This oppression is found in the workplace, where we live, and in our personal lifestyle choices. Women face discrimination for their gender, race, and sexual preference, class, and age.
Poverty has become all too common for women and children. Often termed the feminization of poverty, all women are vulnerable and may be just a separation or divorce away from poverty. Even when employed full-time, women may live in poverty due to their systematic underpayment in “pink-collar” jobs.
Globally, women have become the source of cheap labor with little regard for health and safety. The patriarchy system of male domination subordinates women to the demands, definitions, and desires of men. In the workplace, men make the rules and women follow them. There is little difference between the boardroom and the factory. Few women rise to any status. The dramatic rise of prostitution in the Third World is testimony to male domination globally.
A quote from Karen Lindsay describes this situation all women face: "To survive within those structures, all of us, all of the time, in some way or another, sell ourselves to men... Our degradation may be more successfully disguised in one occupation than in another, but it is always there..."
As a woman, I have experienced male domination and societal oppression. I have been fortunate enough no to have lived in poverty but without my husband that could have been a reality for me and my children. If a divorce had occurred during the first twenty years of our marriage, I would not have been able to earn enough money in our small rural community to support my children. The United States is supposed to be an advanced society and yet these gender and racial inequalities are prevalent with little movement for change.
American women need to plead the case of their foreign sisters. We must not allow further agreements that disregard basic human rights and increase the world pool of cheap female labor. An example of this mistake is NAFTA. We need to resist globally and unite worldwide. Women know what is right for them in their culture and their context and we dare not try to tell the world what is right through our eyes. We must not allow agreements that originate in our country and oppress others in the world.
