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My friend Justin wears a bright
purple shirt with white lettering on it that reads, "This is
what a feminist look like."
He bought it as part of a promotional fundraiser for Eve
Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, a play about female
sexuality that was performed at our small, Lutheran, liberal
arts college. All right, so, if a feminist looks like a
skinny, 6-foot 5-inch cyclist with xy chromosomes, it could
look like just about anyone — right?
Feminism is a tough concept to convey. It’s not a simple,
descriptive word (was it ever?), but a philosophical and
cultural ideal saddled with many, mostly unflattering,
stereotypes. And feminism is still largely a new idea — so
new that many of the key players who gave it a name and
shape are still very much alive.
When
I was first introduced to feminism, I thought of a dozen
women — historic figures, celebrities, and family members —
as definitions of what I understood a feminist to be. They
were smart, determined women, struggling with June Cleaver
stereotypes and a limiting, patriarchal culture. All they
wanted was to fulfill their personal and professional
ambitions in a more equal world. I saw myself as a sister
advocate, and my friends and I were very aware of which
teachers called only on boys in the classroom. I recall
becoming angry when women were defined as innately suited
for housework and mothering.
I
am 23 now, and my understanding of feminism has evolved. I
understand it to mean equal footing with men in the areas of
pay, promotion, and a promising future. Feminism today means
that women can have ambition and acceptance. Feminists are
the women at church, behind the surgeons’ masks, and running
corporations. They are women whose past directly affects our
future — whether it be in our families, workplace, or
school.
Generation
Gaps
My mother was 23 and married with five children when she
witnessed the sexual revolution in the 1960s. Five years
earlier, she turned down a full university scholarship
because her father told her, “Girls don’t need college.”
Across the country and only a few years later, my best
friend’s mother accepted a full-ride scholarship to a
university because college administrators decided that
colleges needed girls.
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.”
But while we enjoy the spoils of battles past, others are on
the horizon. Our degrees may be the same, but women still
earn less money than men in the same fields. In 2000, the
average yearly difference in salaries for men and women in
all professions, trades, and levels of education was
approximately $10,700 (NCES, 2003).
And let’s not forget that much-talked-about recent comment
by Harvard President Lawrence Summers that the innate
differences between the sexes might explain why fewer women
reach the pinnacle of success in science and math. Yep, we
still have a few battles of our own to fight.
Though women today have certain advantages our mothers
didn’t have, that doesn’t mean those gains can’t be taken
away. While lawmakers
continue to bat around the issue of reproductive rights, 22 million single women who were eligible to vote in
the 2000 presidential elections didn’t bother (Women’s
Voices, Women Vote). Fortunately, the numbers were
better in 2004 when unmarried women made up 22.4 percent of
the voters. That’s an
increase of 7.5 million over the 19 percent reported in
2000 (Women's Voices, Women Vote 2004). But I wonder how many of those non-voting
women, ages 18 –
60, didn’t realize the
impact they could have on the legislative process and
women’s rights.
Equal value = equal rights =
equal responsibilities
"Equal value = equal rights" is
the basic tenet behind every mission statement for every
human rights organization. The
United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights states, “All human beings are
born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed
with reason and conscience and should act towards one
another in a spirit of brotherhood.” That sounds like a
feminist, humanitarian view to me.
The ELCA’s
social statement (“For Peace in God’s World”)
calls the church — that’s us — to be a “disturbing,
reconciling, and serving presence” in the world. As
Christians, we understand about being reconciling and
serving. But what do we know about being a “disturbing
presence”?
“The church is a disturbing
presence when it refuses to be silent and instead speaks the
truth in times when people shout out, ‘Peace, peace, when
there is no peace’ (Jeremiah 6:14)". That global ELCA
statement refers to relationships between nations and
cultures, but I think it fits perfectly with my definition
of a feminist as people who struggle to create a more equal
world, for all genders and races.
Young women always have more to see, hear, say, and do to
promote feminism. As Christians, we should understand the
call for bold, compassionate activism and take action in
every area of our lives — at home, at work, at church, and
in our communities. The responsibility to make a better
world for our daughters and granddaughters falls on us, now.
Speak up. Act boldly. Let’s give future generations more
victories to celebrate.
Emilie Rommel is 23 years old and working as a writer,
waitress, and editorial intern in Seattle, Wash. During an
internship with Lutheran Woman Today magazine, she
helped develop the content for CAFE.
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My
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