While the Vatican spouts off about washing machines being the creative force behing the emancipation of woman, millions of women in Eastern and Asian countries still live without any freedom. They are simply chattels belonging to their husbands and are totally under male domination. This includes countries such as
• Saudi Arabia,
• Indonesia,
• Malaysia,
• Pakistan,
• China,
• Egypt,
• Afghanistan,
• India,
• The Moslem countries of the Middle East,
• Many African nations and
• Even tropical islands such as Vanuatu.
These women are refused access to education, dress codes strictly imposed, freedom of expression severly curtailed, incarcerated to the home, free discourse frowned upon with men and a general disapproval of women in reaching any position of power.
However, in the not too distant past, girls were not encouraged to gain a higher education, even in Western society. After all girls were simply going to hang around and maybe work for a few years, before getting married and were forced to stay at home to care for the family. Why bother wasting an expensive university education on them?
What then has brought about the change to where women in the Western world feel they have been given their emancipation? Is it really the washing machine, as the Vatican recently stated, that has made the difference?
Equal opportunity for women has given emancipation to numerouswomen letting them take a prominent role in Western society, brought about by:
•Germaine Greer and ‘the burn the bra’ movement
•The pill and the availability of safe abortions
•Anti discrimination laws both in the work place and in education
•Child minding and day care facilities, backed by the government, have allowed mums to continue as working-mums
•The anonymity and universal reach of the Internet and Cyber Space has been another major contributing factor. Women can now work from home and if they choose, they can remain sexless and nameless.
Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far, with some antifeminist proponents claiming the feminist movement is asking for a higher status for women than for men. Serious conservative scholars such as Carolyn Graglia and Allan Carlson state that the |alteration in women’s role, from being primarily mothers, to self-proclaimed professionals, has been a social disaster that continues to take its destruction on the family.
Many people say there is now anti-male discrimination in the regions of reproductive rights, child custody, alimony and property division, when it comes to divorce settlements. Antifeminists often point out there has been an escalation in divorce and the breakdown of the family unit, as being the prime result formed by the influence of the feminist movement.
Still there are feminists who openly claim, “I prefer to cook a meal for a man and bring him his slippers and find myself in the protection of his arms than have all the awards and citations, or honors I have received world-wide, including the Ribbon of Legion of Honor and my property and my bank accounts. They mean absolutely nothing to me. And I am only one among the millions of unhappy liberated women like myself.”
Others would promote the business woman, women as leader models, as well encouraging women into competitive environments, in spite of the fact that women are sometimes given ‘special treatment’ in the way of lesser physical requirements in certain professions, such as military and rescue services.
At the end of the day, it is going to be neither the male domination, nor the feminist, nor anti feminist movements, that make a difference to families in the years ahead, but the legalization of same sex marriages. Either way, the world is altering for both men and women.
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