Will we all soon become patriotic Tradwives of Brexit Britain?

Alena Pettitt, 34 has turned her back on modern ideas of female empowerment and has told how she is proud to be a traditional housewife (Picture: Alena Pettitt/SWNS)

“My job is essentially housework,” says Alena Kate Pettitt, doyen of the British #tradwife movement, and founder of the aptly named Darling Academy.

“I wouldn’t expect my husband to come home from a long day’s work and have to cook for me, because my role is being at home,” she explains in short BBC film, where she trills her way through her typical day.

This seems to mainly consist of ironing pretty cotton dresses, flicking her long blonde hair, and “submitting to and spoiling her husband like it’s 1959”.

Her assertion that she dedicates her life, 24/7, to her husband, is slightly disingenuous, because while she may not have a traditional nine-to-five job outside her immaculate Cotswolds home, she does run a lifestyle blog and writes books about “good manners, nostalgia-inspired homemaking and marriage”. She may be a more typical woman of 2020 than she asserts.

Church leaders in call for end to Brexit bitterness

The #tradwife movement started – where else? – in the bible belt of America, where the women have been dubbed the Housewifes of White Supremacy.

Here, Alena is quick to dismiss any suggestion that her love of aprons is any way linked to right-wing ideology, claiming that she is a feminist, though she does profess to being a “true blue Briton”.

Luxury lifestyle

Writing on her beautifully designed blog recently she said, “As far as I understand it, feminism is about equality – but how does taking away a woman’s right to fulfil her desires to run her household under traditional values undermine ladies who wish to go out to work?

“Please be aware, I am not here to tell women this is how it should be, but simply to celebrate the work we do in the home.”

Most women don’t see ironing school uniforms at midnight or cleaning out the hamster cage while watching EastEnders as much cause for celebration, and they definitely don’t have the luxury lifestyle that Alena appears to enjoy.

Life for most women in 2020 is tough. While Alena is “drinking tea… or cooking something delicious”, a typical mother is juggling the needs of her job with the demands of family life.

Many of the young women I know have daily schedules that would make the chief executive of a FTSE 100 company baulk.

Their typical day starts at 6.00am and ends 18 hours later when they fall into bed, exhausted but with tomorrow’s to-do list still to compile.

Nostalgia-inspired homemaking takes a backseat to the realities of contemporary life where the cost of basic living – mortgage and childcare – demands that both parents work. And for single parents, the pressure is even more intense.

And things could be about to get much worse. At 11 o’clock on Friday night, we will leave the European Union, putting at risk decades of social protection and workplace rules that have made women’s lives that bit easier.

Essential legal protections now just an aspiration

Many of the rights that we take for granted, from guaranteed holidays to maternity rights and anti-trafficking laws, are rooted in EU law. Even the very notion of equality between men and women derives its legal status from Europe.

These essential legal protections are now nothing more than an aspiration in Boris Johnson’s Political Declaration, which sets out where the Government would “like to be” by the end of 2020, when we finally cut all ties with the European Union.

“Trust us” seems to be the message from Number 10, but women have learned the hard way to never trust a man who cheats on his wife.

A recent report, ‘Brexit: A threat to women’s rights”, warns that the loss of EU legislation and plans for deregulation will strip away women’s rights.

“Add to an increased burden on women as workers, consumers, carers, mothers and NHS users, and it becomes clear that Brexit will be highly detrimental for women,” it concludes.

And it is not just women’s hard-won legal protections that are at risk. No-one knows what the economic impact of Brexit is likely to be.

Bulldog politicians may be confident about reaching a trade deal with the EU by the end of the year, protecting our access to the precious markets on which our economy depends, but there are no guarantees.

And the US Treasury Secretary’s bullish reaction to the Government’s plans for a modest tax on tech companies like Amazon, where he threatened to retaliate with trade tariffs on UK goods, suggests negotiating a partnership with America will be a challenge.

Brexit austerity

A failure to secure a major trade deal will plunge our economy into chaos, and research consistently shows that women are disproportionally affected when our economy suffers a downturn.

The report suggests that if Brexit does induce a recession, it will mean job losses for women, more cuts to public services, already slashed to the bone, and squeezed family budgets.

And it points to research by the House of Commons Library that shows that 86 per cent of the reduction in Government spending between 2010 and 2017 was in expenditure on services directly affecting women.

Why should Brexit austerity be any different to the price we all had to pay for the recklessness of bankers? Of course, it is possible that Boris’s Brexit will herald a new chapter in our nation’s history. One where, as the Prime Minister promised in his New Year message, “we come together and move forward united, unleashing the enormous potential of the British people”.

Perhaps the traditional world of Alena Kate Pettitt, where every “incredibly patriotic” British woman has a home library, wears pearls and a pinny, and has time to enjoy long walks in the countryside, is within our grasp.

Perhaps. But what is much more likely is that our country will cope, just like the overwhelming majority of hard-working women have to in managing their busy lives.

We will muddle through the next few years, sometimes panicking when the money runs out before the end of the month. We will reminisce about the halcyon days, before children and Brexit, when we thought nothing of spending a cheap weekend break in Prague.

And we will look back on that fateful day on Thursday, 23 June 2016, when the majority of women voted to stay in the European Union, only to be shouted down by a horde of angry men.

Will we all soon become patriotic Tradwives of Brexit Britain? – Susan Dalgety