Some reflections on the status of women on Mother's Day

I have been preoccupied with balance between the sexes since I was a teenager, with an atmosphere of mutual respect and love as the foundation of a relationship. Over forty years later, I don’t see much of it in modern society and I find that immensely disappointing. I watched the women in my mother’s generation raise their children and live within the constraints of the times they lived in (1950s-1960s). Most of them did not work outside the home, and the few that did (in my neighborhood) were considered to be unusual. There always had to be an excuse for why they worked—they needed extra money to help with the mortgage, or they needed to supplement their husband’s income if he was sick or on disability, etc. In addition, many of them took care of parents and other family members who were old or sick, respectively (unpaid work). Rarely was it considered that a woman, a wife, a mother, would want to work because she enjoyed working, because she wanted to put her education to use, because she wanted to contribute to progress in society in this way, because she wanted to give something back in the form of her intelligence, diligence and hard work. It was not considered that she might want to be a part of the process, might want to make a difference, and might want to matter. Wanting to work, to pursue a career had and has nothing to do with wanting to abandon her role as a wife and mother. It had and has to do with honoring herself and her unique talents.

I write this today, on Mother’s Day (in the USA), because I find it astounding that women haven’t come further in the USA than they have when it comes to childcare and working outside the home. I find it astounding that Europe is light-years ahead of the USA when it comes to federally-funded childcare centers. I find it astounding that we are still arguing about the importance of providing childcare for women in 2017 in the USA. I find it astounding that women still find that they need to defend themselves when they have children and want to work, whether part-time or full-time. It is not that they cannot work, no, there are jobs for them. Of course there are jobs for them; this is 2017. But there is still a limited support system in place to make it easier for them to do those jobs. So most of the women I know who raised their children during the past thirty years worked part-time or relied on family members to help them juggle it all. The few wealthy ones found nannies that they relied on while they pursued their careers. I am not going to argue for or against working full-time or pursuing a career for women who have children. I believe that feminism gives us the possibility of choice, and each person must choose wisely and live with her choice. But if women choose to work, then they should not be subjected to the subtle critical judgment that still exists—that she is a bad mother for wanting to leave her children and be part of the workplace. You might say that I am wrong, that this is not the case. But it is. Just take a look at the current president surrounded by his cronies who want to return the USA to a time when women had little or no say in society and in their relationships. They are white men of privilege who view women and children as their possessions and their trophies. Many of them behave like hypocritical banal evil men, not unlike many of the men in Hitler’s regime, who were married with their family lives intact while they broke up Jewish families and destroyed their lives. These men spout the importance of family values while doing exactly the opposite—they do what they want, when they want, and how they want. They promote a culture of attacks against women, they bully women, they diminish women (think Trump’s behavior toward most women he dislikes)--in short, they do not respect women, no matter what they say. They are not nice men. Some of them have been accused of spousal abuse (e.g. Steve Bannon http://www.snopes.com/2016/11/14/steve-bannon-was-accused-of-domestic-violence/). So these are not men you would want your daughters to marry. These are men who purport to know what is best for women and children. These are men interested only in power, control, money and prestige; they cannot really love their wives or their children, because real love is not about controlling others or using them as trophies. If you are interested in controlling others, you do not love them. These kinds of men I simply cannot abide. I want nothing to do with them. I do not believe in dialoguing with them, because you will simply be shouted down, squished under their thumbs, bullied, diminished, disrespected, told you are stupid, dismissed, ignored, frozen out (in the workplace), told you are ‘too emotional’, too difficult. The list of abusive terms and behaviors is endless. These men should teach a course—How to keep women down. Even in the church, women’s roles are limited; men rule the roost. It simply has become boring to consider that old men in funny hats in Rome are telling us how to live our lives. While I respect the current Pope for his kindness and compassion for others, I have little use for the hierarchy of the church. I am more preoccupied with having a personal relationship with Christ. I remember back in the 1980s when I was young and foolish and didn’t grasp the depth of men’s power in the world, that I argued with a priest about the phrasing “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her…..” There was so much emphasis on the first part of this statement when I was growing up, that wives should obey their husbands. I argued with the priest that the latter part of the statement was just as important, and that I had no interest in obeying a husband unless he loved me as Christ loved the church. That put an end to that discussion, since most men simply cannot hold a candle to Christ. I guess I could have been considered a smart-ass at that time; I say now—good. More power to me. But after a lifetime of fighting injustice toward women in the workplace, and there is plenty of it, I am tired. I am leaving it over to the next generation. You’ll find me in my garden now.

It is astounding that in 2017 that women are still subject to abusive behavior publicly and privately. I applaud the women who stand up against these men, who fight them, who challenge them, who sue them, who take them to court (e.g. for spousal abuse), who call out their behaviors. I applaud the women who do all these things while raising their families, working full-time, and taking care of aging parents. I applaud the women I know today, on Mother’s Day, because without them, the world would simply not be a place worth living in. But I believe that the time has come to take another route toward changing the world. I believe that women should turn their backs on the type of world many of these men stand for. They should not marry them, they should not have children with them, and they should ignore them. I hope the younger generation of women will find it in their power to defeat these kinds of men. I will support them even if I cannot lead them. I cannot wait for these dinosaurs to die out. 

We've come a long way?

I like to think that the status of women in the world has evolved and gotten better since when I was a child. Certainly that seems to be the case when one looks at the number of women in the workforce at present compared to that number in my mother’s generation. 'We’ve come a long way, baby' as the old Virginia Slims cigarette TV ad used to tell us. We have much more independence and mobility than our mothers did; we are better educated, and many of us are financially secure and able to take care of ourselves. Marriage is no longer necessarily viewed as the best way for a woman to achieve financial security, and single women are no longer labeled as unsuccessful because they are not together with a man. However, old ideas die hard in some societies, so you will find men and women in modern societies who will defend the old ways of doing things—women should be married to men who are the breadwinners, and they should stay home and take care of the house and family. They should not be pursuing careers or earning more money than their husbands. Overall however, there has been progress since I was a child, and it makes me happy to see that; it gives me hope for the future.

But we are often lulled into a false sense of security concerning women’s rights and status; we assume that equality and balance have been achieved, when in fact they have not. Something happens to burst the bubble and forces us to face the fact that many women in this world suffer injustice every day of their lives, regardless of the society they live in—modern, aware, and flexible, or old-style and rigid. Psychological abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual harassment, rape, arranged marriage against their will, societal clamping down on the rights of women in the form of telling them how to act, speak or dress—all of these point toward a hatred of women that seems to be increasing in the world we live in. Recently, there have been several prominent displays of misogyny that have been well-covered by the media. I need only read about the recent rape, mutilation and murder of a young woman in New Delhi India, or about the young Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for daring to say that girls should be able to get an education, or about the fifteen year old girl whose parents sold her into marriage to a ninety year old man in Saudi Arabia. But it’s not just in these cultures where misogyny is rampant, even though these particular incidents are truly horrific. Take a look at our own ‘modern’ societies—women strangled by abusive husbands (as just recently happened in the town where I grew up); physical abuse of women (hitting, battering) at the hands of insecure men who do not want their wives or girlfriends to be better educated or more informed than they are; women married to abusive alcoholic men who destroy not only their lives but those of their children as well (in yet another tale of a young woman with a child who needs to leave her abuser but who ‘loves’ him and thinks he will change if only she loves him well enough). Psychological and verbal abuse in the form of mind games, emotional blackmail, sexual harassment, rude or threatening behavior, being frozen out, lack of praise or acknowledgment of any kind; this can go on in intimate personal relationships, but also in modern workplaces—I have witnessed such behavior during my thirty years in the workplace, and it is more frequent than you might think or want to believe. No matter how often I hear that women also abuse men, even if that is true, you need only take a look at statistics in order to find the truth—that far many more men abuse and kill women than vice versa. It is further proof that men retain the bulk of power in this world, that many of them do not want to relinquish that power, and that women have much work ahead of them before they have truly achieved equality and balance in personal and work relationships. I hope I see that day in my lifetime. It would make me incredibly happy to see that women become truly valued for who they are, not for their monetary worth as property to men or to their families. In the meantime, both men and women need to work together to create a world society that values women as much as it does men. Until that happens, the world will not be a safe place for women to live in. And a world that is not safe for women to live in, will ultimately become an unpleasant world for men to live in as well. We cannot rule out that perhaps one day, women will rise up en masse against their abusers, attackers, rapists and harassers. It will be interesting to see the outcome of such an uprising. I hope I see that in my lifetime as well.