These days I have wondered. What happened to equal rights?
Once upon a time, women took to the streets to claim their rights to be equal to men in the right to choose what to do with their lives. Never mind that men had their own set of limiting cultural beliefs to deal with; the fact of the matter was that their range of options was much wider than any woman’s at the time. The struggle has been going on for a long time. Today, women are in leadership positions in government and private companies. Women can make a career, become doctors, university professors and astronauts.
Happy ever after.
Or not? Curiously, I have talked to many women who feel guilty, insufficient and inferior now, because they chose to stay home with their children and live the life of a housewife. I have seen so-called feminists decrying such a decision as either the non-decision of a poor, disempowered little victim or a betrayal of ‘the movement’, whatever that is in their eyes. I have seen an astonishing amount of – mostly younger – women display the very same rude, pretentious behavior that we often complain about in men. And I have seen tons of articles and suggestions talking about how women should be to ‘make it’ in a man’s world.
What I don’t see is men fighting to enter the feminine realm. I don’t see parents fighting to get their sons admitted to the Girls Scouts.
What I don’t see is the freedom. The freedom of choice that women initially set out to fight for. The freedom to choose how we want to live, who we want to be and what we want to do. I don’t see the shift in where we place our value, to value both the masculine and the feminine. Nor do I see the freedom for men. To explore their feminine side, love it and express it without being judged again.
What happened to equal rights?
I only see a new paradigm that dictates what a ‘good’ woman and a ‘good’ man look like today. More expectations. More judgment.
We could try something else for a change. How about we replace judgment with curiosity? The curiosity of a child that has no concept of how a man and a woman should be? What if instead of moving up and down the same old bandwidth, we leave that frequency altogether? Let’s find another that allows us all to be who we are.