The story of progress where everyone would eventually live in luxury included a promise for material equality between the genders, as part of the general dream of freedom from work, at the core of capitalism and communism both.
Indeed. And one of the ironies of feminism has been that men and women now compete in the same market and are supoosed to be natural adversaries, which makes organised resistance to market-think more difficult than it used to be.
I still find it wretchedly depressing that so many feminist arguments are about how much less 'women' earn compared to 'men', and not about how markets guarantee that neither women nor men have security, or personal and professional dignity - unless they have a seat on the board.
There is still a genuine pay gap issue of women being paid less than men doing like work or work of equal value. We have 20,000 equal pay claims in the Welsh Tribunal system and the vast majority of them are equal value claims.
'Men's jobs' ie refuse collectors and other low level jobs that are dominated by men are valued more highly than those women tend to be concentrated in such as cleaning and catering. So at that level, yes there is still a real issue about men being paid more than women. I'm writing an evidence paper to the Assembly on this right now.
However, I point out a great deal that the overall argument on gender equality isn't a women vs men one - it is that 'type' of alpha male/female vs the rest of us who aren't willing to sacrifice our lives and stomp on other's to get to the top. But those who dominate at the top continue to set the standard the rest of us must meet if we want to get there too. This argument is sinking in more lately. It is about changing the entire culture of how people are expected to live and work and the values we want in our society.
It is entirely self defeating to carrying on screeching about men as a collective being the sole culprits of gender inequality. Ad astra per aspera
