What Women Want

Women usually want different things. Elizabeth Badinter’s Le conflit: la mère et la femme (“The conflict: motherhood and womanhood”) traces today’s women’s servitudes and dilemmas. In her book, she highlights the social pressure for mothers to breastfeed and the politics that have made this issue a priority worldwide without significant scientific evidence that breastfeeding is necessary. Badinter points out that in countries where water sanitation is problematic, breastfeeding makes a lot of sense. She asks however about the Western Woman, her aspirations to work and be Man’s equal and the consequences of breastfeeding policies and politics on women’s chances to reintegrate the workforce after having children. In a context where Europe’s welfare system is failing due to an ever decreasing birthrate and supports for parents that are quite arbitrary, what are decision-makers doing wrong? They just don’t know what women want.