I totally had my feminist sensibilities offended today. One young lady who uses my library stated quite firmly that she doesn’t want to go to college because he’s going to be a house-mom and have her husband support her. Ay yi yi. She seems to think that her step-mother, who is a stay at home mom, doesn’t do anything all day. I tried to explain to her that running a household is work (and it’s often unsatisfying work at that) and that she’d be at her husband’s mercy for everything. Gah. The incredible lack of independence amazes me. This girl’s highest aspiration is to be a breeder who stays at home doing nothing. She’s a smart girl so this really leaves me dismayed.
What happened to the feminist movement’s gains? Why don’t young women today have a sense of how important independence is? We still have a long way to go if smart young women just want to be breeder layabouts. I can’t imagine this girl feeling happy or fulfilled when she eventually gets her wish. Of course this also relies on her finding someone to marry her. There’s plenty of men today who expect that their wives will contribute to family income. Indeed, in this part of the country it’s often vital for survival. I can only imagine the kind of neanderthal this girl will marry. It depresses me. What happens if her husband divorces her? She’ll be uneducated, inexperienced and have kids to take care of. This just looks like a huge recipe for disaster.
It’s been less than a hundred years since women gained the right to vote in this country. My grandmother was born into a world where women didn’t have suffrage. Women could only be nurses, school teachers or work in factories when she was growing up (which is why she opted to become a nurse). I’m not sure when this changed, but for a good long time women had no rights to any of their property – their children included. In the 1800′s a woman leaving an abusive relationship only had the right to the clothes on her back. Women were put into terribly restrictive and sometimes damaging situations. We must not forget this! Women still don’t have the same upward mobility that men do. An indication of this is how professions that are predominantly and historically held by women (like librarianship) are still sorely underpaid. (Teachers and nurses have unionized and fought and made gains. Librarians are behind the times. I make far less with my master’s in library science than I did with just a bachelor’s degree working in a corporation.) Caregiver professions, so often held by women, are generally under appreciated and underpaid. “Women’s work” is still looked down upon. Sexism is still rampant, it’s just less overt than it used to be. Homophobia is rooted partially in sexism.
I get so upset when I hear the next generation willing to give up all the gains so many women fought so hard and long to get.
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