Life in South Africa

On feminism

Has feminism run its course? Depends on what you mean by run its course. If you mean that there is no need for people to advance the cause of the empowerment of women because sexism has disappeared and all is rosy, then clearly it has not run its course. That is not what I mean.

What I am asking is: where is the theory of feminism headed? Feminism has gone through many variations in its history. In the beginning, women fought for the right to vote, believing that that would enable them to change things. Later, women fought for equality. Fair enough, but did they really want to be equal to men? The thought disgusted some feminists, who argued that all men were pigs and that women were morally superior by dint of their not having oppressed anyone. Other feminists argued that there were differences between men and women, and that these should be taken into account, but not be used as a reason to deny women what was rightfully theirs.

As I see it, women have the right to enter careers, and to do jobs formerly done by men. That much ought to be obvious. The problem is that not all women want careers. For some women, fulfilment lies in being a mother. In seeing that her children are properly fed and clothed. In ensuring that at least her children will grow up to benefactors to society. That is a powerful position. Not the only position, but a powerful one. And who are we to deny the importance of that? Are we so addicted to our little black boxes that we cannot decided for ourselves what we think? "It's not cool to be a mom". Ever wonder about what cool really means? Cool means nothing other than "You're not using our latest product. Go out and buy one." Taken out of a commercial context, the word has absolutely no meaning. We need to recognise the innatevalue that each person holds.

The relevance of this argument to my heading is this. When people look at statistics about the number of women in the legislature or in senior managerial positions, they tend to argue that women are under-represented because 52 % of people are women, and only 10 % (say) of the legislature is female. Maybe what we should look at is not the number of women in the legislature, but the number of women who want to be there and cannot. This is not as far-fetched as it may seem. One of my lecturers at my old college was complaining one day that she felt she had to fight for maternity rights for female staff, even though she was not married and had no children. This illustrates that women are either complacent, or are satisfied with their lot. How can women complain about sexism when they never do anything about it? (Here I exclude the vocal minority).

The last point I would like to make concerns the direction in which feminism might be headed. I don't think we can say, as some do, that if women had more power the world would be more "caring" and "gentler". I think that there is a feminine way of doing things, and a masculine way of doing things, but that whether an individual utilises either of these methods does not depend on whether he or she is male or female. If I may say so, I think that Margaret Thatcher had a masculine way of doing things (I think this is true of conservatives generally), while those presently in power (the Bill Clintons of the world) have a feminine way of doing things. The masculines typically are direct and decisive, even if in the short term consequences are heavy, while the feminines typically are more open to negotiation, leading to a long drawn out conflict which ends (quickly) when at last masculine options are taken. What does this mean for my argument? Simply that it cannot be argued that the world would be kinder / more gentle if more women were in power. The nature of the world depends on the individual personalities of its leaders, not on whether they are male or female.

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