Letter to the Editor

Truth lies below statistics

In response to Brett Prather’s opinion piece on feminism:

A wise person once said, “Do not put faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.” It is advice one must keep in mind when examining any piece of data, but particularly data related to social and economic equality. The inherent problem with claiming that feminism is “just out for women’s gains” is that it overlooks the gender bias that currently exists in the dominant culture.

U.S. Census data observes that one half of the U.S. workforce is female, but it does not show the underlying reality that surrounds that fact. Statistics do not show how women are excluded from opportunities to receive, as Prather puts it, “commendation for being more efficient.” They do not show that men rarely share the burden of child rearing and housework. Perhaps most importantly, the statistics fail to account for the fact that women are routinely pushed into low-paying jobs that are often considered the low-status equivalent of traditionally male jobs.

Feminism does not promote unequal treatment or one sex over another. It does ask us to examine the nuances of our cultural environment with a fine lens and to notice when disparities exist. That cannot be done by providing a few statistics that lack a larger context; it can only be done through large-scale examination. When women are valued and encouraged in all professions, when men take equal responsibility for children and housework, and the clerical ghetto receives equal respect, only then should we consider changing feminism to equality.

Tizzy Asher
Women’s Center

Much has been told about abortion being illegal until the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973, but the medical procedure was actually legal in this country until the 1860s to 1880s, when individual states began to criminalize abortion — an attempt by the medical profession to establish dominance over midwives and homeopaths in a backlash to stem the growing women’s movement. It took about 100 years for women to regain access to safe, legal abortion.

As the criminalization and legalization of abortion illustrates, laws are made and unmade. The victories that feminists won yesterday can be lost tomorrow. This feminist wants the full range of reproductive rights and the security of those rights.

So maybe the statistics don’t convince you because there are exceptions to those numbers. You can point to a woman like Oprah Winfrey and say, “See? Women are doing OK. There is no sexism because she makes more money than many working men.”

Gender, class and race intersect. It’s easy to blur the arguments, but the issue there is classism. In a Fortune 500 company, the CEO earns, on average, 185 times the average salary of its men and women employees, according to Time magazine. The enormous socio-economic inequity between the CEO (of any gender) and the wage laborer (of any gender) is classism. The social or legal barriers prohibiting more women from holding leadership positions in companies, governments, schools, etc., is sexism. Furthermore, the woman who got to the top most likely had a much rougher road than many of her male counterparts. And finally, an exception to the “normal” inequity is still just that — an exception.

If you’re a male and you say you support women (i.e. your mother, sister, partner, daughter, etc.), here’s a very simple suggestion: put action to your words and do your share of the housework and the childcare. Then, maybe that equality in the home will carry over into the public institutions.

Until women’s rights are secure and until we achieve social, economic and political equality for both genders, feminism will continue to exist. Outsiders to feminism will say that the movement is dead. Feminism, like other social movements, develops over time. Women did not win the right to vote overnight. From the 1848 Seneca Falls declaration of women’s rights to the 19th Amendment in 1920, 72 … 72 long, long years passed before women won the right to vote. Where will you be in 72 years?

If feminism seems dead to you, maybe it’s because there has been a huge backlash toward women gaining power. Maybe it’s because feminists don’t seem focused, since they are fighting on so many fronts, from breaking down the gender barriers on the golf course, to gaining political office, to ending the trafficking of poor people for labor and sexual exploitation.

Take it from this feminist, the movement is not dead — maybe quiet, but very much alive.

Like any form of movement, social movements are dynamic. Between the large waves of victories, many ripples continue, interacting and converging, until another surge crests. Feminism will not die until the day when it is no longer needed, when gender equality is a reality.

Feminism

Why it continues

D.K. Nguy
Special to the Ebbtide

Remember the Boston Tea Party? The party that dumped Darjeeling tea into the Boston Harbor as a protest against British tax policies? This was just one moment out of the many organized efforts to boycott English goods, but this incident is retold in classrooms with no mention of the U.S. colonial women’s roles in the larger boycott. Many women led organized boycotts of English goods, and some even signed pledges of resistance against the British Empire’s policies.

These and many other stories of women’s participation in forming and shaping history have been omitted from the textbooks I read throughout my K-12 and college years. My teachers taught me about the United States’ founding documents: Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal;” the U.S. Constitution starts with “We the people,” which sounds inclusive. Well, the inequity is that the history in a typical textbook does not include the experiences of many groups. My teachers didn’t tell me that women, slaves and native peoples, if these groups were mentioned at all, were not equal to the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. And, this country’s basic rule of law (the U.S. Constitution) has had 27 amendments. Some of these amendments have included the many groups of people who were excluded by the “founding fathers,” such as (former) slaves by the 15th Amendment and women by the 19th Amendment, in gaining the basic democratic right to vote.

Why do I bother bringing up “history”? Here is the reason: It is easy to look back and recognize the injustices that existed, but it takes a more perceptive mind and courageous heart to look at the current stories and recognize the injustices that still exist. The injustices related to the “isms” of class, race, and sex are very much alive today.

Sexism exists. And feminism exists as an antidote to the injustices of sexism in a world dominated by the male social group. So, what is feminism? “The theory of the political, economic anad social equality of the sexes,” according to Merriam-Webster. For me, feminism is a shift of consciousness from the continuous barrage of a male-centered world to a reaffirming female-centered sanctuary.

Over the past 150 years, the U.S. women’s movement has won many battles, such as the right to own property, to vote, to attend college and to enter professions such as medicine and law. All of these rights were granted to men (of privilege) long before feminists won them for women. But we are far from equal. Here are some examples:

* Work inequity persists. Equal work, equal pay? No, not yet. For the same job, women still earn less than men. Take Wal-Mart, that gigantic retailer. According to the National Organizational for Women (NOW), “Wal-Mart pays its women associates an average of $0.37 an hour less than it pays men in the same job.” The glass ceiling is real. Even with the large number of women in the work force, women are still denied the top leadership positions; of the top positions, 95 percent of CEOs are men, and only 5 percent are women. Women are CEOs in nine of the Fortune 1000 companies, according to the Spring 2002 National NOW Times.

Many women are doing double shifts — working for the company at the office and then going home to work for the family at the house. In general, women spend 15 to 60 hours per week on housework, and married working women spend 37 hours every week on housework, which is about twice as much time as their husbands do, according Elizabeth Rider, author of “Our Voices: Psychology of Women.”

This feminist wants gender diversity in the decision-making positions, workplace equity and universal childcare. (Canada’s far ahead of the United States on this one.)

* Violence against women is an epidemic. In my childhood, my parents’ arguments got so heated sometimes that Dad tried to win by striking Mom. His habit of control continued until Mom grabbed a big kitchen knife to defend herself. This is just one story of gender violence. Every year, there are millions more.

According to the FBI, every day four women are killed by their intimate partners, which means that about 1,400 women die each year as a result of domestic violence. A leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide, murder by her partner. A woman is raped every few minutes. That’s not to mention the countless sexual assaults that are not reported. According to NOW, “The most conservative estimates indicate that 2 to 4 million women of all races and classes are battered each year.”

In the United States alone, every few seconds a woman is physically hurt and violated in some way. And how many more by the time you’re done reading this? This feminist wants an end to the violence against women. (And yes, an end to the violence against all people.)

* Women’s reproductive freedom is under attack. Today, 80 percent of counties in the United States do not have an abortion provider, and the current U.S. administration and Congress is in the process of banning late-term abortion.