Women Behaving Courageously: Really understanding feminism
Definition: Feminism is a range of social movements, political movements and ideologies that aim to define, establish and achieve political, economic, personal and social equality of the sexes.
Which brings us back to the dreaded word ‘feminist’. Rebecca West, writing for Good Housekeeping (hardly a rebellious magazine), said: ‘When many women hear the word “feminism”, they think about angry, bra-burning ladies in the 1970s, terms like “man-hater” and worse. But these days, a feminist isn’t someone who hates men, and it isn’t even necessarily someone who identifies as a woman. Anyone can be a feminist, and you don’t have to be politically active to support the cause.’
Being a feminist simply means believing that women and men should have the same opportunities; the same pay for doing the same job, the same rights to run for office, the same opportunity to be the boss, and the right to say no to inappropriate advances without fear of recrimination. Surely any father reading this book would want this for his daughters?
Having spent most of my life in personnel and human resource roles, I was horribly familiar with advertising jobs that had one pay rate for men and another for women — for doing the same job!
There was a time when you could actually advertise those differentials; now all it means is that the differentials have gone to ground but rest assured the interviewer will have two rates in mind when going through the selection process. It used to irritate the heck out of me. I would challenge this practice at every opportunity only to be met with the ‘men have families to support’ argument.
SO DO WOMEN!
There are so many women now bringing up children on their own for whatever reason, so that argument simply doesn’t hold water any longer. ?I’d always believed, price the job. Whatever the job is, whoever does it, this is the rate.
We’ve already met some of those early feminists in the suffragettes. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, women fought not just for the right to vote but for equal rights in marriage and property ownership.
At that stage only men could own property and if a woman came into a marriage as a property owner, her property was now owned by her husband. If the marriage failed, she walked away with nothing, even having to leave her children behind.
A second wave of feminism swept the world in the early 1960s when people like Gloria Steinem became a renowned social and political activist. A columnist for the New York magazine, she co-founded Ms. magazine and published the article ‘After Black Power, Women’s Liberation’.
Steinem’s mother had a mental breakdown at the age of 34 which left her an invalid. Her father was a travelling salesman, so a 10-year-old Steinem pretty much became her mother’s caregiver. Eventually the marriage failed and although Steinem didn’t blame her father for walking away, she did become aggrieved at the way her mother was treated when she tried to find work and the apathetic way the medical system treated her.
These formative years built into her a determination to tackle the social injustices women faced on a daily basis.
The tragedy for women is that if they declare they are a feminist, the label brings all manner of negative connotations, the assumption being that if you are a feminist you must hate men. So very rarely do women come out and proudly say ‘I am a feminist’. Yet ask them if they believe it is fair that men and women are paid differently for doing the exact same job or do they think it fair that women’s property should be handed over to their husband once they are married and they will state that it is categorically not okay.
The famous story of the Dagenham women workers who went on strike at the local Ford Motor Company in 1968 was eventually made into a movie. The misconception is that they went on strike for equal pay when in fact that wasn’t the case; they went on strike because of the company’s refusal to upgrade them to a skill level that gave them a pay increase. Men could be upgraded, but women were never upgraded.
The 187 women who downed tools were machinists responsible for making the seat covers for Ford cars. They were categorised as ‘B’ grade workers — in other words they were classed as unskilled workers.
What really offended them was that they even received less pay than men who simply swept the floors. Even doing these lowly jobs, men were also classed as ‘B’ grade workers and received a higher pay rate than the women.
Not even their union supported them in their fight for acknowledgement. The union felt that the fees these 187 female workers paid weren’t worth the union’s trouble so the women went on strike.
No seat covers were made. You can’t sell cars without seat covers!
领英推荐
So here is a feminism test: Try mentioning the word ‘feminism’ in a group of men and women and watch the reactions. Not just from men who scorn the word but from women who also seem to be threatened by the concept.
Then ask them if they think it is fair that women are paid less for doing exactly the same job as a man. ?NOW watch the reaction.
‘When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man; when a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch.’ Bette Davis
?If you are a woman OR man reading this and want to know more about my 25 Female Warriors and how you can better understand why the system of having different pay rates for men and women no longer cuts it, then grab a free electronic copy of the book?right here
Ann Andrews, CSP. Author, speaker, profiler, Life Member PSANZ
Author of:
Women Behaving Courageously:?How gutsy women, young and old, are transforming the world
?
An advocate and contributor to sustainable values-based business.
3 年Love your work Ann.