|
 Women of my generation may have
a hard time understanding the many “glass ceilings” that
existed for women years ago. And when it comes to the entire
library of stories, plays, poems, and doctoral theses
written by and about these women, we know to appreciate
their struggles. However, there is still a communication
chasm between my generation and theirs. Some women in years
past — indelicately labeled “bra-burning
feminists” — dedicated their whole lives to ensuring that this
generation would not face the same judgments and
restrictions they did. But without having experienced the
same opposition to female equality that these women did,
will my generation ever truly understand their battle? Can
we connect to the women who paved the way for us to have a
better life?
My 24-year-old former college
roommate, Anne, answers yes to those questions without
hesitation. It may be our mothers’ generation who struggled,
but “we were raised by our mothers,” she says. "For the most
part, our upbringings have been directly affected by our
mothers’ reactions to their own [rearing]."
 I see Anne’s point. Though
many young women may not recognize it, we are tied to the
feminist battles our mothers and grandmothers fought. Those
women before us who fought for equality may radiate
enlightenment, but they were trained, supervised, and
scrutinized by a patriarchal culture. Through it all, these
women learned and grew, and they are training us. It’s a
trickle-down effect.
But will the trickle-down
flow stop with us? Is it possible to become so accustomed to
a more equal system that we forget the work that went into
creating and maintaining it to begin with? From the time I
was five years old, my parents told me I would have the
opportunity to go to college, no matter what their
sacrifice. With help from my parents and extensive student
loans, I did get to college, and I knew they were proud,
especially my mother, who wanted her daughter to have the
opportunities she missed 40 years earlier. (I knew all of
that, but by my sophomore year I still routinely slept
through my early morning literature class and barely passed
philosophy.)
How many roads….
For anyone like me, who has ever taken their hard-won (by
someone else) privileges for granted, an even greater
concern exists. Not only are we dishonoring our foremothers’
work by taking them for granted, but we are effectively
putting our own rights at risk. This may seem a little
alarmist — after all, yes, we can vote, and we can choose
whether to marry, work, travel, have children, or some
combination of all of the above. And yes, women’s graduate
school enrollment has risen 40 percent higher than men’s in
the last 10 years (National Center for Educational
Statistics, 2003).Younger generations can easily accept
these freedoms as “business as usual.”
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My
Feminism
(Continued)
