With March gone, and women’s month gone along with it, I begin to wonder just why there is a women’s month.
To me, the answer seems simple — women have been discriminated against and abused for centuries, and awareness needs to be raised about the current injustices. Most people think that now that women can vote and go to college, everything is fine. However, if people examine the statistics, they would realize that women are still unequally paid, violence against women is still acceptable and people throw around degrading terms for women like it’s no big deal.
I was first intending to write this column on feminism and why most of it is too radical and alienates those who would otherwise support the cause — including myself. This perception of feminism could have an effect on what people think of women’s month itself.
But then I did some research, and I discovered that the violent protesting and bra-burning days of the 1970s are no longer accepted by the feminist community as a whole; they are even seen as a mistake by many. So this led me to wonder why I still think of feminism in this seemingly negative and factually incorrect light, as I suspect many of my peers do as well.
Let me first give some background knowledge, as I understand it, of the feminist movement. The feminist movement is commonly split up into three waves.
The first wave covers the beginnings of the movement from the 1800s to around the time when the 19th Amendment was passed in 1919 granting all women the right to vote. This wave primarily concentrated on women gaining equal political and legal rights.
The second wave is the one that we are most familiar with, covering from around the early 1960s to the late 1980s. This is the period that is covered in many high school classes, and its main focus was equality and ending discrimination against women.
The ideas that were expressed in this movement were such that women lose their identities through the false belief that they are only good for childbearing and homemaking, to challenge the social construction of women and the lack of a minority voice in this movement.
A version of this article appeared in the Apr 2 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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Please you ladies cry about equality, equal pay, no glass ceiling but the second it's time for a divorce you act like it's the 1930s. All of a sudden we need to support you for several years because you're too helpless to find work. All of a sudden we need to pay you because you're somehow entitled to a certain lifestyle. You feminists want to win men over you need to address how unequal divorce is in this country.
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When the woman in the marriage earns more than the man, she can end up supporting him. It's not a default to the woman needing to be taken care of, it's entirely based on current employment and salary at the time of the divorce.
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That's a good point but in a lot of states the man has to pay for the woman's attorney and that has big effect as well. If the girl has OJ's lawyers and the guy can only afford a cheap lawyer it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how it will go regardless of income.
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I have seen divorces go both ways. Some women who cannot find full time employment after a divorce are working to support their children. Child care, which historically is more commonly provided by the mother, is expensive. And some women do not have a college degree, especially women of an older generation, which makes it very hard to find a job which will pay for child care as well as food, utilities, rent, etc. Most of what is paid by men now is child support; in my personal experience I have seen very little alimony paid to a wife, or husband for that matter, after a divorce. Alimony is not as common as I previously thought, I have talked with a number of divorced women and what they receive is child support. It is also the man’s responsibility to provide for their children and see that they are well taken care of. Sir, when you are willing to pay all the financial bills for children and are willing to step back and let women argue for their own equality as human beings, then maybe we can have a rational discussion about feminism and how it is misleadingly taught in high schools today. Until then, we cannot have a rational discussion because you refuse to put aside your prejudices against women and instead have decided that all women who are divorced are simply trying to milk their divorce for all it is worth. Women deserve equality as human beings.
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Everyone can find full time employment some women choose not to so they can justify alimony payments. Why work when your ex husband has to support you for the next decade. You don't see the contradiction in arguing a man has pay for everything or a women can't make it but somehow women are equal. Now that's not my argument that's yours, my argument is women are equal so do your share and stop relying on your ex husband for everything you're not feeble and helpless.
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Women get paid less than men because on average they work a lot less.
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Make me a sandwich
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hahahahaha oh man you're a comedic genius. Did you come up with that line on your own?
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You forgot the "sudo"
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"Feminism" is stupid. "Egalitarianism" is not. Stop calling yourself a sexist term and I'll stop treating you as a sexist.
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LOL you're a woman.
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I think the nasty comments here show exactly why it's a mistake to water down feminism in order to avoid alienating people: it just doesn't work.
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There was one sexist comment posted. Women DO win where divorce and child custody are concerned, and women DO get paid less than men because they don't work as much. There is nothing sexist or wrong about stating these facts.
That feminists call anything that doesn't agree with them "nasty" or misogynistic shows exactly why feminism is stupid and outdated.
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Except for the part about women not working as much as men being a fact, because it's not. If it's a fact, then cite your source. There have been numerous studies showing that when women and men work the SAME job, women are typically paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes.
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Please David, cite one source, just one, that shows that a woman working as a, say level 1 accountant for company x gets paid 77% of the salary a man working as a level 1 accountant for company x gets paid.
I have never seen proof of that claim ever.
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You've never seen a source for the 77-cent-for-every-dollar assertion because it is in fact a myth. These studies never take into account the ACTUAL job you have (so it'll compare beauticians to plumbers because they require the same number of years of training, and of course the male plumber makes more than a beautician). If the study DOES look at the same job, it doesn't look at the same number of hours worked or the same job experience (so when a woman takes off for maternity leave, etc., the man is still working and getting experience, so OF COURSE he'll make more).
tl;dr no such study exists to prove the assertion true. That's why it's a myth.
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Here ya go. Gender Wage gap by occupation.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAsQFjAA&url=http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/C350a.pdf&rct=j&q=gender wage gap by occupation&ei=kxS6S_SoGoL98AagqYzfBw&usg=AFQjCNHYhVpxwR1JJHUB6oETE7iwrkqjgg
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David, that shows what everyone already knows: if you look at something solely by job title women make less money. It doesn't show the average hours per week men or women work, it doesn't show the average time in employment, it doesn't show differences in attendance due to sickness or pregnancy. They make work the "same job" but not at the same rate.
http://books.google.com/books?id=vq_0BUkcZ5MC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&source=bl&ots=ZsmyJPf4N_&sig=7eFrK39IXwM_6QnqQE8Ax2WlmJI&hl=en&ei=MF7KSfutFYaNtgfd0NinAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result#v=onepage&q=&f=false
10% of married women with children work 2250 hours per year, but 50% of their husbands do. Why pay the same rate for someone who does less work?
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There has never been a study that has controlled for hours worked, degree earned, years of education, work experience, etc. They only control for one or two of the variables (there are more than just these, by the way), and these are all VERY significant variables that cannot be ignored.
Also, "full-time" is not 40 hours a week. My girlfriend's stepdad was "full-time" at 32 hours a week. My dad is also "full-time" at 50 hours a week. To say that one of them gets paid more than the other despite both working "full-time" is deceiving, as are all wage-gap studies because they ignore such important variables.
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Sorry David that is not what I asked for, median wage earning really mean nothing. If we both make $10 and hour and you work 40 hrs/week and I work 10 hrs/week you will earn 75% more then me.
Find a source that has what I asked for. Does a woman working for company x in the same position as a man for company x make the same hourly rate? I have never seen a source to confirm this to be true.
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http://www.snopes.com/history/american/burnbra.asp
The bra burnings never even happened.
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Not to mention the "violent protests" the author mentions. What "violent protests" would those have been? Take Back The Night? Give me a break. The only feminist protests I know of where there was violence were the protests for women's right to vote, where nonviolent protesters were beaten and jailed for carrying signs.
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