To mark International Women's Day, Italian women are arranging fluffy mimosa pom poms in colourful Murano vases --I just did a quick search for thought-provoking articles and was disappointed to find that none of my usual news sources featured anything remotely applicable. Not to diminish Iranian women's struggle for equality or outreach missions to Afghan women, but these stories don't resonate with me --and I resent the media's message-by-omission that women in relatively peaceful industrialiased countries have evened the gender playing field.
It is, perhaps, not surprising that a myth of equality has developed in recent years - an assumption that everything has been won. New Labour flaunts its female-friendly credentials while women everywhere enjoy the fruits of feminism's efforts: they do brilliantly at school and university, get on the board, are paid the minimum wage or more, feel good about sex and contraception and abortion, are aware that they don't have to take violence or sexism or abuse from men. Furthermore, we now talk of liberation in all sorts of ways: we "take care" of ourselves with ever more indulgent products; we give ourselves "me time", whether it's shopping or pampering; we take responsibility for our flaws with cosmetic surgery; we embrace pornography and stripping as liberation.
Though none of today's articles impressed me in the least, much writing floating in cyberspace did (including Katharine Viner's While We Were Shopping, quoted above). So, among photos taken by and with some of the most influential women in my life, I'm going to link you to a smattering of modern feminist blurbs in the hope that they'll be debated or at least pondered... So, make some tea, settle into a comfortable reading position, and when you're done, please let me know what you think about my collection here. First Thank You goes to Liz, for clipping tasty things and sending them my way --don't stop!
On August 22, 2006, Forbes.com, the accompanying website for a leading American business and financial magazine, published an article entitled "Don't Marry Career Women". It caused such an uproar that Forbes issued a 2-sentence apology (?) and pulled the article (and its accompanying slideshow) from the archives of the Forbes.com website --but direct quotes can still be found:
- "If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003). They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Social Forces, 2006). You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001).
- A 2001 study (American Journal of Sociology) found that having a wife who works less than 40 hours a week has no impact on your health, but having a wife who works more than 40 hours a week has “substantial, statistically significant, negative effects on changes in her husband’s health over that time span.” The author of another study summarizes that “wives working longer hours not do not have adequate time to monitor their husband’s health and healthy behavior, to manage their husband’s emotional well-being or buffer his workplace stress."
- In 2005, two University of Michigan scientists concluded that if your wife has a job earning more than $15 an hour (roughly $30,000 a year), she will do 1.9 hours less housework a week.
- While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women--even those with a 'feminist' outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner. "
- "When it comes to murder, you're actually more than twice as likely to kill yourself as to be killed by someone else, giving weight to the old truism that you're your own worst enemy."
- regarding the trend of young, Ivy-League women who are abandoning the career track to be stay-home moms: "Somehow, as highly educated as these girls are, they don't seem to have heard about the 50 percent divorce rate! Somehow, they imagine that their husbands' incomes - and loyalties - come with lifetime guarantees, thus no contingency plans for self-sufficiency will prove necessary."
- "If you look carefully, you'll see that women's wages are up to 80 percent of men's because male wages are down, which evens things out. It looks as though the dirty little secret of the last 30 years is that the job market played women off against men to depress pay."
"The latest instance of fear-mongering against feminism has been occasioned by the 51st Commission on the Status of Women held at United Nations headquarters, which has gathered organizations working on women's issues and heads of government from all around the globe. (After recent reports on the deplorable and sometimes declining status of women in many countries, this year's meeting seems especially primed for action.) But for Janice Shaw Crouse, writing at the rabidly conservative Town Hall, the meeting portends dark days ahead. "As if we didn't have enough trouble already at the United Nations (U.N.) from feminists pushing a radical agenda on the world, they are now trying to 'reform' the whole 'gender architecture' of the U.N.," she writes, referring to the widely embraced idea of creating a new well-funded women's agency." -Carol Lloyd
Lisa Miya-Jervis is the editor of "Bitch - Feminist Response to Pop Culture":
"I'd been married less than a year when a customer at the bookstore where my husband works approached the counter to buy a copy of the feminist magazine I edit. 'You know,' a staffer told her while ringing up the purchase, 'the woman who does this magazine is married to a guy who works here.' The customer, supposedly a longtime reader, was outraged at the news--I believe the phrase 'betrayal of feminism' was uttered--and vowed never to buy the magazine again...
As long as the yeti of the antifeminist world -the hairy-legged man-hater- roams the earth, we need to counteract her image. And as long as wives are assumed -by anyone- to be obedient little women with no lives of their own, those of us who give the lie to this straw bride need to make ourselves as conspicuous as possible."
For the past 12 years, Ann Pappert has researched and written on assisted reproduction. "As the techniques have proliferated, it has become clear that assisted reproduction is less about empowering women and increasing their choices and more about serving the interests of scientists, doctors, and the pharmaceutical industry. If curing infertility were truly the goal, then the focus would not be on a high-tech medicine but on, for example, eliminating sexually transmitted diseases--one of the leading causes of infertility--or improving the health of low-income women, who are particularly vulnerable to problems with infertility. But, of course, in the U.S., low-income women are not the market for assisted reproduction. While the majority of assisted reproductive techniques are centered on women, ARTs are not women-centered."
Financial guru Suze Orman, from Women & Money:
"All my previous books were written with the belief that gender is not a factor on any level in mastering the nuts and bolts of smart financial management. Women can invest, save, and handle debt just as well and skillfully as any man. I still believe that— why would anyone think differently?
So imagine my surprise when I learned that some of the people closest to me in my life were in the dark about their own finances. Clueless. Or, in some cases, willfully resisting doing what they knew needed to be done. I’m talking about smart, competent, accomplished women who present a face to the world that is pure confidence and capability.
Women have been thrust into an entirely new relationship with money that is profoundly different from anything we have ever encountered before. The shifting roles of women at home and at work have dramatically changed where and how money interacts with a woman’s life. Yet what I see is that while women have established or expanded their roles and relationships, when it comes to navigating the financial ramifications of this new world, they are using old maps that don’t get them where they really want and need to go.
It doesn’t matter if I am in a room full of business executives or stay-at-home moms, I find the core problem to be universal: When it comes to making decisions with money, you refuse to own your power, to act in your best interest. It is not a question of intelligence; you absolutely have what it takes to understand what you should be doing. But you simply won’t bring yourself to take care of yourself financially, especially if those actions compete with taking care of those you love. Your inner nurturer reigns supreme; you do for everyone before you do for yourself.
No matter how good your intentions may be, they are nonetheless draining you."
