Feminism Is About Equality, And I Do Want[1]
It
In the last few months, there has been a percolating
undercurrent in American culture against feminism. Search for “I don’t need feminism” or "Women Against Feminism." You
will see not just the radical minority listed in the results but results
including mainstream major news organizations.
I don’t know what women against feminism think feminism
is.
Feminism is “the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds
of political, social, and economic equality to men.”[2]
At its core, feminism is about EQUALITY. To be against feminism, is to be against gender equality.
I can’t believe women really don’t want equality. (I shudder at the thought.) I have to believe they are simply ignorant of the definition or perhaps living in blissful bubbles of equality rendering the concept's necessity strangely foreign.
The world I live in is still completely gender biased. I need only make one statement to illustrate this fact unequivocally: I now regularly speak to the CEOs and VP of companies, and there is not a woman among them, not one.[3] (People… it is 2014!)
The world I live in is still completely gender biased. I need only make one statement to illustrate this fact unequivocally: I now regularly speak to the CEOs and VP of companies, and there is not a woman among them, not one.[3] (People… it is 2014!)
I will admit (no doubt needlessly), I am a feminist. I am what I call a Nouveau feminist.
As with any movement, beliefs change over time. The feminism of my mother’s era, what I would
call 1980’s feminism, meant women got to compete in a man’s career world, if
they conformed to the man’s world, clad in a boxy gender suppressing suit, with
an overcompensating aggressive persona. Nouveau-feminism means I get to
wear flowy pink dresses and the men in the room still have to treat my ideas
EQUALLY on their merit, regardless of the pink attire, the gender beneath, and/or
the happy-go-lucky attitude.
Let me tell you what feminism means to me, a woman,
with a man’s[4]
job, in the man’s[5]
world of software development, with a man’s[6]
college degree (physics).
Feminism means I get to be anywhere my ability warrants. I am EQUALLY entitled to be in an engineering program as any man, if my scholastic capability qualifies my acceptance. And chances are, I am going to be better than some men (AND WOMEN), and worse than other men (AND WOMEN).
If choose not to have a career, in order to raise well-adjusted citizens of tomorrow, I am both respected and valued for my contribution. And feminism is also about the fact that choosing not to have a career, in order to raise well-adjusted citizens of tomorrow is an equally respectable and valued contribution by a man.
Feminism is about equality in policy. Health care expenditures around my sexuality (such as birth control) are equally covered to health care expenditures around a men's sexuality (Viagra).
A woman's choices are equally valid to any man’s. Her choices are equally respectable. Her pursuits are of equal merit. And her decisions should be absent of societies gender based stereotypes.
Feminism means anything, choices, pursuits, decisions are of equal worth regardless of her or for that matter his gender. The anti-feminist movement concerns me because feminism is not about femi-nazis (with a supremacy streak) or victimization (with a coddling air) or entitlement (bending the rules to falsely enable parity).
Feminism is about equality and respect, not because we
are women but regardless of the fact we are women.
And if that is in fact what women do not need, then the
nicest thing I can say is that I very much hope their movement and clout is
very short lived.
Stupid:
Viral social movements based on ignorance.
Cool: The
fact that feminism of yester-year has created the world where I can be me, a
smart, ambitious, cheerful, professional, clad in pink regardless of the fact I
am a woman in a field still regretfully predominantly of men. And the last
portion of the sentence is why not only I NEED feminism, but you do to. (After
all, the AIDs virus was discovered by a woman, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi,
nuclear fission was discovered jointly by Lise Meitner, groundbreaking
fundamental stem cell discovers were by Gail R. Martin…. We are stronger together,
equal.)
[1] Forgive
the semantics, but I am going to replace the mainstream movement’s use of
“need” with “want.” Technically no one needs feminism any more than they need freedom,
love, religion or equality. These concepts are not needs; they are conceptual
and culture constructs we want.
[3] My experience is arguably an accurate
representation of the greater American economy where only four percent of
Fortune 500 companies are run by women. A girlfriend of mine would be irritated
by this statistic and my resulting conclusion that the world is biased. She
would say, maybe women just don’t want to be CEOs. I very much respect her
view. I even agree with the hypothesis that the percentage of women pursuing
the CEO career path may not be nearly as high as the percentage of men pursuing
the CEO career path. Nonetheless, I still believe the number of women in major
CEO positions underrepresents the number of women who BOTH want to be CEOs AND
are legitimately qualified.
[4] I
consider my job a man’s job, because the vast majority of people who do my type
of work are men.
[5] I
consider software development a man’s world because the majority of people who
work in software development are men.
[6] I
consider a college degree in physics a man’s degree because the vast majority
of recipients are men.
