On Women

Earlier this year, a close friend of mine and I had a great conversation about the plight of women in society. She is disappointed with the lack of progress for women, and I have a different view. The plight of women is very real, especially in America, but around the world. There are many fights still to fight for the equal rights of both sexes. I wanted to repost portions of the letter here for everyone to read. I’ve deleted personal notes and moments that are not appropriate to release publicly, but the bulk of what I wrote about the present situation is here.

Problems? Sure…

I can quote you stats on maternal mortality rates (worse for black women per usual in this country), and I can quote you stats on child support payment rates by state, and I can tell you myths and truths about the wage gap and the burden that women take in caring for children and older parents over their male partners. I can tell you stories about poorer women who don’t marry because they find having a husband simply too stressful due to economics. I can tell you the stats for women suffering in doctor’s offices because they aren’t believed and female bias in a variety of parts of society and within various industries. I can tell you that making birth control and reproductive health available to women and girls reduces teen pregnancy, raises incomes and education levels for her and her children. I can show data from research that shows children do better with women who are educated and that women having the power of their bodies and their reproduction betters society in every metric you can mention. I could bury you in data that would confirm your points to the letter. However, I am not going to do that because I have another complimentary view. 

Don’t Count Women Out

Women are currently and have been on the most potent political forces in human history. The French Revolution was primarily begun by women who could not feed their children due to crop failures in 1791, which forced Louis XVI and his queen back to Paris from Versailles. In 2016, the biggest march on Washington was not a resistance march. It was the Women’s march that made those pink hats and iconic symbols of protest. Greta Thunberg has made headlines all over the world for her activism. Emily Pankhurst and her suffragettes got women the right to vote on both sides of the Atlantic. It was Elizabeth I that took on the Spanish armada, Queen Victoria modernized voting in Britain and made reforms that created the monarchy as we see it today. It was up to Elizabeth II to become the most popular and most beloved monarch in the history of the UK and probably of any monarch anywhere in the world. Princess Diana fought against her constant objectification in the press and called out the paps for what and who they are, and although she died because of them, she stood up and said, “No!”  It was women like Gloria Steinem that began the work of overcome sexism and creating equality for women in all areas of life. It was the women in WWII who built the planes and tanks that won the war for the allies. It was women who made the 2018 House victory happen.

Betty Ford brought alcoholism mainstream. Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in the creation of the United Nations and the modern liberal international order. Women helped make sure that Japanese women gained equality and the right to vote after WWII in a society that saw women only as rules of the home and mothers. A woman created the first abortion clinics, and yet another woman helped finance the research that resulted in the pill. In ancient times, women were the first to create calendars to track their menstruation. They have found bones counting 28 days in caves in France and Southeast Asia.

Glass Ceilings

In 2016, we had the chance to vote for a highly qualified woman to be president. This cycle, we had six women running, among the democrats. Sixty-four million people voted for Clinton in 2016. that’s 64 million Americans who thought that the woman was the best option. Nancy Pelosi did her best on the impeachment of Donald Trump, and the biggest people in Congress are fighting him are women like Kamala Harris, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, and Katy Porter. In our age of #metoo, women like Gloria Allred have led the charge to repudiate the piggish behavior of men. Megyn Kelly and others have taken down powerful men who don’t treat women as equals and human beings and simply objectify them. Now they are dead, going to jail, or at least put out of public life for the foreseeable future. Women did that; women did those things. Women are out there, right now, fighting for a better and most just society than ever before. Thanks to this movement, the horrors of what women go through are being brought out into the light of day, and we must all collectively make a decision about how we are going to proceed in our society. 

In media, there was a time when women could not anchor a major TV show or the evening news. Women were relegated to be the cute weather girl and not taken seriously. Barbara Walters, Gwen Eiffle, Connie Chung, Oprah Winfrey, and others changed all that and our perspective forever on what a woman’s voice meant when it came to the major issues. The most popular political TV show in America is The View, a panel of women. If you want to do anything in politics, you have to go on The View. They are the gatekeeper for every democratic nominee, a few republican nominees, and pretty much anything political that goes on in this country. It all passes under the noses of a panel of women.

In TV, late-night is still lacking in women, which is a huge problem. However, the two most popular day time TV hosts are both women (Ellen Degeneres and Wendy Williams). Now Kelly Clarkson has a new show and Tamron Hall has just begun. That progress extends to entertainment where we have women finally winning academy awards and being taken seriously not just for their actions but also their technical work. Much improvement (especially when it comes to looks and aging) must be done in this area, especially for people of color. 

Women have been an integral and important part of society and not just by staying home and raising children. The first computer code was created by a woman, and it was women who helped put a man on the moon. A woman made the calculations to get them to the moon and back, and a woman wrote the code to make that happen. Women have been the backbone of every office. They have done the quiet work that no one thinks about but is always incredibly important. In science, the first person to win Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry was a woman (Marie Curie). Women’s contributions to science and technology hardly stop there.

We recently posted an article on Rouges about Sor Juana De La Cruz, a nun in Mexico. He blazed a trail for women in education, science, and theology and became powerful in an institution controlled by men. She appears on the 10 peso note in Mexico. The Soviet Union sent the first woman, just a factory worker, to space in 1971. I’m leaving many out. My point is that women are amazing, have been amazing, and will continue to be amazing, and overcome challenges and gain new rights and respect in any decent society. 

Domesticity

I know that this doesn’t always matter to the individual experience. I’ve known different people who have had great partners and do co-parenting well and others who don’t. Clearly, this is an area for improvement in our society but it is improving in many ways. It is better today that it was for my Grandmother and that happened in 50 years. 

Conversely, I’ve also seen how men can be manipulated using their children. I’ve seen grown men who can bench 200 pounds break down crying in locker rooms and gym parking lots because they can’t see their children. I’ve seen men have tough conversations about relationships, parenting, and much more in-person and online. Contrary to popular belief, these things really affect men, especially men of my generation.

Men have been thrown out of their homes, lost jobs, their financial futures, and worse due to these terrible situations. I’ve also seen single fathers and the struggle that men face to be taken as a serious parent because our society presumes that men are basically babysitters for their own children. True equality means true equality, and that means everyone should be treated equally before the law. When relationships break up, it is important for the priority not to be the grievances between the parents but about the well-being of the children.  

On the bright side of things, child support is often enforced by the state. This is an area where we can continue to improve. Tax refunds and other government assistance are held back as well, which is good and just. We are still fighting for universal child care and pre-k, which helps both men and women. Do you know who first fought for that reform? Hillary Clinton. Women are the people that make these things happen and get these things done. If it weren’t for women, I think we’d still be living in huts. Women did that. They advanced civilization in every way. 

Progress is Progress

My main point is this: it can be easy to look at our society and see everything that is wrong, going wrong, not right, and generally bad. The long arc of history bends towards justice and I do genuinely believe that things are getting better.

Millennial women are moving the conversation forward on all sorts of matters related to equality in every area of life for women. We no longer live in an age where catcalling is ok. Remember how that was discussed in Designing women 35 years ago? Remember how no one thought anyone would watch a show about women over 5,0 but then The Golden Girls blew away every expectation about television? Shonda Rhimes, at one time, produced ABC’s top three television programs and created over 100 hours of televised programming per year? Things in my life-time have gotten better. It is sometimes hard to see the progress. It often is subtle and not obvious to the casual observer. But if you look hard, you can see how the slow erosion of dated ideas and dated habits are slowly changing.

Women have greater diversity and a variety of opportunities than ever before. The rates of education among women across racial groups is the highest in American history. I am angered when I read stories about women not being believed or biased in medical offices or worse. I am saddened and angered again when I see women not being treated like human beings. That does not inspire me to shut down and check visa requirements for Denmark. It inspires me to stand up and tell the story over and over again until those with the power to make change begin to move.

It’s Time

To advance any cause, we have to do the hard work of advocating, educating, and making change. That is how women got the right to vote and got into workplaces. That’s how we changed divorce laws, child support laws, and achieved welfare reform. Women were the backbone of civil rights, abolition, and began LGBTQA advocacy. Name a social movement, and I guarantee you that women were involved at an integral level.

Our society is getting better. It just takes time. It takes hard work, and it takes tenacity. Women are on the march all over the world. Our world is out of balance when it comes to the positives of both the masculine and the feminine, but it is coming back into balance. If you look close, you can just see it, and that is tremendous.