Today is International Women’s Day (though South Africa celebrates their own Women’s Day in August), and for me it is often a time to ponder. My older students tend to say ‘Happy Women’s Day‘ while my younger ones say ‘there is nothing to celebrate if we still need a day for women‘
Personally I fall between the two.
I recognise that women are still discriminated against every single day, even though most of the population does not realise it. Women still earn less, even when doing the same job. They do most of the unpaid labour at home, are still the primary caregivers of children. They do almost all the invisible mental labour. Women’s rights are going backwards in many countries.
I have had to explain several times to my husband that he does not live in the same world as I do. He can catch the subway at midnight or walk on dodgy streets without having to look over his shoulder and clutch his bag more tightly. He does not feel fear when drunk or mentally ill people hassle him. He is physically more imposing than I am and his voice has a sound of authority that mine does not have. Predatory people don’t approach men and women in the same way. The life of a woman is not the same as the life of a man.
On the plus side, women HAVE come a long way. We have broken the glass ceiling in many professions, we now have the independence and economic power to divorce instead of staying in an unhappy marriage (about 70% of divorces are initiated by women). We are not automatically expected to be homemakers and mothers.
When I wanted to buy my first house in 1984, I was not allowed to sign a mortgage. At that time, only married women could take a home loan. And only if their husband signed it. Even if the woman was paying. If you became pregnant and were not married, you were not covered by medical insurance. I was routinely sexually harrassed by male coworkers, as were all my female colleagues. It was seen as part of the job. Never mind that you may just have been friendly, or wanted to dress nicely. Everything was seen as a come-on. Luckily the #metoo movement put paid to most of that. It exposed the awful underbelly of sexual abuse and harassment, particularly in the workplace.
Weighing things up, however, I sometimes wonder if women can have it all. All Swedish women work. The system is designed with two-year parental leave, almost free daycare, free education, and flexible working hours. Parents tend to share the picking up and dropping off at daycare and cooking/cleaning duties. But still women do most of the unpaid labour at home and the mental labour at home and work. They are the ones who remember birthdays, do the dentist appointments, make sure sports clothes are clean, arrange schedules. I have asked several female students why that is and they say they think it is a combination of biological imperative (women are still gatherers who multitask, and men are focused hunters) and the fact that it is expected of them, even today.
And…sadly, the US seems to be restricting women’s rights little by little. It would be so bad if we lost everything we have fought for.
What do you think?
[this is a repost]
I agree with 100% of what you said. Yesterday, we were heading to the supermarket with my husband and a clearly “unwell” person was walking in our direction. I was trying not to freak out too much but I felt so unsafe. My husband was completely unaware. He’s almost 2 m tall and I am not even 1.60 m… And overall, I think that the fact that we can multitask is a big plus for us (or minus because we have to do twice as much?). Even though we’ve made great strides forward, the world is more or less viewed by men and they don’t really understand women and how they work and what they need. Only recently do we start having studies done about endometriosis when countless women have been suffering from that from the beginning of time… Let’s hope we continue to make progress but somehow I feel that we peaked…
…and the wide-ranging effects of menopause have only recently been more discussed, while cardiovascular disease (more often seen in men) has been widely researched for decades.
The reason why discrimination persists is because of the boys club in charge. There is no proof that women are any more capable than men of keeping the home, raising children (John Lennon spent five years raising Sean and taking care of the household).
Brilliantly stated. Look at a young woman ( of colour), who attended a movie theatre and was requested to leave a certain sector of the theatre as it was deemed not ” appropriate for her ” skin” colour. She refused to leave and was forcibly removed – today she appears on our $ 10 bill. Think back to the movie ” hidden fences – 3 great woman in the Nasa Space world – working alongside men in the control room. At nasa. The Salem Bridge walk where USA troops did not approve and turned an ordinary solidarity bridge walk into a massacre. Think of an upcoming. Young police woman ( of colour) where a knock and enter mistake by ” white” policeman – and killed a wonderful young police woman – she was of course ” of colour”. USA has not changed – deliberate affirmative action causes. Discrimination in the USA states.