Ok, done. Got anything with substance to say?

I'm not a wage slave but I would rather be that than a servant to some man who thinks he can tell me how to live my life. (A wife.)

Down with marriage.

I work for myself and I am not married. I like it that way. Don't misunderstand, I love people, men included. I just don't want to own one or be owned by one.

Sorry, I don't have any statistical data which you should provide in support your arguments...

But I think the boss would request a "favour" in return ONLY when the other party doesn't truly deserve the promotion!

Sorry, darling, didn't mean putting you down... That suggestion of mine actually referred to your comment adout those women who "sleep their way up corporate ladders ".

Unfortunately, pulling tricks isn't restricted only fo the "street walkers" (i.e. "ladies of the night").

On the other hand, if "sleeping with the boss" is the only way a girl can secure some favoritism (and the boss actually bites her bate), then more power to her!!! <b>(as long as she can perform her duties<b> -- at her job and under the boss's table!!!)

Women have been turned into unhappy 'wage-slaves' by the march of feminism, according to one of the movement's pioneers, the author Fay Weldon.

The novelist, 78, believes only the better-off are able to cope with the exhausting nature of modern life.

Weldon told a literature festival that while the sexual revolution of the Sixties had ended the requirement for women to provide 'sexual, childcare and cooking services', the 'downside' of feminism was a new breed of women.

These women, she claimed, are like their male office colleagues and intent only on scaling the salary ladder.

She said: 'The downside of feminism is that women are now expected to go out to work, which some women would rather do than looking after the children anyway.

'Once it was only the men who were wage-slaves, and now it's the men and the women too. You know, I'd really rather blame capitalism.

'Probably 20 per cent of women are worse off and the enormous number are better off.

'You do feel some qualms for these women who actually have to shove their children's arms into clothes at five o'clock in the morning and get them off to the nursery.'

But Weldon, who has four grown up sons and has been married three times, insisted that feminism was the 'least worst' option for women.

'If you're an intelligent, competent and healthy person it's the most wonderful thing,' she said.

'If you have no aspirations and don't want to do anything except exist, than perhaps the pre-feminist world was better. There's never a perfect solution. There's just the least worst.

'And least worst is feminist society, which is more or less what we're getting now. And people are on the whole happier than they were before Although everybody's much more tired.'

The author, best known for The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil, was speaking at the Richmond Book Now Festival over the weekend, where she was promoting her 29th novel, Chalcot Crescent.

She also said Katie Price, the former glamour model also known as Jordan, was a positive role model according to certain people's expectations about how women should 'function'.

Weldon said of the celebrity: 'If it's to look good, then she's fine. If it's to make a lot of money, then she's fine.

'So I suppose she must be empowering for women because one wants them to be prosperous and they like to look good.

'She drinks too much and sleeps with too many people and talks about it too much for common decency, but who of us is perfect?'

It is not the first time Weldon has described modern women as wage-slaves.

In an interview ten years ago, she said capitalism crept in 'under the cloak of feminism' and 'cunningly turned women as well as men into wage slaves, so that 'the employer' not 'the man' is woman's new enemy'.

In 2004, in an essay on the newly-released Briget Jones film The Edge of Reason, she described the main character as a 'wage slave' for whom the feminist revolution had passed by.

msharmony: but wouldnt it be nice if we had an economy that permitted both choices for a woman without penalizing her family economically?

You must be talking of the Harmonious society! (no pan intended..) Something like that already exists in Sweden:
*** homemakers earn a salary!!!

There is a bit of truth in the actual statement which is the title of this topic; but I disagree with the implications: 'That women were happier before' or 'That things were better before' or 'That feminism has caused more harm than good to women'.

I would much rather have the choice to be a miserable wage slave than not.

I remember back in the mid-90s I was reading the state law books (out of curiosity) and found a law that was added, I think, in the mid-80s, which, in essence, made it illegal for men to rape their wives.

Presumably, it was legal before.

I'm not a wage slave but I would rather be that than a servant to some man who thinks he can tell me how to live my life. (A wife.)

Down with marriage.

I work for myself and I am not married. I like it that way. Don't misunderstand, I love people, men included. I just don't want to own one or be owned by one.