The USA began as a country where women couldn’t vote and wives were basically the property of their husbands. One 19th-century woman who ran away from her husband was charged with theft because she “stole” herself from her owner, her husband. Trying to rectify this rather bad start on gender issues in the USA, the first women’s rights meeting in the world was held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, Today, there is a National Women’s Hall of Fame there. I took my daughter to it in 1988. The 1848 meeting issued the Declaration of Sentiments, which began with the words “All men and women are created equal.”
Many women were upset in 1870 when the 15th Amendment granted African-American males the right to vote, but did not grant women the right to vote.
In 1920, in gratitude for the work women had done to help our country in WWI and after much hard work by the suffragettes, Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures finally granted women the right to vote. I have told the bizarre story of how Tennessee became the final vote for ratification in a previous commentary. After WWII, as after WWI, many women who had been working outside the home during WWII, such as “Rosie the Riveter,” quietly went back to working inside the home, raising their families. By the 1960s, when their children were older, many of these same women wanted to resume working outside of the home. The uneasiness this caused was outlined in Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, “The Feminine Mystique.” The modern women’s movement took off like a rocket after that book came out. One of its leading voices was (and is) Gloria Steinem, who helped found Ms. magazine. I met Steinem at an educators’ conference in Washington, D.C., in 1995. I told her that I did a lot of work on gender issues in independent schools, and that many teachers of both genders were inspired by her work. Steinem said she was glad to hear that because it made up for a lot of the “s—t” (use your imagination) that she has to put up with. Steinem, at age 80, is still working for equal rights for all.
Well, women have come a long way, but there is still quite a ways to go. A lot of younger women to this day will reflexively say things like “I’m not a feminist.” However, if you ask them should both genders have equal rights the answer is “of course.” Well, equal rights for both genders is the definition of “feminism.”
Women make 77 cents for every dollar that men of equal qualifications make. The USA never ratified Alice Paul’s Equal Rights Amendment, which simply states “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” We could never get three-quarters of the (male dominated) state legislatures to ratify it. President Obama has spoken about assaults on women in the military and on college campuses. The video the alleged shooter at the University of California at Santa Barbara made talks of his discomfort with women. Some male politicians in the Republican Party in recent years have made bizarre statements about rape and pregnancy. The list goes on and on.
The situation in the many other parts of the world is even worse. Girls are discouraged from getting an education in many places. Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan because she was an advocate for girls’ education. There have been some appalling rapes in India that have made the news lately. A pregnant Pakistani woman (Farzana Parveen) was murdered by her own family because she would not participate in an arranged marriage. CNN reported last week that the man, Mohammed Iqbai, admitted that he had killed his first wife so that he could marry Farzana. Nice guy — is it any wonder why Farzana wanted nothing to do with him?
CNN also reports that the United Nations “estimates 5,000 women are murdered worldwide by family members each year in ‘honor killings,’ so named because the woman’s actions are considered to have brought shame on her family. But women’s advocacy groups say the crime is underreported and the figure could be around 20,000 a year.”
Need I say more? And it is not just women who need to be involved in righting all of these wrongs. Men — as sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, cousins, uncles, grandfathers, and human beings — need to be involved in the struggle against misogyny, worldwide.
Contact Tom Lees, a longtime area resident and educator, at firstname.lastname@example.org.