I liked your article. It was well balanced, sensible and thoughtful. I wish we had more women like you in positions of authority- to balance out the likes of G. Greer.

I realize its probably quite impossible for Australians to consider this- but in many countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia - foreign maids are hired to look after children or to clean the home - whilst the parents go out and work or to free the wife from back breaking house cleaning chores.

I know of a few Australians who are working in Singapore who prefer to live there - because its easier to hire maids - to look after the kids , cook, and to share the housework. God knows you don’t want to come back from work at the end of the day and think about vaccuming the carpet and preparing dinner.

Australia has a vast land to manage- if we all sat down and thoughtfully worked out our differences and set aside our ideological and partisan barriers, we’d be able to turn the desert green.

My husband would love to be able to share in the care of our child. I know of other families where they have managed to wangle it so that they can share care, but the problem is that it’s financially precarious.

I’ll have to have a look at Joan Williams!

Its interesting you say you’d like your partner and you to be able to share care of your daughter. That is my ideal too & I think one of the remaining battles for feminism is changing the world of work so it is no longer structured around a “male” ideal worker ie. one with no dependents or one with a wife to do the care work. Instead we should all have equal opportunities to both work and care.

See Joan Williams (an excellent legal feminist) Unbending Gender for a good read on the topic.

I found your post on feminism really refreshing and sensible.

If this is what feminism is, can I be a feminist too?