The progress (and lack thereof) of feminism

This morning, as I was enjoying a lazy Saturday in bed with my coffee and my newspaper, I came across an article in the New York Times Book Review. The review tackled Gail Collins’ When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present, and the reviewer, Amy Bloom, did a fabulous job of making me want to run out to the bookstore and pick up a copy.

Some of the excerpts from the book were startling— it’s strange to think about how different things were in 1960. Women my age tend to assume that, although subtle sexist overtones color many contemporary interactions, overt sexism was something that belonged to a sepia past when women wore corsets and hoopskirts and were thought to be physically unfit for public office because of their occasional "fits of hysterics."

But today, while reading this review, I learned that in 1960, a woman named Lois Rabinowitz went to traffic court to pay her boss’ speeding ticket. That in itself is fairly offensive, but not really all that different from what bosses do to secretaries today— I’m always being told to make reservations for my boss, or buy gifts for his grandchildren, or have his wife’s car picked up from the dealership. No, the really shocking part is what happened when she got to court: the judge rebuked her for wearing pants. Then he “instructed her husband to use a tighter rein and told reporters that it upset him to see ‘women tearing themselves down from this pedestal.’”

This happened in 1960. 1960! My own mother was six years old then…old enough to be absorbing cultural messages about gender inequality.

In fact, it was from my mother’s experiences that I first learned how tenuous and recent our steps towards gender equality have been. When my mother was a teenager, she had two passions: science and cooking. Her school guidance counselor told her that women weren’t supposed to enjoy the former; her own mother, my fiercely feminist grandmother, occasionally insinuated that intelligent women weren’t supposed to like the latter. (My grandmother, by the way, may have come to this conclusion simply because she happened to hate cooking, herself.)

What was my mother to do? She failed her introductory physics class in her freshman year of college; later on, my grandfather would tell me that the reason she failed was because her male teacher didn’t believe women could be scientists, and so he failed every single woman in the class. (By the way, this was in the 70s, not in some bygone era.) My mother moved on to history and got her Masters, but then, when she married and had kids, she and my father faced a stark reality: he was likely to make more money than she was, so it made more sense for her to be the stay-at-home parent. She loved cooking and sewing, of course, and was willing to do those things; later on, when I was old enough to ask her why she’d stayed home with us instead of going back to work, she’d said, “As soon as I saw you, I didn’t WANT to be away from you. Ever.” Yet I’ve always been aware that, as voluntary as her housewifery has been, and as happy as she has been as a stay-at-home mom, the decision to stay home was still, in some small measure, predicated on the assumption that a man would have better job prospects than a woman.

My mother went back to work, full-time, after I left for UWC, although she also continued to be a full-time mom to my two younger sisters. This year, however, she’s scaled her hours back to part-time, mostly so she can spend more time at the house with my youngest sister, Sarah, who is sixteen.

Anyways, the point of all this is that we rarely think about how much has been accomplished for women’s rights just in the last fifty years. We’ve come to make up half of the workforce and half (and often more than half) of the freshman class at most universities. We’re a potent political force (potent enough, for example, to cause the 2008 McCain presidential campaign to inadvertently insult us by bringing Sarah Palin onto the ticket in a botched attempt to woo ladies to the GOP), and we’ve gotten most of the country to at least pay lip service to the idea that men and women can be equal partners in relationships, at work, and in civil society.

Of course, we still have a long way to go before we’re really afforded the ability to choose what we want to do with our lives as completely as men can. After I read the review article, Adam began watching To The Contrary With Bonnie Erbé, on PBS, and the topic of the day was, fortuitously, women in the GOP. The talk began with a discussion between four women— one liberal, one conservative, one moderately liberal, and one moderately conservative— about women in the workplace. Several important points about the predicaments of modern women were examined: a Democratic representative pointed out that, while the conservatives were right that being a parent is a “full-time job,” it isn’t fair to expect women either shoulder both their career job and their parenting job, or to choose between the two. I mean, only three percent of stay-at-home parents are dads. Articles about how the recession has apparently “shaken up” gender roles have popped up everywhere in the media this year— interesting, since the reporters writing the story (and the folks they’re interviewing) seem to take as a given that most women would rather stay home with children and most men would rather be the breadwinners. (For example, check out this article; it made me sad when I read the quote from a woman who says she doesn’t “want to see [her husband] in an apron” because she’s “lost so much respect for him” since he lost his job and became a stay-at-home dad. Wow— I feel sorry for the dude, to have married such a judgmental and shallow lady.) If we’re really seeing this amazing shift in gender roles, how come people still give me confused (or angry) looks when I talk about how my husband does the housework and cleaning, how he packs my lunch everyday? How come, in my year of working as a temporary secretary, have I never met a single male working in the same role I am? How come every single person I’ve been working to replace— every single secretary that has come before me at one job or another— has been a woman? How come every single boss I’ve had— every single company owner I’ve ever worked for— has been a man?

Paradoxically, eliminating chauvinistic behavior has become more difficult in light of the shift in attitudes that has come about since the 1960s. Nowadays, being identified as a sexist or a chauvinist is something people want to avoid, so they’ll couch their preconceptions in vaguely optimistic language, like, “Of course we need women in the workplace, but…” or “We all know that women and men are equal— except…” The conservative talking head on To The Contrary initially began talking about how women ought to start “taking responsibility” not to have children with a partner who doesn’t want to share in childcare: "Too often women are desperate to get married, and they end up in dysfunctional relationships with men who aren’t willing to help out.” When the Democratic councilwoman quickly countered with, “So, you’re saying that women ought to have unrestricted access to abortion and contraception, then?” the conservative hastily stammered something to the effect that she REALLY was talking about the evils of single parenthood and out-of-wedlock births, effectively calling all single moms terrible people for not trying hard enough to make their marriages work or for having sex outside of marriage.

But while we still have a long way to go before we achieve true equality, it’s good to remember that we’ve already done so much to advance gender equality. In 1960, I wouldn’t have had all the opportunities I have now. It would have been even harder to keep my last name after I married. (Hey, just ask my mom about that one.) I might have been chastised for wanting to work after marriage. I might be expected to be popping out a kid by now, too, and not focusing on my writing and my career objectives.

Let’s not stop working for equality…but let’s not forget to look back and enjoy our successes, our triumphs, our hard work— and what we’ve managed to accomplish in so short a period of time.