By the look of my friends and network wishes and hopes for the New Year, 2009 has been a dreadful year and everybody wants to forgive it as quickly as possible.
Are we all ready with our resolutions? Will 2010 bring better perspectives for women?
One of the big changes women have been waiting for may have already started, somehow inconspicuously and deeply rooted into the society. Women position in the work market has changed and so have the feminist standards.
As very well described in this article of The Economist, the old generation of feminists made a point by being as tough as men. ‘Working harder and thinking smarter’, they demanded to be judged by the same standards as men, in order to climb the ladder and access to male’s privileges. Leaders like Dong Mingzhu (boss of Chinese giant Gree Electric Appliances) showed the hard way that women can do it and be as –if not more- successful as men.
Feminists of the new kind proclaim a different concept: women are fundamentally different from men, do not treat them equally!
Women are naturally less aggressive and more consensus seeking. Collaborating and not competing, they are more flexible and adaptable to their environment, which are highly desirable skills for the employers.
An interesting comment in this article is that men, on the opposite, often emphasise on skills such risk-taking and tough sense of competition, which has just led us to a massive economical crisis…
Is that a crack in the glass ceiling that we can see?
The current figures show that women represent 49.9% of the work force in the US. As detailed in this second article in The Economist, even if the level of employment of women isn’t uniform across the countries, the trend is very encouraging. For example, the type of work and tasks undertaken by women has much improved in the past 20 years and is improving rapidly.
Political actions and feminist lobbying, decrease of the manufacturing sector and rise of the service sector, or simple understanding of the women qualities and competences: There are lots of factors to explain this change.
However and interesting aspect is the lack of cheering or celebrating of this change. The revolution was approved and welcomed but pretty much silent.
This may be explained by the discomfort caused by the motherhood question, still present in the women’s mind.
The Damocles sword of Mother Nature.
Earlier, I was exploring the case of WAHM and home worker that some of us describe as the solution to benefit from women organisational and flexibility skills, and fit their way of life as mother and family COO. This new trend has many adepts: home working is allowed in more than 90% of German and Swedish firms.
If home working can be presented as a great solution, it underlines the existence of a problem: many women are forced to choose between career and motherhood.
If this problem has been somehow occulted by the old generation of feminists, it’s still a reality. It’s another reason why women should not be judged by the same criteria as men: motherhood should be acknowledged and understood in career plans, as much as the extension of the average life span can justify longer sabbatical period.
Different country took different approach to the problem: preschool education, kindergartens, part-time work, or incentives for father spending more time to take care of their children… And the companies are changing as well, allowing more flexibility to mothers.
Another interesting change of the empowerment of women is that many of them just ‘hop from the corporate treadmill to form their companies to meet their own needs.’
Should women celebrate? Not just yet…
From a general perspective, the conclusion is that women situation is improving. A great advice is to wait a bit more for the activation of the great changes in the way women are considered: girls are currently outperforming boy at school and university and this is a great lever in the current meritocracy-based system.
However, feminist and the society in general have great challenges to tackle now. For instance, the millions offamilies that are still struggling with the increasing cost of childcare. As reported by Unicef and other agencies, there is a real erosion of the quality time spent with children. There is a new dimension to the social gap that results from the different conditions in which women manage both hats of worker and mother, and the consequences on their children.
You know I find it interesting that women must either be better men than men or better women than men, so to speak. That is, they either must adopt “masculine values” or show of their “feminine values.”
I personally think this goes against what feminism should be. Certainly the word has its roots in a time where women were nowhere close to being seen as equal to men, so the focus on the feminine is only natural. At the same time, for true egalitarianism (which is what feminism, when practices correctly, is) to occur, we need to stop ASSUMING that any member of a particular group will or should act the same way.
Certainly men and women, in general, have a biological predisposition to be different, and to have different talents, and perhaps even to act in different ways. However, to take it a step further and attempt to enforce these “values” with such rigidity is where I believe the problem lies. This is prevalent in western society.
Men and women should be given equal opportunity. Neither should be rewarded for failure to perform simply because they are a man or a woman, but it should never be assumed that they will based on whatever values. In American culture, if a man or woman does not conform to his/her respective masculine or feminine values, he/she ridiculed. If he DOES conform to his values, he is ridiculed. This is a problem that reaches not only the ranks of men and women, but also differently defined groups: different races and people of different sexual orientations for example.
I think one of the most difficult things women face today isn’t patriarchy, but rather a defensive backlash against feminism, due in part to a misunderstanding of the concept by those who are not feminists, and “bad preaching” from some who are. Feminism shouldn’t have to be a dirty word, but I think by it’s name, “feminism,” people believes it espouses what are considered “feminine values” rather than simply the fair opportunity for women to show who they are and what they can do, whether that is exemplified by traditionally “feminine” values or traditionally “masculine” ones.
Still, as long as we are a culture of consumers, which let’s face it, we are, this sort of thing will persist. It’s profitable to make women believe they will never be beautiful enough, men never strong or flashy enough. This shouldn’t be seen as a fight of men versus women, as it often is for some inconceivable reason, but rather as a fight of anyone who belongs to a labeled group AGAINST the rigid restrictions that are placed upon his personal expression.
Hi Cosmic Bloke,
Many thanks for your comment.
I agree with you: egalitarianism, as a starting point of any relationships between men and women, is probably the ultimate goal of feminism.
Women want the same rights as men, they do not want to feel scared, threaten, patronised, minimised,… only by the simple fact of their gender.
Why did women have to become tougher and show their capabilities ‘the hard way’? Probably because they weren’t given that chance that men are granted just by the fact that they are..men.
Therefore this may have led to errors: from both sides, misunderstanding of the concepts of feminism (what do women really want?) or misunderstanding of their message and action (see here all the clichés wrongly associated to feminists).
An interesting point to conclude is that the societal pressure you mentioned is, indeed, upon both gender. Jean Kilbourne illustrates this with the excellent video from Media Education Foundation “Killing us Softly 3” ..
Thanks
Marion