I’m a cis male and I believe in the importance of feminism, but I hesitate to call myself a feminist because it seems like there is a presumption of understanding women’s experiences as if I was part of the Me Too movement. In some binary sense given how hateful and shitty men can be I’m absolutely a feminist, but I wouldn’t declare myself to be one. What is your standpoint?
To expand on what @FishLake@lemmygrad.ml said, this analysis ranges from reductive to completely ahistorical.
Women have been part of the productive workforce long before the notion of equality was even on the table. The idea that women were exclusively bearing and rearing children before the industrial revolution is nonsense, women were crucial workers in agriculture and manufacture and it was impossible for a family to be fed only by the patriarch.
The relationship between capitalism and feminism is actually partly the other way around from what you are presenting. Industrialization required centralization and urbanization, which meant it was easier than ever for women to organize with their colleagues and comrades and demand equal rights. It also eased access to weapons, which allowed for direct violent action to force the ruling class to pay attention. Capitalism accelerated or even sometimes spawned feminist movements, which were always in direct contradiction with the actual capitalists who were entirely male at the time.
The idea that women haven’t won anything is just bullshit. You are right that they didn’t “win” the “right to work”, because they had that “right” forever. But what they actually did win is a smaller gender gap in pay and economic opportunities, access to better education, right to political representation, legal prohibitions on some kinds of gender violence. If you think all of this was somehow “granted” by (male) capitalists because it is profitable, that’s just untrue, most of it was directly or indirectly hurtful to the ruling class when those measures were first introduced.