I intern with this lady who runs a malaria research network NGO and a gender empowerment NGO, I work mainly with the research network NGO but right now I’m organizing this seminar/workshop that I’m going to lead in early May called “Using Digital Media to Enhance Your Journalism Career” with 15 local female journalists (so it’s combining the research network/gender empowerment initiatives).
The first time I went to my internship, she was bemoaning the men in her organization saying they weren’t performing to her expectations, and then the male driver walked in carrying a soda for me to drink and dropped it on the floor everywhere. And she looked at me rolling her eyes.
She’s actually the coolest; her husband is a member of World Health Organization and is opening a med school a couple hours from here, and he wants her to move there. Her response: “He still doesn’t understand that I’m an independent woman! He wants me there so I can cook, but I work as a professor and run two NGOs and all the kids are gone.”
[Her kids by the way: older daughter doing post-doc at Yale, middle son graduating from Vanderbuilt Med School (was in S. Africa for Duke fellowship last yr) and youngest daughter freshman at Vassar (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)]
When she drove me to the trotro station in her car, we got into a more serious discussion of the role of women in the Ghanaian society-- the fact that there are so few women representatives in the government, in education etc (ONLY 29 OUT OF 275 MEMBERS OF THE GHANIAN PARLIAMENT ARE WOMEN). We were talking about Hillary Clinton and the idea that people criticize her for being not female enough but also because she is female in the first place.
We talked about the fact that the men in my adviser’s academic department don’t invite her to panels when international guests come around, or the idea that because they only have one woman on the board they think she is enough representation for the entire sex.
“You have to work 3 times as hard as a man to get the recognition you deserve,” she told me.
I constantly get so angry with friends back home or not friends back home who insist that because more women than ever are in Congress, feminism is over (~*~**~)
In my class African Women Speak (our topic this week appropriately was African and black feminism), we talked about Marissa Mayer and the entire media circus surrounding the idea that the Yahoo CEO was a woman-- the idea that a single woman depicts whether women as an entire sex could progress or fail. When she was pregnant, there was a harried media frenzy of whether she would fall flat on her face. HELLO SHE’S A CEO SHE CAN HIRE A NANNY... and the idea that we think a woman becoming CEO is such a tremendous feat when she clearly has the financial means to surpass most of her female peers.
Although the first important battle women in America fought was for voting, there are battles internationally (even still in the states but not as common) of human trafficking, a universal rape culture (aka India) and so many serious serious lethal issues that haven’t even started their discussions.
Betty Friedan, in her Feminine Mystique, in Bell Hooks’ words, was talking about upperclass white women who wanted to return to work. But what about the women who have always worked? Friedan was focusing on the housewives of America but shouldn’t the argument include the nannies of international ancestry?
And you may say that this problem doesn't exist anymore-- that the intersectionality of race and sex is perfectly adequate within feminism, but let's look at the articles that call a certain number of women (largely white, maybe even a few black) winning/doing something a feat for all womankind (?!?!)
The myths of feminism:
-that you have to be man-hating/burn bras
-that feminism=lesbianism
-that militant feminism is a bad thing --every movement in history has a certain radical sector yet radical feminists are completely feared/ostracized because most people have the internalized idea that women aren’t supposed to be angry
Certain truths of feminism:
Feminism is as much a body of thought/academic theory as it is a activism movement. Third Wave Feminism includes the notion of “but I want to raise a kid and be home.” It includes the study of how masculinity constricts manhood into a machination in which being female (“the opp of a male”) is the worst thing you can be. It’s gender issues.
So when you say you’re not a feminist or make broad statements about why the movement should not exist, you should check your single narrative and attempt to look past it.
No comments:
Post a Comment