the owners wife would work without formal pay. For example, my family has always ranched. Do you really think my grandma and great grandma just hung out with kids all day?

Hell no, they chased cattle on horseback, they milked cows and goats, they sheared sheep, and administered vaccines, and branded animals, and butchered. They didn’t receive a damn penny as individuals, because the money went to the collective family business, and that was ok then. And that was super normal for lots of small businesses.

Feminism didn’t trick women into getting jobs. Feminism created the opportunity for women to choose different jobs. Women have always had jobs.

Anyways, rant over.