Fay Weldon says feminism was ‘bad for most women’
FAY WELDON, the author and playwright, claims feminism was bad for most women and argues that what is now seen as sexual harassment was once viewed as “welcome attention”.
Weldon, 85, said that the campaign for gender equality had shrunk the male wage to the extent that men were no longer able to support a family, forcing more women into the workplace to meet the shortfall.
The author of 2006’s What Makes Women Happy said she was still in favour of the “bloodless revolution” that was feminism, but argued that it benefited only one in three women.
Most women were forced to work and left the raising of children to nursery teachers, she said.
“By going out to work they halved the male wage, so a male wage no longer supported a family,” she said.
“Women had to go out to work to support the family. So for two in three women it really was a problem. The advent of the nursery has been awful. Because it’s so convenient; because you don’t have the responsibility of bringing up your own child. You put its care, its information, its understanding into the hands of someone else.”
Weldon, who releases the sequel to The Lives and Loves of a She Devil next month, told The Mail on Sunday Event magazine: “Not all women are good women. There are as many bad women as bad men.
“In my youth, what is now seen as sexual harassment was seen as welcome attention. Actually if men took notice of you in an office you were very pleased.
“Young women [today] need classes in low self-esteem, not in high selfesteem. They’re brought up now to have an unrealistic view of themselves. It makes them live in a sort of bubble.
“They won’t listen to anybody else. They deny the existence of other thoughts and other people. It makes them terribly easy to offend.” Death of A She Devil is published by Head of Zeus on April 6.