The feminist movement was supposed to be all about giving women the right to enter the work force. Now, it seems, it’s all about forcing women to enter the work force. So argues Sharon Dijksma, leading parliamentarian for the now-ascendant Dutch Labor Party (as reported in the Brussels Journal), who believes that stay-at-home mothers leech off the rest of society (hat tip: Bettnet):


“‘A highly-educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to work – that is destruction of capital,’ she said in an interview last week. ‘If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at society’s expense, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished.’


“Hence her proposal to recover part of the cost of their education from highly-educated women who decide not to seek paid work. Between 2001 and 2005 the number of Dutch women aged between 15 and 65 who were out on the labour market rose from 55.9 to 58.7 per cent. Dijksma says she wants to stimulate more women to join the work force.


“The proposal elicited fierce criticism….Twice [Dijksma] started a college course, and twice she failed to complete the course: her grades were poor, and anyway, at the age of 23 she was already a well-paid MP. Angry Dutch bloggers demanded that Dijksma pay back the costs of her unfinished studies before going after the mothers.”


Comments the Brussels Journal:


“Since the sixties, socialist feminists like Dijksma….have refused to accept that women also contribute to the wellbeing of society by investing in children. The time, energy, money, talent, and indeed education invested in the upbringing of children produces greater benefits for society as a whole than the pursuit of individual wealth and satisfaction. Apparently Dijksma’s ideal world is one where educated people spend their lives partying and spending, while the future of society is left to depend on a generation of children raised by poor and uneducated mothers.”


Hey, proposals like Dijksma’s are what happens when you let the government take over the cost of educating everyone as is the case in “advanced” European societies such as the Netherlands..