Via the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Chloe Bercovitz

Managing Editor

“I’ve yet to be on a campus where most women weren’t worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I’ve yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing,” said Gloria Steinem.

Ask any child what a mother is. Their answer will come easily.

She’s a cook.

She’s a nurse.

A teacher.

A best friend.

These answers, learned, carry themselves into adulthood. These answers breed a cycle that culminates into more of an expectation, rather than a choice.

I am a product of my mother’s love and selflessness. The meals, cooked for me, sustained me. The clothes she got that adorned me. I am the bedtime stories that invited me to dream big.

But, I am also a product of the feminists that have me nestled amid the books of the school’s library, writing this article. Their bravery is why I get to look forward to continuing my education; why I can live and breathe a life shaped by choice and not expectation. This is another type of love that I, too, have the privilege of carrying with me. 

However, this same love that I was writing about, prior, has been begging for me to come to realize that the very meaning of what it means to be a woman has lost something essential amidst the neverending fight.

Therein, it has come the time to redefine what it means to be a mother.

In Quebec, labour feminism was birthed by the proactive women in unions. From 1965 to 1975, the amount of women in unions increased by 144%, according to reporter Julia Métraux. These women challenged the patriarchal structures that impeded upon their capacity to take on leadership positions. Women were finally given their place in paid labour. Protections were won, be it a higher pay, affirmative action, or maternity leave.

But now, this begs the question: what happened to unpaid labour? Who is expected to be the cook, nurse, teacher, and best friend? How has labour evolved in the past century alongside that in which we choose to value and pay?

“How have we let progress fester into this heavy burden of domesticity, instead of one that is shared? While I commend the fact that girls and women are finally being taught to believe that they can accomplish everything – who is here to help actualize this?”

I see a world in which paid work has been rightfully added to women’s lives, all while unpaid labour remains expected, invisible, undervalued, and assumed.

We live in a culture that has become exhausted by the very concept that is feminism. While at its core, the definition has not changed – it has undeniably taken on new forms. It is a personal word that connotes differently to different people. For some, feminism is yes – empowering. For others, it may be exhausting or accusatory, and that can only worry me.

Among the myriad branches of feminism include girlboss feminism, pioneered by Sophie Amoroso following the publication of her novel in 2014.

Has girlboss feminism altered our perception of womanhood? 

Girlboss feminism can be attributed to a realistic mentality that treats the patriarchy as something undeniable – it would be naive to assume that it may be – can be dismantled. The only way to merit success is by emulating characteristics that are quintessentially masculine, namely that of which prioritizes individual successes. 

The distinction is rather blatant then, being framed around the very concept that one must work amid a broken house instead of putting in any effort to fix it. Besides, it is getting fixed already – slowly.

In that same vein, lately, women that opt for domesticity have become mercilessly mocked on social media. A lifestyle, bound by freshly-made food, handknit sweaters and fresh laundry, is no longer valued. Instead, these women have become scorned for setting women back.

And while mocking women is undeniably a feminist failure, this shift in worldview is also, strikingly hypocritical. Because, we must ask ourselves why women are making these conscious decisions? 

Every woman has unflaggingly been failed by the system. The patriarchy. We all choose to cope with this reality differently. Work may be as precarious as it is undervalued. Childcare is a luxury for many. 

You’ll either climb the ladder or retreat. However, whichever option chosen is undeniably rooted in survivalism.

Another defense mechanism is beginning to become misandry. Whether it is through sexist jokes or by getting into fewer relationships with men, women are coming together through their shared hatred towards the other sex. Many see it to be harmless – justified, even. But resentment in and of itself cannot redistribute power.

Let’s say that someone stole your pencil, so you called them out, angrily, and walked off. After the fact, if you retold this story to your friends, chances are that they would be supportive of your reaction. You had every right to behave as you did. They’ll all come to the same consensus that you are, in fact, the victim. 

And I understand the temptation. When something has been taken from you for so long, anger can feel like the only thing that belongs fully to you.

But you know, as well, that you could have at least tried to get the pencil back. And while the pencil thief might try to explain to you what a pencil is made out of and what it’s for  – and maybe this thief is wearing a Carhartt jacket and a Cocotte and you’d rather eat that same pencil if it would mean that you wouldn’t have to bear a conversation with him. You also know that with conversation, often comes a solution.

As long as women hate men the patriarchy will continue. 

Include men. Hold them accountable.

A good place to start may be in the home. If the role of a mother ought to be redefined, logically, so does that of a father. 

The average mother is educated. Ambitious. Capable. Working eight hours a day only to come home and begin her second shift. We’ve told her that she can have it all: a career, children, married life. She has every right to believe it. She does. 

“She burns out.”

There seems to be this feminized, cultural obsession with doing it all. Girls are taught that limitation is oppression. But we seem to have forgotten to teach boys that care is not emasculating. Progress has expanded expectations, rather than redistributing them.

“I shouldn’t have to ask.” 

Men’s participation ought to look like emotional labour, anticipating needs far more than responding to given instructions. Feminism was never meant to look like carrying the weight, all alone.

We’ve given women – mothers – this pressure to succeed in public and to be nurturing in private. To be the cook, the nurse, the teacher – the best friend. To feel ashamed to want a break. To ask for help. And above all else, there seems to be this looming sense of guilt that comes with it all, in a sense of betraying the very progress that others thought for them to have.

But feminism stretches beyond the scope that has given women the right to work. It’s about giving men the responsibility to care. I don’t believe that the patriarchy is just a class ceiling for women, for it too, has become a class cage for the many fathers right now, that aren’t cooks, nurses, or teachers.