at least the women who have to wear burqas

Yes, the people who are involved would have a more valid opinion, though it seems that quite often when they are asked their opinions are discounted as being inadmissible since they are by definition oppressed.

We can look at Libération, too. Ni Putes Ni Soumises demonstrates in favour of the burqa ban in front of the PS headquarters because the PS is too ambiguous for their liking.

Women generally were constructed as being more caring and nurturing by nature. Women who worked were expected to give up work when they got married and men's wages were set at levels to support a family. A woman's role was in the home raising the family, and also caring for other adult dependents such as parents.
Of course it is well known that the process of raising a family is highly satisfying for women, because they are fulfilling their 'natural' instinct of caring for others, be that their children or other dependents. So women are best placed to take on a caring role.

Single women were dually constructed as angels/demons.  Think of associations with 'spinsters' - nasty, evil, interfering.  But women are natural carers, so they are also the angels that take up domestic service and look after wealthy people's children.  

The line of thought was that a single woman needed to sublimate her sexual urges by diverting her energy to caring for others and if she didn't have her own children, this process of sublimation could be achieved by looking after other people's children.  Many women were forced to go into domestic services if they weren't married (surplus of women due to the 'lost generation' of men in the war.)

Single women were also expected to look after their parents as they became older and indeed many couples would 'keep' usually their youngest daughter for this purpose and marry the rest off. So single women were able to live a happy and fulfilled life free of frustrated sexual desire by caring for other people.

But this also extended to 'spinsters' who took on roles as midwives and sort of social workers, which in itself was something of an extension on the philanthropic work done by middle classe women attempting to bring morality and Jesus to the unwashed masses of deviant working class women.  So single women eventually became constructed as experts on childbirth and child rearing.

And that, Colman, is why single women who have never had children are more entitled than you to offer their opinions on childbirth and child raising.  Consider it a hangover from the last century.  

The day I am no longer discriminated against in employment for being a woman, be it through wage differentials, assumptions about the worth and value of jobs that women do, or gender roles restricting my choice in the place I take up across the work/home divide; is the day that you can have an opinion about childbirth.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

it's getting more ok to have friends of either sex, as excessive formality slowly gives way to more tolerant and relaxed attitudes to life, and a more balanced personality, playful with the differences, and comfortable both sides of the fence.

one is a lot less circumscribed than before, we are learning to trust that it's ok to be different, there's a place for that in the scene of things, in fact that's what gives life its mystery.

in some ways, the more obvious one's cultural roots are, the more likely one is to be somewhat narrow in perspective, even if one can be deeply grounded and strengthened by the healthy roots that implies.

of course some traditions give false strength, such as the myth that our tribe is of necessity superior to another.

reality gets its way and dismembers illusions eventually, though the road there can be long and arduous. likewise with our losing our apprehensions about communication across the Great Divide of gender, we all had a parent or sibling of the other persuasion, so it shouldn't be so strange, after all...

except it is!

it really helps to get that we can't be complete until we suss our complementary opposite, and meet in the middle. that's the alchemy, where the dross, the pettiness burns off and the gold of who we really are can shine.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty