Special Report: The State of American Women - Time Magazine

I thought this article as fascinating.  Spanning four decades, looking at what women were thinking and doing then as opposed to now. The report begins as follows:

If you were a woman reading this magazine 40 years ago, the odds were good that your husband provided the money to buy it. That you voted the same way he did. That if you got breast cancer, he might be asked to sign the form authorizing a mastectomy. That your son was heading to college but not your daughter. That your boss, if you had a job, could explain that he was paying you less because, after all, you were probably working just for pocket money.

I can hardly fathom a society that looked like the picture Nancy Gibbs painted to begin her report. Though this is the world my mom knows and lived through, by the time I arrived on the scene in 1983, the Feminist movement (and backlash) were finishing up and women were busy crimping, feathering their hair, doubling their shoulder pads and ripping their stonewashed jeans.  What I mean to say is, though the Feminist movement needed to exist in all its militancy and fervour, there were and are still many women who don’t identify as Feminist at all.  Probably because of the radical, man-hating females (with hairy armpits) it may bring to mind.

Essentially, feminist doesn’t mean feminazi. Feminism is about basic human rights and equality, which 100% of North America women enjoy and utilizes the benefits of today.  But there was a day, before I was born, when bras needed to burn.  When a woman represented a family facilitator whose sole purpose was to cater to her husband’s need for sex and a comfortable home.  She wasn’t a person or citizen first, but a wife first.  She wasn’t a doctor or lawyer but a mother and housewife. When her place and purpose was predetermined by her gender rather than by her ability.

When I stop and think about how things have changed with regards to gender equality (and will continue to change), I become, in a word: thankful.  Thankful for those of my mother, and grandmother’s generation who made a place for themselves in society when doing so was dangerous and extremely challenging.  Thankful for their persistence, in this slow process of change; So their daughters could grow up free to engage their ideas, abilities and talents with the world around them, as I am free to do so this very moment.

Gibbs reminds us, “We just came through an election year in which Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Tina Fey and Katie Couric were lead players, not the supporting cast. And the President of the United States was raised by a single mother and married a lawyer who outranked and out earned him.”  For those of us with double X chromosome’s, times have drastically changed.  They won’t stop changing either.