The fact that half your workforce doesn't have an opportunity to contribute to the country's growth?
I mean, cut the US or Europe's output by 25-30% (to match India's low female participation) and you're basically talking about eliminating decades of growth. People would be so much poorer and worse off.
And that's just at the national level. There are a whole lot of other issues at the individual level, and the fact that it indicates a lack of freedom and opportunity for nearly half the country's population.
Especially when a bunch of that extra income just goes to childcare and services to make up for having less time to manage the house. And then much of the rest is eaten in competition for housing, with prices increased by all the extra money from those second incomes.
I'm skeptical that we'd be much worse off, in actual experienced fact, if the norm were single-income households. I wouldn't be surprised if measures of contentment or happiness actually increased, overall.
Not at a policy level, really. Women could prefer stay-at-home spouses, to protect their own financial independence, though, even in a world so extremely into single-income households that such arrangements were somehow legally mandated (which isn't workable and probably isn't desirable anyway, but, even in that extreme, there'd be options, provided regulations weren't, themselves, sexist).
It's all hypothetical, anyway. We're not going back to that. Outside chance a few other countries do (some are still much farther that direction than we are) but the US never will, barring tyrannical theocracy or something like that. I do think we're buying rather less happiness than one might hope, for all this extra paid labor, but I also doubt that's a solvable problem, realistically.
You are surely making great points. Some people obsessed with mindless economic growth don't think there is anything beyond it. With full support of media, intelligentsia and economists there is this myth created where anyone not doing a paid job for external entity is an inferior person or oppressed person.
I have read endless stories in Indian newspapers where a person hauling their four member family on an underpowered scooter to a McDonalds meal is a aspiring middle class. On the other hand if a family is having a hot meal at home on weekend it is obviously because women of house is oppressed to stay at home and cook.
You do realize that prior to women entering the workforce a man, and his partner and three kids, working a full time factory job could lead a better lifestyle than two l5 engineers in CA can today, right?
Are you seriously suggesting that in order for women to have personal autonomy the quality of life for everyone needs to decrease? Really ripped your mask off with this statement.
California housing is so fucked because of ladder pullers and obstructionists. That has nothing to do with women’s rights.
It is progress relative to current position, where men have the advantage. It would be better if regulation was equalized for both in the other direction, but that did not happen.
That's an issue that needs to be tackled, certainly, but "solving" the issue by limiting women's rights relative to men and stripping them of their choices is horrific.
