Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Conservative Feminist?

Severing the Ties That Bind: Women, the Family, and Social Institutions
by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

From the beginnings of the woman’s movement in the mid-nineteenth century, feminists focused on the injustice of women’s subordination to men within the family, and they gradually secured a number of reforms, beginning with a married woman’s right to own property in her own name. Second wave feminists even more sharply condemned the family as the cradle of women’s oppression, and they successfully campaigned for no-fault divorce, recognition of marital rape, and other forms or assistance for the wives of abusive husbands. Many of these changes represented significant progress for women, many of whom had previously lived in dependence and without any resources they could call their own. As recently as the 1960s it was often extremely difficult for a married woman to get credit in her own name.

Few today would, I think, dispute the positive value of these and related changes, but some are also beginning to worry that they have come at an exorbitantly high price.

If a married woman does not have income because she is a full-time homemaker, is it right for her to be able to get credit "in her own name," if it is her husband who will be held responsible for it? Unless it was the case that she would be solely responsible for her debts, but what evidence is there that the laws were written in this way?

Why did the feminists seek? It could be argued that what they wanted was a license to despise their beta husbands and to be free of his authority, not being equal to them in law but surpassing them.