The Movement, Stalled

I've been reading Nora Ephron's book, Crazy Salad, a series of essays about women written in the early 1970s.

The experiences she's had resonate with me, although they are slightly ahead of my time. I was raised by a woman who held traditional beliefs about marriage, family and faith. My mom, like the majority of women in her generation, quit work at some point in her first pregnancy and stayed home to raise her children and keep the home fires burning. She was so good at this, I wanted desperately to follow in her footsteps. 

At the tender age of 20, I married a man I believed with all my heart was my life partner. There are some 20-year-olds who are lucky enough to be right about this. I was not one of them. In three years, my marriage was toast, and I realized that I was more like my dad than my mom. I was not cut out to be a housewife and raise a passel of children.

Instead, I threw myself into my job. I decided I wasn't going to have any children.

Fortunately, I made this decision at a time when it was becoming fashionable to do so. The women's movement had been gaining momentum, and suddenly it wasn't expected that women stay home. Day care centers popped up. The tide turned. It became more of the norm for women to work outside the home. 

Of course, tides being what they are, they turned again, and it is now considered a luxury to be able to afford to stay home with your children.

One wonders what progress, if any, the women's movement has made in the last 40+ years. It's a sort of "two steps forward, one step back" scenario.

One the one hand, we have a woman running for president. But she is called out for ridiculous things her male counterparts would never be.

Women are far more prevalent in the workplace, but often are still not making the same money as the men who hold the same positions.

And, probably worst of all, if you follow Facebook, which is a fairly realistic microcosm of our society, women are still sniping each other based on their choices. Which is what the women's movement is supposed to be about. The right of each individual woman to choose how she wants to live her life, whether she stays home with her kids, is a working mom or decides not to have any children...whether she marries a man or a woman or remains unattached.

That's the goal here. The ability to make choices without getting crap from women who chose something else.

As most of you reading this know, I went on to marry again. And I had a child. At one point in my pregnancy, Mr. Ginley and I sat down and had a discussion about who was going to take care of the baby. He stepped up and said he would stay home while I worked. He is a wonderful dad, and most folks would agree our now-college-age son has turned out pretty well. But my husband took a lot of flak about being "Mr. Mom." The thing that frosted me was many of the snide comments he got were from women who should have known better.

And so it goes. Maybe the women's movement is not just about choices for women. Maybe it's about men and women choosing their roles, deciding what works best for them.

If we all look at it from that perspective, how can anyone be against equal rights? Having asked the question, of course, I know how. Too many people believe their rights are more important than the rights of others, because the others are a different gender or race.

I have no idea how to wrap this up. There are no quick answers. And people have been the same since the beginning of time.

Maybe the only thing to do is sigh. Walk away from the keyboard. And have a little chocolate to console myself.


There are some Malley's chocolate hearts around here somewhere...