When work doesn't work anymore Book

Ok so reading this as someone who has worked in early childhood (she devotes half a sentence to this...just saying that privileged women like her should get free childcare...so many problems with that I can't even start) and the rest of it is about fabulously wealthy women who are married to even wealthier men in capitalist jobs exploiting everyone else. And turns out they are not all happy all the time. Boo hoo hoo.

I mean. I actually don't think they should keep on stepping on each other to climb the greasy pole or whatever...but I also think the idea that you can just drop out or change your hours and be OK is an extremely privileged one. I didn't relate at all...I have had the luxury of some choices in m life but not to this extent. In a lot of places the author observed some inequity and ALMOST reached a real break-through but did not have the intersectionality to go further than rich people moaning. I mean there was even a chapter on "What about the (wealthy) men" FFS but no interrogation of her own whiteness and privilege.

The first few chapters were very repetitive and went around in circles, then it went to "What about the men" and at the end there was a laughably unconvincing disclaimer entitled "Why this is important to more than the upper class" which was about a page and a half of wealthy white liberal feminists being quoted as saying that all their poor friends agree with this (noone thought to actually ask a working-class woman though did they?). Then the conclusion was about how by dropping out of work she hates to do what she wants (write for money) she is teaching her son great values even though his father still works full time. I am sorry but I am not seeing the liberation.

I am inclined to cut some slack considering how old this book is and yeah I know women...all women...even fabulously rich women faced huge obstacles to literally get ANYWHERE. But I am disappointed by this book because I got it from the book exchange at university so I thought it was going to actually be theorising "women's work" (ie the exploited careers) which is an interest of mine. Somewhere this book calls itself "research" but it actually isn't. It's a bunch of anecdotes and quotes from someone called "Marie Wilson" who I wanted to look up but she isn't referenced properly so I have no clue why I should see her quotes as significant. I know who Gloria Steinem is and I don't hate everything she ever said but again she does not speak for most of us.

I know it is impossible to speak for all women but the length and depth of ignorance about most women or their work was pretty stunning. What percentage of women do this sort of work or have these sorts of choices to make? Even most middle-class women don't have it quite this easy in my experience. The "poor men" stuff was just silly...though I can remember trying to reframe feminism that way to bring men with us in the 90s and at the time I suppose I collaborated with that way of thinking too.

I may be biased because of some recent personal stuff but this to me was just an entitled stereotypical boomer ranting. She wants to smash a small corner of the patriarchy so she can be a wealthy wife to a wealthier man. MEH.