Feminine Riles: Cartoons to Promote ThoughtOur cartoon series, “The Invisible Woman” addresses how the work of women goes unnoticed and uncounted in society.
In developed economies women produce about 40% of official GDP.
However, women also do most of the housework – 70% of it.
If the value of this housework (calculated at the average wage for a nanny or domestic – that is, at artificially low wages) were included in GNP, then we would produce significantly over ½ of total national output.
In 1859, James Carnegie, a Scots noble, while travelling in North America, acquired a magnificent Blood Indian woman’s dress.
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She had made it from the finest prepared skins of mountain-sheep.
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She had lovingly embroidered it with blue and white beads.
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Carnegie notes: Her husband stripped her naked of her prized garment and sold it to him for rum.
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Woman’s work.
Woman’s art.
Woman’s heart.
Woman’s soul.
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Man’s property.
The next feminist revolution: The back to Motherhood and Nurture movement.
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For tens of millennia, before patriarchy existed, Mothers were worshipped.
Motherhood was a highly respected profession.
Time to go back and to reclaim our heritage … Mothers are the foundation of the world, the guardians of its future.
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There is nothing unfeminist in choosing to be a Mother … it is the most feminist of choices:
>> PROVIDED it is a choice.
>> PROVIDED it is respected.
>> PROVIDED it is not a vow of poverty, fear, abuse, dependence, and enslavement.
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Take back the Night?
Hell no! Time to take back the Family from the Right.
The family values crowd talks endlessly about our “precious” children and that they deserve loving care by their moms.
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What do moms deserve?
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Better than a dead-end, unpaid job with no pension, no benefits, and no recognition. Better than to be run to death by work. Better than to be trapped in poverty.
Work done by men commands more respect than that done by women. Paid work commands more respect than unpaid.
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Important note to Family Values crowd: Want women to return to the home?
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Pay women enough to make the role sufficiently attractive for men to want it.
Want to equate child care and motherhood with sacrifice in a world in which women have education and options?
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Then get used to NO children.
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Proper support of mothers, and their children, is NOT entitlement. It is NOT welfare … it is Society’s future.
| Want women to stay at home? — ⚤ — Time to put our societal money where our fundamentalist family values mouth is. Make motherhood a real career. Provide mothers with decent pay, medical benefits, a pension, and educational opportunities. — ⚤ — No woman should ever be trapped in poverty because she chooses children. No mother should have to worry about her children because of losing her husband – whether due to abandonment, illness, or death. No mother should ever have to choose between an abusive husband and homelessness for herself and her kids. — ⚤ — If we can afford sports and war, we can afford kids and stay-at-home moms. |
Globally, women are refusing to have children. The result is demographic disaster, a baby bust, with birth rates in over 50% of countries now below the 2.1 needed for a stable population.
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Many governments have responded by offering to pay women to stay home and have babies.
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However, the incentives offered are generally less than a year’s pay at minimum wage.
Women know that once that bundle of joy arrives, they are facing at least a 16-year commitment. Do the math: That works out to less than 1/16th of the annual minimum wage for a 90 to 100-hour work week, with no holidays, benefits, or pension.
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This tells you everything you need to know about how the Patriarchy views female intelligence.
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All over the world, women are failing to leap upon these offers, causing the men who created them to scratch their heads in puzzlement and ask why their policies aren’t increasing fertility rates.
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And this tells you everything you need to know about what the Patriarchy has done to male intelligence.
| GDP not only fails to measure the value of mothers; it also fails to measure the value of Mother Earth. — 🗠 — GDP is never reduced by the depletion of finite resources or by the degradation of our environment. GDP is always increased by the damage we do to our planet, by species destruction, by ecological disaster, by increasing levels of pollution, and by environmental diseases which destroy our health and our children’s future. GDP is then further increased if we attempt to clean-up our mess. — 🗠 — Look on Man’s mighty works and despair … |
| Important note to Family Values people: GNP IS NOT increased by volunteering, by child-care, by elder-care, by housework. GNP IS NOT increased by building a family, by assisting friends, or by leisure time spent recharging one’s batteries. — ⚢ — GNP IS increased by family break-down, by child-abuse, by divorce, by wife-battering, by crime, by imprisonment, by social disintegration, and by environmental destruction. — ⚢ — “The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Senator Robert Kennedy |
| Family Values do not mean the family is valuable. — ⚤ — There would be no economy, no society, no community without the unmeasured, unrecorded, and unpaid work provided by the Invisible Woman. — ⚤ — What do we really mean by “Family Values” when we place no value on the work of creating, maintaining and caring for a family? |
Read more on this topic: Women’s unpaid work must be included in GDP calculations: lessons from history