Guest post: How much worse prospects for young people today are
Originally a comment by Nell on Capstone shmapstone.
We had a similar situation in the UK. When Corbyn emerged as the front -runner, feminist commentators used exactly the same arguments to try to get young women behind one of the female candidates. It failed. I think something that many older, more established people can’t seem to intuitively grasp is how much worse prospects for young people today are.
Most of us are thousands of pounds in debt, with no jobs or insecure casual jobs with wages that barely cover the travel costs. The government’s austerity measures have hit young people and women particularly hard. Housing benefits and unemployment benefits are going to be scrapped or curtailed for under 25s, and child benefits are going to be limited, but it only for women starting to have children now. We can’t afford to live once these changes come in. Rates of mental illness are increasing – about a third of my generation now have some form of mental illness, and mental health care is being slashed. and there is no sign of things getting better, no one likes thinking about the future because we can’t see anything good in it.
In the leadership elections both female candidates were pro-austerity, they said they would carry on with what the Tories started. So when commentators start saying you have to vote for the female candidate or that the left wing candidate is unelectable, pick one of the ‘centrists’, no one listens. Being able to vote for a female candidate on the basis that she is a woman is a luxury you can have if you don’t depend on the services she has pledged to cut. And we don’t really care if she was more electable because with her politics it wouldn’t matter, as long as they’re pro austerity we are screwed whether Labour or the Tories get in.
I don’t know what it’s like for young women in the US but if it’s anything like it is here, appeals to feminism and electability aren’t going to work, it will just turn people away from feminism and from mainstream politics. There’s also the danger that you turn people away from the Democrats completely. Over here, among many young people, and all generations in Scotland, the Labour-Right have become as hated as the Tories. If Corbyn gets overthrown and replaced with an ‘electable’ right winger, young people aren’t going to rally around his replacement, they’re just not going to vote. There’s a danger that using these tactics young voters will end up as anti-Clinton or Democrat as they are against the Republicans.
If feminism is really about the collective welfare of women, then female voters should vote for the candidate with the best policies for women generally.
That’s not an accurate description of what feminism is about.
To put it less curtly, feminism is a political movement for equality, not a welfare organization. Of course better conditions for women are an oblique goal, but the core project is equal rights.
Ophelia #3 – That kind of attitude will get you shunned by most of the people who advertise themselves as feminists.
Eh? It’s not an attitude, it’s a fact claim. I don’t think it’s a particularly controversial one, is it?
By the same token, the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t exactly “about the collective welfare” of African Americans, even though that was an oblique goal. It was a movement for rights, just as it says on the tin. Rights aren’t the same as welfare, although they tend to be a precondition of them. But it is quite possible to have good overall welfare but no rights – like pampered ladies of the rich classes in the 19th century for example: they had luxuries but they were confined and restricted.
There’s nothing in feminism which says that we should vote against our own interests just to see a token woman (or African American, for that matter) take a very visible position in an un-reformed system. So, we strive to change the system which by design disempowers us. Though it’s very unlikely with the present system so entrenched, if there’s a woman who can do that it’s a bonus but it’s not the primary purpose of what we do.
Ophelia #5 – Yes, that’s a controversial claim. What people consider to be the ‘goal’ of feminism is subjective, not a fact based claim. Equity-feminism seems to be rejected by a lot of main-stream feminists these days. Further, just because nearly everyone gives lip service to the ideal of equality doesn’t mean that others perceive them as championing that ideal.
Very much so. Other examples include the USSR and China to name two. They lifted millions of people into comparatively better welfare very quickly, but also severely constrained and trampled on human rights. Or KSA, where most people are better off than they were, but if you are outside the monarchy or theocracy (or a women) you have little in the way of rights.
Civil rights are not a pre-condition to improved physical welfare, but they do enable improved total welfare and ultimately greater physical welfare than limited civil rights.
It is so much the same in the US. Bernie is focusing on things that are fundamental to the survival of people in the lower economic rungs. The $15 minimum wage would especially benefit women and minorities, who are more likely to be in low wage jobs.
Beth @ 8 – I didn’t say it was a “fact-based claim,” I said it was a fact claim. Those are different things.
I’m not talking about “equity feminism” or about the difference between “equity feminism” and whatever they call what they take to be the wrong kind. That’s a different discussion altogether.
And you’re wrong. Equality is the core claim of feminism, and the differences proceed from there.
It’s very much true that things are worse now for younger people in the USA, too. Economically and career-wise, I mean. When I entered university at age 18 in 1984, a full semester of tuition at my state university cost about $1500, which is about $3500 in 2016 terms. That was just tuition. Back then, I recall that a salary of $40,000/year on graduation was relatively decent (in my field, Computer Science). Moreover, getting into the university was just a matter of having good grades and SAT scores.
Today students must pad their personal resumes with volunteering and extracurricular activities in addition to having good grades just to be accepted to the same university, and once accepted, they face single-semester tuitions of a little over $10,000. Upon graduation, they can look forward to a salary of around $70,000/year. So income hasn’t quite doubled, but expenses have almost tripled—and that’s just tuition. There are living expenses as well, and those have risen at the same rate.
So young people are working harder, paying more, and earning less. I know some younger colleagues who are facing decades of debt payments, as a result. How is someone supposed to save for retirement like that, when they are going to be scraping by, practically hand-to-mouth until at least their 40’s and sometimes even 50’s? The answer is obviously that they are not.
Is it any wonder that younger people are rejecting establishment candidates, and electing instead for those who promise them at least the same level of opportunity and life-success as we, their parents, had and have?
I would generally agree with Ophelia @ 3 about the main purpose of feminism, but also with Maureen @ 7. Feminism should focus on gaining women’s rights, surely there is controversy in what actions count as feminist? I can’t see how something could truly be feminist if it results in a worse outcome for a majority of women, but I can see how policies could improve women’s lives without necessarily being feminist.
Sometimes Clinton’s campaign seems to be using feminism more a campaigning tactic than a goal in itself. If she was running on a specifically feminist platform with policies that would help women, or if she was offering a similar platform as Sanders and being held back because she was a woman, I think more young women would back her.
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Ophelia Benson #2 & #3:
This is an internet comment section, so I can’t go into Hegel-length diatribes about what I mean in minute detail.
What I meant by “welfare” I meant the condition of women in the broadest sense. It was used as an umbrella term which includes rights (human, civil, reproductive & health), legal & economic equality etc.
I did not explain this, leading you to erroneously believe that welfare, equality and rights were separate issues in my scheme. Welfare may be an imprecise term for my intent, but it was the best I could think of at the time.
I was also trying to make more specific points: (a) that women should vote for the candidate with the most female-oriented policies (among other considerations), and (b) getting a small number of women into positions of power is secondary to the needs of the millions of women that live under them.