There's a really common misconception out there that feminism contends that men and women are the same. Far from it.
Feminism actually helps us see the ways in which men and women have
totally different social experiences and pressures. Equality doesn't mean sameness. And then that's further complicated by race, class, and so on. Feminism is about recognizing all those differences.
Equality just means that all genders from any race/class should have access to meaningful opportunities and rights. That includes having a voice and the ability to have some control over your own choices. We might make very different choices, and that's okay too. For example - women should not be penalized in their careers because of their reproductive choices. Hence, maternity leave and measures to help even the playing field. Not that that really evens it out for women in precarious jobs who might not have access to maternity leave. There are still employers who fire a woman for getting pregnant. Or it's more subtle - someone who focuses on her reproductive choices is seen as too "weak." You are asked to be "tough," like the Yahoo CEO who came back to work 2 weeks after child delivery. I mean, that's just not possible for most women, especially if you don't have all the resources that that CEO must've had.
So what does equality look like?
- if there was no "glass ceiling" for qualified and skilled women who want to become the best in their fields/careers
- if women made the same amount of money as their male counterparts (in terms of skill, position, experience, etc.)
- if girls were as encouraged as boys to develop a range of skills and to achieve their dreams
- if legislative equality actually translated to social equality - if women didn't have to worry about being raped, assaulted within their "safe" domestic spaces, or within any public place
- etc.
Those are all things that have to do with equality, and those are all things feminists fight for.
In fact,
recognizing our differences is a really important feature of feminist thought. For example, the experience of white women is very different from women of colour, or muslim women of colour who wear hijab, for example, in a post 9-11 context. All women's choices are not treated as equal. A white Christian woman can wear a cross, and that's seen as acceptable, but a Muslim woman wearing a hijab faces different forms of discrimination (from the state - in countries where women wearing hijab or niqab can be denied public services, for example -- and also from self-proclaimed feminists who think those who wear hijab are somehow automatically oppressed).
A related point is that there is a great deal of diversity in feminist thought. There are those who claim to be anti-abortion feminists. I don't really get that myself and I certainly would find myself having radically different perspectives.
For example a lot of first wave feminists were really anti-sex in some ways, and felt that sexual things necessarily denigrated women. Feminists who came after that argued against that and wanted more radical inclusiveness for women's sexual choices.
Progressive feminists have debates all the time about what "choice" looks like for women in a world with concentrated power exercised by a small few - or the 1% to put it in occupy terms. So feminism actually necessitates a debate on class.
Personally speaking, it's not enough for me to just talk about gender if we can't talk about class, race, sexual orientation and all the other differences that affect our experience in the world. So in some ways as a woman of colour I might have more in common with a queer man of colour than I would with a white woman. Our intersecting identities are taken seriously by feminists, so there is no call to flatten those complexities and view the world in black and white.
I think to have a fair assessment of what kind of contributions feminists have made, we need to be able to cast aside simplistic stereotypes about what feminism/feminists are about. Feminists are real people with family members and allies, who might even include straight white guys. Anyone with a gender/power analysis can be a feminist. Sometimes on IF I feel people have this picture of a 70s hindi film "socialite" lady in pearls who hates men, when they think about a feminist.
Feminism isn't about hating men, nor is it about prescribing one ideal way of life for all women. Those things are antithetical to the notion of freedom and self-determination that animate feminism at a very core level.
Edited by --arti-- - 12 years ago
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