"How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement", by Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic, Vol. 293 No. 2 (Mar 2004),  pp. 109-128

Criticized by Steven Blatt


"But how so many middle-class American women went from not wanting to oppress other women to viewing that oppression as a central part of their own liberation--that is a complicated and sorry story."  p. 114

"So here we have the crux of the problem:  ask an upper-middle-class woman why she is exploiting another woman for child care, and she will cry that she has to do it because there's no universal day care." p. 126

     Flanagan characterizes hiring a nanny as "oppression" and "exploitation".  However, there is a good reason to think that hiring nannies makes the nannies better off than they would be if you didn't hire them.  The reason is that if the nanny didn't think the job would make her better off she'd be unlikely to take it.

    There may well be effective ripostes to this argument; however, Flanagan doesn't refute the argument, she ignores it.  I think this is a big flaw to the article, and that the article would have been much improved if Flanagan had acknowledged that there is this good reason to think that hiring nannies makes them better off, and hence that using terms like "oppression" and "exploitation" to describe this employment is inappropriate.


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