Happy International Women's Day! A good friend reminded me, so I'm passing it on. When I think of the suffering of women in the world, I feel angry, upset, and disappointed. I'd hoped my daughters would have a more equitable life than we did, and that our granddaughters would be free of second class citizenship. But we are still not paid equal pay for equal work, men attempt to dictate what we do, they brutalize and sell us into slavery. We can't elect a President or even Vice President who is female in this country, and our compassion and connection to our children is used against us at every turn. Where is the child care? How is it we let our daughters be sexualized practically from birth? Why, when over half the students in college are women, are most of their teachers male or untenured females? We not only don't own our bodies, we don't fight the situation. We train our daughters to diet and dream of princes.
I worry about the power inequity. Not only between rich and poor, but because the poor are so often women and children. And yet we do the the vast majority of the work that helps humanity survive. The men don't want to do it. They want to drink strong coffee in cafes and argue politics, then come home drunk and demand to have supper waiting. In our culture we could achieve more if we supported the few women candidates who want to really change all this. Not the women in suits who power broke; the women who identify with all women. It should not be shameful to be a feminist. All we want is fairness, and the oppression to end. But evidently that is too radical to acknowledge openly. We prefer to pretend that having a Visa card is independence. Wake up.
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