Women can do everything – work, make a career, rule. Men help in the household, take parental leave, change babies. We have had equal rights for a long time! What are you upset about? "About sentences like this! Even before Corona. And now more than ever. I have been writing about feminism and motherhood for years and I am upset how much one is lost when the other happens – how quickly parents slip into old roles: She goes on parental leave – he goes to the office; she works part-time for years – he works full-time; she wraps, sucks, cooks – and is happy that he "helps" in the household as if he were a guest there. "Many women choose this voluntarily," I then hear and ask myself how voluntary a decision can be if we have been instilled in generations that an opposing life model is "unnatural". The bazooka sentence "Why did you have children at all?" unpacked (now we all imagine a middle finger), a reproach that fathers never hear. But no matter, we have long had equal rights.
Crisis clearly shows anti-feminist structures
Only at some point is the end. In a crisis, when the anti-feminist structures become so clear that ignoring them is complicit: A study by the Berlin Social Science Center shows that since Corona, mothers have reduced their hours more often than fathers. That mothers more often quit their jobs. And make themselves financially dependent on their partners – if only because 90 percent of all toddlers were part-time jobs before Corona. At home, however, 4.5 hours more care work per day – unpaid, of course. Equal rights? Ah yes.
In mid-April, when the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina called for the daycare centers and elementary schools to be largely closed for the time being, there were protests. Do you have no understanding of the double burden that mainly leads mothers to the brink of financial, physical and psychological breakdown? Well, the Leopoldina working group consisted of 24 older men and two women. One could almost have imagined that maternal concerns (let alone the other marginalized groups) fall through the grid in such homogeneous groups. It can happen – in a committee that makes recommendations for 82 million people. Yes exactly.
Home office is not synonymous with childcare
What are we whining about, it said in the newspapers (or from some authorities) – that's exactly what home office is for. I didn't know that home office was synonymous with childcare. Then educators can soon change diapers and play games, write emails and answer calls. Everything easy, no problem at all.
It is almost funny that nursery school staff are arguing with mothers because some feel pressured and others do not. And now, nursing nursing women are insulting as unsolidarious. Those who are right and wrong are completely irrelevant, because it is super practical that it is women again who get their hair on instead of rebelling against the never before male-dominated political system. Neither could they, because after sleep deprivation, telephone conferences, playing, cooking, cleaning and comforting, they no longer have any strength.
Everything a strange coincidence? No – a tried and tested tool of conservative politics: To make mothers feel guilty to keep them small. Exaggerated? Sounds like a conspiracy against women? It is. Called patriarchy. And is apparently as difficult to eradicate as Covid-19.
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