If Only Early Feminists Had Put Equal Pay on the Back Burner

IIn the early 1970s, I was a single mother in NYC with two small children. As part of left-over Johnson social and economic policies, day care programs were widely available in the city.  My kids attended a terrific center a block away from my apartment.  It was state and federally funded, and we were charged a fee based on what we made, ad infinitum.  The center was in a brownstone, well equipped, and filled with light. The caregivers were young, excited to make a difference in children's lives, and were paid a decent living, 

Then, under Nixon and the Republicans, it all changed. Mothers who made over a certain income could no longer send their kids to the center.  The cap was too low for private care, and most of us would be thrown back on welfare.  New York parents organized a protest and I called the local NOW organization and asked what they'd be doing to support us.  The answer was: "Child care isn't part of our platform."  

Reproductive rights and equal pay have remained front and center throughout most of the feminist era, with child care on the back burner. The primary objective of the movement has been to enable upper middle class women to enter the global corporate system as equals to upper middle class men. Working class mothers have been disregarded, with most of their jobs paying so little that equalizing their income with those of their male peers would be irrelevant anyway. Starting in the seventies, many of us lucky enough start out in the higher educated classes went into "career think" mentality, with our focus driven by money and a shallow meaning of success. We "had it all" and our kids had latchkeys.  

The essential problem is that men in the upper corporate ranks are making far too much, and bringing their female peers up to scale isn't the solution. Unfortunately, questioning this inequitable economic system driven by global corporate monopolies has never been part of feminist ideology. 

Think how different things would have been if a half century age the movement had made child care as much a priority as abortion rights. Mothers at all income levels would have had the same opportunities as men and their childless peers. Women who wanted to work wouldn't have had to start off feeling compelled to parrot male aggression.  Not to mention that we would have had a well-funded and universal early social and educational structure, which has gone missing for decades, that would have given kids of all races and backgrounds a sound and equal foundation. 

Impelled by the pandemic, perhaps this is changing now. However, maybe if feminists in the seventies had incorporated into their platform all aspects of our gender lives, including the consequences of reproduction, we wouldn't have such disparities, such elitism, so many Trump voters today.