On making “choices”

Abstract

The article points out the cost to women of the feminist decision to support women’s choice to work only in the home. The author argues that women who work only in the home hurt themselves, their children, and other women. The women who actually drop out may end up living in poverty. Dropping out, job-sharing, and working part-time are not solutions as long as these options are taken almost exclusively by women. The solution is to follow strategies that promote equal responsibility between men and women for childcare and housework, rather than encouraging women to work only in the home or to make their double burden work. Such strategies include marriage agreements that recognize the opportunity costs suffered by women who drop out of the workforce, and legislative changes that remove the tax and other benefits that subsidize married men whose wives work only in the home.