more on feminism

I really don't mean to play the feminist role here, and I apologize if I write about this topic too often and make it seem as though I'm obsessed because I'm not. However, as Danielle so astutely pointed out in class the other day, MEH (or at least Period 4) is a very testosterone heavy class. I have noticed how we haven't really discussed women of late, which is understandable as it is not as interesting as some of the other topics discussed in this chapter, so I am using this blog as an outlet.
The family has always been considered a valuable and crucial institution in the Western world as it is seen as the stabilizing force in a lot of ways. Many think that the decline of the family would mean the decline of Western civilization as we know it, and this attitude was certainly prevalent in the late 19th century when people "believed feminism would dissolve the family, a theme that fed into larger discussion on the decline of the West amid a growing sense of cultural crisis"(836-837) because women were/ often still are seen as the only person really fit to run a household. However, a lot of the conservatives who felt this way about women in the household had no problem hiring these women to perform jobs that there were not enough men to fill and also because "a need to fill so many new jobs as cheaply as possible made women a logical choice"(835). The jobs were often in the realm of government and corporate bureaucracies, health care, and education. While some men still thought that even these jobs were an inappropriate place for women, most people encouraged this new work force. However, if women were working, they were not spending time in the home, which means that the men who considered women not eligible to participate in politics because of their duties as wives and mothers but then encouraged them to take jobs because they were cheap labor were hypocrites. Women were used conveniently by men whose supposed "morals" were just blatant excuses.