The usual suspects are trying to beat up Julia Gillard’s heartless and evil childlessness again, though Gillard herself was trying to make an argument about work/family balance.
The reliably ludicrous Ms Ove at her Australian blog reveals that the new(s ltd) standard in public life is compulsory Christianity praisin’ for agnostics:
Ms Gillard also says that she’s not particularly religious, and doesn’t regard marriage as all that important.
Two of the key pillars of Western civilisation, two grand institutions, two of the most precious and important elements in most people’s lives – Christian faith, and the family—and she’s openly dismissive.
Oh, Julia.
Oh, Caroline.
It’s somewhat astounding that Ms Ove didn’t take this opportunity to push her “big black mama” indentured labour childcare campaign. Julia could have time to have kids, to hypocritically attend church and be PM if only she’d hired a nanny from a South Pacific island!
And Jackie Kelly dispenses some advice for us gals who might want to go into politics and “have it all”:
Liberal MP Jackie Kelly, who resigned from the Government front bench in 2001 when pregnant with her second child, said Ms Gillard was wrong and urged ambitious women to marry men who earned less.
“I tell young women keen to get ahead in politics: marry down, always marry down, somebody who earns less than you do,” Ms Kelly said. “In a family unit when somebody’s career has to take a hit it will be the lower income earner. Marry someone who has a lower earning potential than you.”
What the?
Elsewhere: More from Helen.
‘marry down’ – hmm, sure that will help the egos of lower-income earning people everywhere.
Loved the Kelly line: ‘what she (Ms Gillard) did was generalise and that’s never a good thing to do in politics’ – I thought that was what politics was about?
“never a good thing”
Priceless! A dreadful generalisation to prove her point.
“Down” = “less money”?
So it’s official: there’s a ladder, with dollar signs on it, and that ladder has been ratified by a federal politician. Good old Australian values, eh?
Personally I’ve always thought of ‘marrying down’ as ‘marrying someone dumber than oneself’. Presumably, what Kelly’s husband thought of her remarks would depend on how smart he is.
which can only mean in a couple of decades look out for a pethora of country party female pollie candidates from…tamworth.
PC:
You’re obviously not familiar with Worthington’s Law.
Warning: loose edits in clip.
Correct PC
“Downer” = “less brains”.
If he’s earning less than her, Mr Jackie must be the lowest paid full-time Orthodontist in Australia. How do they afford to keep the nanny on?
My understanding was that private school girls stood by the maxim:
“Fuck down but marry up”
The only scandalous thing about the points of views of Julia Gillard, Jackie Kelly and Caroline Overington is that they’re all entirely unremarkable responses to the requirements of middle-class existence. Squealing about the demands of being a fully-employed bourgeois professional in Australia is hardly likely to engender sympathy from the rest of the planet.
Gillard is quite right to say that children are an unnecessary and frankly unpleasant burden, and to assert that people who have to look after children are disadvantaged in professional/bureaucratic careers. It’s only noteworthy that she’s said it because she’s not in a profession known for statements reflecting the truth. Jackie Kelly is just as correct to say that the only socially approved response to this problem is to arrange unpaid child-minding by stifling the employment of one partner in a bourgeois marriage. “What the?” You ask? That’s the whole point of tying the knot in a political economy, and the only unpleasant bit is that these days you seem to expect both partners in a relationship to be employed: that your expectations of middle-class life requires two full-time incomes are your own problems, nobody else’s. “Marry down”? Well, that’s just Kelly giving hope to the prole blokes in her electorate that someday they might be chosen by a high-earning politican to act as pre-preschool for their privileged offspring. Caroline Overington completes the trifecta of unremarkableness by pointing out the ideological justifications everyone knows about: religion and normative monogamy. Hey, if you don’t like them, take it up with your parents who disgorged you into this oh-so-apparently-unpleasant existence.
My advice, of course, is to immediately drop out of the whole disgusting affair.
I reckon The Age editorialised this one well today:
here
Politicans aren’t very good and BBQ stopper converstaion…
I think Ms Ove’s enlightening views would be what’s known as a c*nt punch.
Oh come ON, Gillard said nothing of the sort. No politician worth their salt would EVER say something that stupid. She said that the demands of being a MOTHER and being a senior level politician are currently incompatible.
She did not say PEOPLE, she said mothers. Note that she said if Peter Costello had been a MOTHER to his children as opposed to a father, he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in now (Treasurer, wanna be PM).
Talk about entirely missing the point.
Erm, Rebekka, talking of missing the point … Irony is notorious for producing unstable meanings. He’s the Devil Drink, and that is the persona in which he talks. This blog isn’t called Larvatus Prodeo for nothing.
Well stated DD.
My only quibble is that I’m sure refugee Iraqis, Darfuris on the run and kidnap victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army would be enormously sympathetic of the plight of fully-employed bourgeois Australians, if only they knew.
The reason why they aren’t is because said FEBAs are so stoical in their suffering that no media outlets have access to the abyss of their collective angst.
The suffering of FEBAs is one of the dirty secrets of the world.
FEBAs are martyred reproofs of sob-sisters everywhere.
If you say so, Pavlov’s Cat.
DD – you’re playing your own advocate now?
Ewww, Caroline Overington. Yucky.
She really is a joke wrapped in an even bigger joke.
“Oh Julia”. What is she about to break into song?
Oh well, I like to think the best of everyone. Pollyanna is my middle name.
I’m sure refugee Iraqis, Darfuris on the run and kidnap victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army would be enormously sympathetic of the plight of fully-employed bourgeois Australians, if only they knew.
The reason why they aren’t is because said FEBAs are so stoical in their suffering that no media outlets have access to the abyss of their collective angst.
The suffering of FEBAs is one of the dirty secrets of the world.
That is playing dirty, and you know it.
“It’s unacceptable for women over a certain income bracket to ever point out the power inequalities over a certain level, because once you get to that level then there’s always someone worse off so you should Shut Right Up and think of the Darfurians or something.”
I don’t buy that.
That is another disingenuous argument to make femininists shut up.
We who are relatively privileged should be aware of that factl, but why are men allowed to be middle class, bourgeois, and govern the rest of us, but not women?
I call strawman.
The great irony drought of 06-07 just keeps getting worse.
To think it all started by giving them the vote……..
I think it all started because there was no vote….
It’s not anti-feminist to take issue with the idea that “women”, as a bloc, are oppressed and discriminated against. It’s actually going to help the people who are really discriminated against if we can deconstruct that bloc a little, since as things stand the concerns of white, middle-class women are given disproportionate attention.
Most women in the world are legitimate victims of oppression, but are white, middle-class Australian women? Even without comparing them to other men and women in the world, but simply by comparing them to their most obvious binary counterpart, white middle-class men, they hardly come off as significantly worse. I’d say that at least in the elite arena of first-world, middle-class life, we’ve reached a position of rough-and-ready equality between the sexes. If middle-class women earn less than their male counterparts, and they do, there is surely at least some element of choice in the matter, given the level of education and opportunity for the white, middle-class female population (not to mention the fact that in a marriage, a woman has a legitimate, legal right over some of her husband’s earnings, if he’s earning significantly more).
I think Gillard’s comments were reasonable and pretty accurate. I know I wouldn’t want to do it (quite apart from the fact that I would make the world’s worst politician).
I would think it would be very hard to be a female politician and mother of young children unless you have support from extended family and/or lots of money to employ a carer and/or don’t mind leaving your child/children often when you have to go on business trips or to government functions.
It is true that we have to keep in mind how lucky most Australian women are (including myself): we have access to food, clean water, medical care, education and the like (although the stats on the indigenous community indicate we’ve still got a way to go there). But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider these questions. I’d like to think outside the square (beyond just maternity leave and the like) – I have done a post on the topic here. It’s not just a question for women, either – I think it has to be a question for everyone.
Read your post last night Legal Eagle – a good read.
This is the era of the wedge.
Just goes to show if you’re a politician, and you’re female, it doesn’t matter what you say about marraige, family and childrearing – it will always be wrong!
Actually, even if you’re just jane citizen – whatever you choose will be wrong from one direction or more.
But what if your world is not divided into right or wrong but merely options to take or not take?
Hmm — I went to a state school where they taught us not to fuck up, but I think it was a metaphor.
Re La Ove, cop that non-segue from paras 2 to 3 of the quoted bit from the article. ‘Religious’ has somehow become ‘Christian’, ‘marriage’ has somehow become ‘family’, and ‘not particularly’ has somehow become ‘openly dismissive’.
Is this deliberate sleight of rhetorical hand, or is she not bright enough to manage such a thing? My world is certainly divided into right and wrong, Steve: I think it’s wrong for journalists to misrepresent other people’s words deliberately in order to try to sway their readers’ votes.
The one nice thing about “Caroline Overington blog” is that even the commenters who support her are often more intelligent, more broad minded and more genuine than her crap.
But it’s interesting that the News Ltd stable of “bloggers” attract so much deserved flak from their readers, who largely aren’t those of us who comment in the actual independent blogosphere.
That gives me hope.
Demon drink’s comments were ascerbic and a bit real, but my plaudits go to Rebekka, who astutely unraveled the right-wing spin. As did most of the other contributors.
Don’t forget, this stuff is not about “feminism”, so much as an attempt to smear Gillard prior to the election.
As for some “feminists” mentioned here, they are not feminists in any real sense at all, so much as self serving middle class self promoters and self aggrandisers, who gleefully and maliciously profit at the expense of more deserving people both male and female, and are sometimes paid off overtly or covertly by the private think tanks to run interference as part of the usual efforts by these to disrupt progressive politics.
Diametrically opposed to genuine feminists these are mere reactionary opportunists. Think Marohasy, Devine ( or, if you like, the far worse male agit prop Salusinsky), much more than legitimate and talented commentators like Summers and Cannold.
Feminists are dead- right to mention opportunity availability, a chance for a “view of their own” as to growth and dead right to make mention of the many male wastes of space in politics. I,too, prefer a rep who is “there” full-time both mentally and physically committed to advancement of the country and its people, particularly at cabinet level, not dilantettes like Kelly, who like many of her male colleagues is a freeloader.
Closing,( oddly enough )I feel one woman who could be intellectually and temperamentally suited to holding down a key political job and brings up a kid, is Tanya Plibersek, the highly-educated Sydney MP.
But preselection machinations mean that talented candidates are less likely to get through regardless of gender.
(Garry Punch, indeed!!)
Traditionally, childless working spinsters have looked after mum and dad, into the grave. So, no opening of child-care centres Jules, pics with wrinklies at the hostel or with the hordes of grey nomads off to do good works in regional communities, only. And lots of pics at the office, working late on important policy ’stuff’.
An intriguing subtext here is when and how did it start taking two incomes to live what is now generally regarded as a middle class lifestyle?
““Fuck down but marry upâ€?
That would look awfully nice as a latin motto on certain dynasties’ coats of arms.
“Tamen matrimonium sursum” in tasteful Baskerville Bold under a shield with Platimium Mastercard on colour and well-drafted pre-nup on metal and Gossip Columnist and Afghan Hound rampant.
Post stagflation, mid 70s.
A lot of it has to do with the cost of a house being six times one yearly income instead of two times like it was in the 60s/early 70s.
That’s right, blame Nixon for going off the gold standard you lying tramp-for-Marx.
Yes, that was one of Bird’s more inspired comments:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/?p=2373#comment-13604
An intriguing subtext here is when and how did it start taking two incomes to live what is now generally regarded as a middle class lifestyle?
that would be the 2 for the price of 1 sale of 1983. coinciding with a glut of kitchen walls traded in, for the more trendy office wall. factory walls while never really fashionable, remained the wall of choice, for those at the bottom end of the wall market.
Most women in the world are legitimate victims of oppression, but are white, middle-class Australian women? Even without comparing them to other men and women in the world, but simply by comparing them to their most obvious binary counterpart, white middle-class men, they hardly come off as significantly worse. I’d say that at least in the elite arena of first-world, middle-class life, we’ve reached a position of rough-and-ready equality between the sexes.
This is the great lie which has been around since the 80s. See a few women and suits and assume it’s all over. Since when did women gain equal positions in government? on Boards of Directors? Right – never.
If middle-class women earn less than their male counterparts, and they do, there is surely at least some element of choice in the matter,
This is perhaps not so much a great lie as a great misinterpretation. Women “choose” lower earning jobs and “choose” the greater part of child rearing because, really, they still don’t have much of a choice. They are still pressured into this way of life as much as they have chosen it. To claim that women have “chosen” lower average earnings even for work of equal value, and for work that is undervalued, simply assuages male (or female antifeminist) guilt.
given the level of education and opportunity for the white, middle-class female population
Which the dreaded feminists fought for. Also, the type of jobs which the non-middle-class women concentrate in usually require writing and computer skills for which education is a prerequisite. Pre-feminism, few working class girls would have had any such education.
Also, why do you assume anyone with a good job is white? Have you never seen a person of colour in a good job? If not, you must live in a fairly backward part of the country. And why do you assume women of colour must be good, submissive non-feminists?
(not to mention the fact that in a marriage, a woman has a legitimate, legal right over some of her husband’s earnings, if he’s earning significantly more).
The partner doing the unpaid work has a legitimate claim over some of the earnings of the higher paid partner. It works out the way you say in more cases simply because the man is earning more and the woman is usually still doing the lions shareof the unpaid work. You’d like that to change? So do I.
I would think it would be very hard to be a female politician and mother of young children unless you have support from extended family and/or lots of money to employ a carer and/or don’t mind leaving your child/children often when you have to go on business trips or to government functions.
Yes, but you are always assuming that nothing changes. (I’m not having a go at you, after all, most people seem to have this problem.) what if you were in a male-female partnership and you, the woman, weren’t opposed to having kids but quite uninterested in being the primary parent? What if your partner was more talented in that sort of thing, sick of work, wants to get out of the rat race blah blah… Why shouldn’t you be a sort of John to his Janette?
No reason at all, except for the essentialist view that for a woman to take such a role would be some kind of crime against nature or God’s will.
There are quite a few blogs out there by men who are primary parents. James Lileks and Househusband are I think the best known.
That’s what I mean by thinking outside the box.
condaleeza rice doesn’t bother with kids and conservatives don’t slag her off, for obvious reasons
Kim
I would ordinarily like to comment on your thread, but last time I did (re tits and pussies being aired out at strip joints) you bit my head off! So this time, I might just sit demurely by and take notes.
Yes, you’re terribly marginalised JG.
Funny that this “debate” hasnt bothered to note that Vanstone and Julie Bishop are also childless. Surely the Minister for Education needs that Stepford wife/ reproductive touch more than the dep opp leader – dealing with our kids futures yada yada?
Just another boring example of our craven, cowed, uninspired media – recycling press releases written by cynical dullard hacks, instead of bothering with actual journalism.
Actually I don’t know whether anyone with children would want to enter federal politics either as a politician or even as a staff member. If you live in Canberra it might just be OK. Anywhere else and you are basically absent for at lthe very least one third of the year and more if you have the “bad luck” to elected from anywhere not on the eastern seaboard.
This is not a fun lifestyle IMHO.
At least we have planes now – I can’t imagine what it would have been like before that.
ok…gillard can be this weeks poligoth
Helen, you are right. I know a number of men who have decided to be the primary carer of their children, and I doubt they could manage being a politician successfully any more than I. I wasn’t intending to limit my comments to women, although it did come out that way!
I agree with Angharad, I really don’t understand why anyone who had young children and didn’t live in Canberra would want to become a politician. It would be terrible to be away from your family for so long. But then, I love to have my family around me – I’ve recently moved within 10 minutes walk of my parents’ place!
P.S. Thanks Steve!
Glad you enjoyed the post.
Have now updated it with reference to the debate in comments here!
Kim
I would like to join this discussion, but I cannot for the life of me understand why you have posted this. Do you have a position on any of these quotes or the issues generally?
Well, John, I think that debate about whether women should eschew a career or its summit in favour of some essentialist “need” to have babies is important. It goes to core issues of feminism.
Obviously, I think that the comments of Overington and Kelly are absurd. That’s clear from the post.
I call bullshit.
Anyone who thinks women aren’t STILL doing signicantly more unpaid domestic work, check out the difference in number of hours of unpaid work (women do more than double), and the differences between whether men and women expect to have their career goals modified amily, and whether they have had their career goals modified by care of dependents – and they’re doctors, working at the same hospital. You can’t get more middle class than that (I don’t see what race has to do with it, frankly) – click here
And then there’s the fact that women still on average earn 25% less than their male counterparts.
So, if you think that’s hardly significantly worse, perhaps you’d like to donate 25% of your salary to me, and come round and do about 10 hours of housework a week. Then we’ll be even.
The other point that reinforces Rebekka’s is there’s been very little change in either of those indices over the past few decades.
Kim, you sound like you think women are “forced” to have babies. Look,
I agree with you wholeheartedly as to many of the cultural arguments that indicate that women, for a long and developing time, have been conditioned into thinking they “need” or “have” to have’em. As men are conditioned as to their attitudes and responses to life in a culture out of sync with the bases and means of production.
In this day and age, many women still make an informed and premeditated (ultimate) choice for children. So the realisation must dawn as day follows night that these need looking after?
That’s the price for the “indulgence”, if that is the right word ( am already wearing a raincoat after saying this, so don’t bother with bile! ).
An interesting point made earlier suggested that modern yuppies have to pay six times as much as two-income families, as the single income “traditional” unit a generation or more ago, for their Mac mansion. And then there is all that infantile snobbery over 4-wheel drives and private schools.
It seems that so many supposedly- bright people have not realised in their lemming like rush into mortgage and family- dom, that increased demand causes increased prices ( the politicians have exacerbated this by pandering to the mortgage belt, usually on behalf of the banks). Just the same, is motherhood a vocation or a hobby?
Kelly’s comment is a typical response pandering precisely to the baser, mercenary levels of human nature that generate discontent and the hope of a materialist “fix” And it obviates from political parties the need for sound policy as to infrastructure and welfare.
But you wonder at the lack of thought from many people over the last generation, just the same.
It’s not just McMansions. My one bedroom flat cost just under four times the average income – if you think you can buy anything that’d fit a family in it for twice the average income you’re very much mistaken – it’s not just that people want to live in a McMansion. It’s that they want to live within commuting distance of their work.
Kim
OK. thanks for clearing that up. But I think you and a few others have gone way over the top here.
Is this really the core issue of “feminism?” I put scare quotes around ‘feminism’ because once I introduced a friend as “completing a Ph.D on feminism.” My friend corrected me that things have moved on and that in the 21st century it is called “Gender Studies.”
And who are these bogey-men/womyn “essentialists” You seem less interested in “feminism” than slaying the evil “usual suspects” who, by the way, seem to be er, er,…working “mothers!”
And as for Oves and kelly being “ridiculous.” Come on, the absurd one is Julia (whom I admire and respect very much by the way), for raising a red flag that her lifestyle choices are a political issue. Ove’s quite rightly questions the political wisdom of this. As Ove says, “she’s running for Deputy Prime Minster, not the school council.”
In fact, if Julia is raising the issue of work/family balance she has definitely let us know where “blanace” is. Work 1, Family 0. Plenty of other women have entered politics, raised a family and eschatalogical reassurances of regular church attendence. Julia has basically told the Australian public that her values and preferences have little in common of those whose votes she covets Silly Julia!
Still, now that Sussex Street has put La McKew on the payroll, Julia may end up spinning this very cleverly. Let us hope, for her sake, that she does. I have no doubt that the Divine Maxine will counsel Julia against denouncing cookie-baking!
On Ove’s “big black mama” idea, have you asked any of the said “mamas” what they think of the idea? I think it sounds wonderful for all parties concerned: the parents; the children; and the mamas. Win-win-win. Who could ask for more. Or perhaps only a owman with degrees in Developmental Psychology and Cultural Studies should become nannies?
Actually I think what Julia’s let us know is that for her, politics has taken priority over popping out sprogs. Not everyone’s choice, but she’s not trying to force it on anyone else.
Yes, plenty of women. Oh SO many women with kids who we see crowding the front benches. And as for the “reassurances” of regular church attendence, ugh, I can only assume you’d rather vote for a hypocrite than someone who tells the truth about their beliefs.
Has she now? How many Australians exactly go to church regularly? I would say in those terms, she’s pretty much on a par with the majority of the population. No problems there. As for the statements about motherhood and leadership being incompatible, well, anyone with half a brain will see where she’s coming from, no woman with kids is going to think it would be easy to be Prime Minister and still do a good job of raising them, and it’s really only the men who think women are walking ovaries who Jules is going to have alienated – and let’s face it, they weren’t voting for her anyway.
As for this:
Yes, let’s exploit some uneducated black women with no geniune opportunities by bringing them over here and getting them to do the domestic work us white ladies don’t want to do. Hey, it worked perfectly well in America until that pesky Lincoln started interfering.