The fortunes of socialist feminism

Abstract

Your new book Fortunes of Feminism -a selection of writing you’ve produced over the past 30 years -includes the 1994 essay ‘After the Family Wage’, written in 1994, in which you argued that neither the ‘universal breadwinner’ model (in which working mothers strive to emulate male employment patterns) nor the care-giver parity model (in which women are remunerated for being full-time stay-at-home mothers) is very satisfactory. Instead, you proposed the universal care-giver model in which both men and women are structurally enabled to share the load as a fairer solution. (As someone who campaigned in 1990s London for paid paternity leave, I’m extremely on board with that project). What progress do you think has been made towards that model of sharing the pleasures and pains of childcare?