Are today’s young women taking Feminism’s gains for granted? Guest post by Ann M. of http://www.wordsmart.com.au/
The Lost Girls
by Ann M. of http://www.wordsmart.com.au/
For those of us in our forties, fifties and beyond, there’s a certain sense of satisfaction, knowing that we did things differently as women, leading different lives to our mothers. Personally, I’ve always been grateful for Germaine and Betty and Gloria and Mary, and, more recently, Naomi. They’ve walked beside me these many years now, my old friends.
Conventional perhaps as my life has been (a husband, a mortgage, four children) they have taught me how to fight the brave fight (as my five sisters call it) in the politics of marriage. They have taught me how raise my four daughters, mostly not to think that they need a man to define them, to value their female friendships, to be financially independent. They have taught me to forge ahead as an individual, not an easy thing when one is up to one’s ears in washing and children’s panadol. Being raised in a time when the feminists reigned: our how fortunate we were!
My observation now, watching my daughters and their friends, is that feminism is literally a historical concept. All they know of it is the module they learned in their Modern History syllabus.
I have conducted an experiment lately, asking the friends of my 19-year-old daughter whether they have read any feminist literature. Some reply that they have completed an assignment on the subject (like Marxism or capitalism, and about as relevant) and some look skyward, searching for the words to tell me they don’t know what I mean. One, a brilliant engineering student, said “What, like ‘Looking for Alibrandi’”? (I gave her The Beauty Myth).
It is a very curious thing, but they are, as a whole, a very socially conservative generation. They marry young again, they take their husbands’ names again, there is no talk about changing the world (nor even seeing the world for that matter). How in the hell did that happen?
Recently, when I started to notice this, I resorted to purchasing every feminist tome I could think of, from Wollstencraft to Wolf, and putting them on the kitchen table, announcing that this would be the Christmas holiday reading in our house. Well, I enjoyed reading them again anyway. Not sure anyone else even glanced in their direction. But I would read passages to anyone who would listen, and it stirred up my blood for a good few months again. My husband was pleased when the time passed.
The problem is not actually so much my own daughters, who’ve had healthy role models in all my sisters, and who have had my views somewhat leached into their bones. But it is the broader group of young women I meet, who are suspicious of feminism when it is raised in conversation, that concern me most.
The younger ones I have come across are more interested in being skinny, whitening their teeth, getting a spray tan and pairing off. I guess that sounds harsh, and maybe it is.
In a culture dominated by the Kardashians, The Biggest Loser and heavy drinking though, there is not much scope for introspection.
Perhaps they have their own way of seeing that their needs are met, but I don’t see it often. All I see are young women who have few choices, working long hours, dragging kids to long day care, adding long commutes to their days. I don’t see that much has been gained.
Women are still left poorly off when relationships end, and men still regain their financial position within two years of divorce. Women still tend to be overrepresented in ‘nurturing’, lower-paid jobs and professions. High-end restaurants are still filled with men at lunch. Pregnant women are still never asked: ‘And what do you do?’. Stay-at-home mothers are still totally invisible.
I told my girls, over and over: ‘Get a boy job’. I am amazed at how many women I know who tell their daughters to study something that they can do ‘with a family’. They omit the obvious point that: many won’t have a family, many can’t have a family, many will have a family and the man will knick off, and many more still will find that they would have preferred to do something they really loved, than to have taken the ‘family-friendly’ option. What’s the matter with you silly women?! You don’t tell your sons to study Speech Pathology or nursing or teaching.
I tell any girls who will listen that they ignore the lessons of feminism at their peril. They usually look at me curiously and wonder what language I am speaking. But, just occasionally, I’ve had them come back, when pregnant with their second child, when they are doing all the child care and all the housework, and say: “ Can I talk to you about why I am so angry?”. And I tell them to fight the brave fight, where many have gone before them.
Apr 20, 2012 @ 10:03:43
As a child of the early 60′s and a committed feminist I remember being surrounded by young women who assumed I was a ‘man-hating lesbian’. When I became a police officer I had to battle all kinds of sexism to be successful. Back then I was denied entry to the dog squad because my menstruation would upset the dogs! I never saw female doctors, lawyers or professional business women and the newspaper was full of ‘first woman…’ stories.
I don’t tell my daughter to get a ‘boy job’, firstly because I’d be reinforcing the notion that jobs can be divided by gender and secondly because in my daughter’s universe there is no such thing as a job she couldn’t consider. There never has been. We deliberately found female professionals as part of our commitment to feminism and she was shocked to discover at five years of age that ‘Men can be doctors too!’.
I agree with you, Ann, that there are still plenty of rivers to cross, including the way girls continue to be socialised to obsess about their appearance and the way other women continue to criticise them. It’s no great achievement that this is now also the case for boys and that anorexia in the male half of the population is on the rise. So much for equity!
Why is it that only young women are criticised for not embracing the feminist cause? My husband and my brother are both feminists, as was my late father. I know many young men who are as passionate about equity as their ‘sisters’.
Lets not lose sight of the incredible gains. A woman attending university is no longer front page news. In fact they make up at least half the population at universities. There is no occupation forbidden to women. The way my daughter and her boyfriend relate to each other is a source of joy and amazement to me. We now have young men raised by feminists. All this in just one generation.
Contrary to your advice, I have encouraged my daughter to think about whether or not she’d like to have a family and how she plans to deal with any career conflict when she does so. I stand by that advice. As a feminist I was shocked to discover upon her birth that I really couldn’t ‘have it all’ and that having a child and a career was very, very difficult. She should know this. If I had a son I’d be giving him exactly the same advice.
I’ve also encouraged her to define ‘success’ on her own terms. Having worked for 20 years to achieve male standards of professional success I was shocked to discover that, in fact, what really gave me satisfaction was being at home for my daughter during her difficult high school years. Why did I feel like a traitor to the cause? Shouldn’t feminism be about supporting our choices, whatever they are?
Perhaps the measure of a successful movement is that we no longer need a name for it. It just becomes ‘normal’. My daughter proudly calls herself a feminist. She wants to fight for genuinely equal pay and better support for parents. I hope her daughters and sons, if she has children, find her battle bewildering because it will have become redundant. I hope they consider feminism an historical concept because their generation will have achieved real equity.
I agree we’re not there yet, but I also think this current generation of young people are far more feminist than you give them credit for, even if they don’t wear the badge. We serve them best by giving them information and supporting their choices, even if they do involve spray tans and white teeth.
Apr 20, 2012 @ 19:24:25
I was born in 1955. As the eldest child of a farmer, I did anything a farm son would so. I was raised to be whatever I wanted and my objective was to be a doctor. Oddly, I never had those role models of which you speak – I just assumed I was equal.
As a manager, I fought for the right for my staff to wear trousers to work – in the 1980s. When I first came to Australia, if women married, in certain industries they were expected to resign – that was 1974.
Lately I have seen alarming retrograde steps – the repealing of legislation in a state in the USA, the terrible Max Tomlinson email (which would have made a good joke, but sadly it wasn’t meant as a joke) and the general GOP attitude: not to mention the attitude to women of our own opposition leader.
I have never been one to burn my bra or forgo my makeup or hairdresser. Why should I? Quality does not mean sameness.
However I also see a very sad lack of awareness in young women today. They think it has always been like this. They need to be on their toes, for I am very concerned we are currently moving backwards.
Apr 21, 2012 @ 00:13:37
I agree that the young women of today are not as aware of their feminist heritage and their responsibilities to it as we would hope.
I’ve just come away from 26 years of working with teenagers as a high school teacher, as lately as last year.
Mobile phones and television and magazines still take up the biggest chunk of their attention and they’re definitely NOT googling the rights of women around the world. Boys, squabbles, make up, all the treachery of being adolescents with their insecurities and concerns about appearances and accessories – hair colour, fake fingernails, pimples, weight – all of these things consume teenage girls in schools. And I suspect Tweenagers as well. Little girls of 8 are known to be worrying about dieting these days.
These girls didn’t appear to me to be at all political in any of the schools I taught in, in the last 6 years. And neither did the younger female teachers, for that matter.
Feminism is a dirty word these days amongst females. Try it out for yourself – try beginning a conversation with your families, with your men, with your girlfriends and younger women and report back on their responses. That might open out the discussion that we’re having here.