Women have come a long way in this country. Their battle for equality outside of the traditional gender roles has been long, frustrating and in many cases faced with opposition from those who desired to maintain the status quo. Many thought that after women gained the right to vote, that they would be happy with that, and only that, and would leave everything else alone. But as history has shown us, that was not to be, and I'm glad that it wasn't.
Whenever a group of people fight for something, it is inevitable that they, at some point, will experience repercussions of that fight. And women are no exception. Even though they were given the right to vote, I would be interested to see how many were harassed on their way to the polls and prevented from voting, as it was for the blacks after they gained the same right.
Women can enter into once male-only industries, such as business and law and politics, but we haven't seen a lot of evidence of what happened to them in the early stages of their infusion. Today, we see many women owning businesses and many female attorneys, but in the early days, what was it like?
Women were allowed in business yes, but in what position? I would venture a guess and say mostly secretaries and the like, and that in business as in law; they weren't taken seriously when they wanted to "strike out on their own." A woman opens a business, but was it going to survive? She had to compete with the big boys, but this is an ignorant assumption, for it's proven that most businesses fail within the first five years, regardless of who started them, men or women.
On a more private level, men began resenting their wives and girlfriends. I would attribute this to an infringement on their power and control within the home. For the longest time, men were in control, and controlled nearly every aspect of the home, and it was a part of their ego that they were the provider and protector. Once women could leave the home and pursue jobs and the like, men lost that part of their identity. It damaged their ego and many didn't have an easy time making the adjustment.
Now that women are seen, from what I can tell, in every aspect of our society, many feel that the fight is over. They see that feminism is coming to a close, and that the previous three waves that swept over this country are fading away and that a fourth will not happen. Personally, I'm not sure. I don't know if another wave of feminism will occur in our country. Right now I'm thinking "no" and that it's going to be more of a case of enforcement of the rights that women have secured. Women can occupy the same jobs as men, but are they paid the same? Most often they're not, and it's an issue like this one that I see will be at the forefront for women.
But it's not the only one. The mainstay issue is abortion. A woman's sexuality is the one part of her life that she and she alone controls. She can give it to whomever she wants and deny it to whomever she wants. Since it's the one aspect that no man can control, and has such a profound and personal impact, it is one that I'm sure will never be completely resolved; pro-life or pro-choice. No one likes being told what to do with their own body, be it what they eat, getting a tattoo or abortion. Since a woman's body is within her control, she cannot afford to lose the choice that she has a choice. If she does, then for all intents and purposes, she has nothing left to hold onto, and that's why she fights so hard.
There are other issues that affect women, ones that need to be addressed, talked about and eradicated, such as sexual assault, domestic violence and rape. These acts occur more than people realize and it's an abomination that we are doing so little to try and stop them. I have a friend who was in an abusive relationship for two years. I've had three friends that have been raped. When you look them in the eye and see what it did to them, you want to do something and know that this has to stop and stop now.
If there is to be another wave of feminism, I believe that it will not be a fourth one, but it will be the previous three waves we've had in this country, taking place somewhere else in the world. How women are treated and viewed in the Middle East has long been at the center of much debate and discussion. They are relegated to sub-citizen and in some cases sub-human existence. For example, women in Afghanistan were given the right to vote in 1964, but they've little progress outside of that. While under the rule of the Taliban in the 1990s, they had virtually every aspect of freedom and individuality stripped from them. Today, they are not under the Taliban's rule, but they still are restricted in many aspects of their lives, such as dress and their position in relation to men. So if feminism is going to occur, I believe that it will be a wave of global feminism in that part of the world.
Most people, mainly men, when they heard the word feminism, they shuddered, and associated it with bra burning and protests. Many of them would praise their wives and girlfriends and daughters in private but had difficulty doing so in public. They were resistant to allow them to venture out of society norms and to become their own person. And that's the rub, women are human beings, with their own desires, hopes, dreams, fears and wants, just like men do, so why do we want to deny a human being from attaining what makes them happy? We're adults and I feel it's time we started acting like it.
