WOMEN: SHIFTING STEREOTYPES

Today is International Women's Day, and this is an article I wrote for the March issue of our community magazine. I know that some of my readers live in Sun City Carolina Lakes, and may have already read this piece. It may be worth reading again, especially the bit where some men once considered us to be no more than defective, soulless beasts. That just frosts my soul. I really do think that the religiously celibate men who came up with this piece of doctrine were "depraved on acounta the were deprived." What were they thinking?!

March is Women’s History Month - and a fine history we do have. In years past though, we have had to put up with too many stereotypes. In the seventh century, the Council of Nantes argued that women were “soulless beasts”, defectives (defectives? Now, I ask you!) who could be treated as such by men, their natural masters.” Whew!

Over the centuries there have been rare, prominent women whose achievements - scientific, artistic, patriotic, or oven notorious -  have given them a permanent place in history. (Who hasn’t heard of Lucrezia Borgia?) It is only in the last century or so that women have started to reassert themselves beyond the realm of farm, hearth and home, and to shed some of the sentimentality and stereotypes assigned to ‘the soft sex’, ‘the weaker sex’.  

We women are no longer solely the sole keepers of hearth and home, not good enough to vote, much less run for office, and not capable of anything above simple home mathematics, much less rocket science. You name it, we could always do it. Only now, when we want to go beyond our female-specific and stereotypic pursuits, are we allowed the opportunity.

Gone are the days when a woman was told “bring in your husband” before she could transact bank business or buy a car; never mind buying a home or starting a business of her own. Gone are the days when hospital whites were worn by nurses and doctors went around with stethoscopes around their necks. Even better, gone are the days when a gal in scrubs is assumed to be a nurse, or a man in scrubs a doctor. The world can no longer ass-u-me. Now are the days when all stereotypes, all assumptions must be banished.

Lady cops, woman judges, female executives, or woman soldiers should be labels no longer: they’re just cops, judges, executives, or soldiers doing a pre-defined job. (Truthfully though, we still don’t understand why a gal would want to be a wrestler.) There are no more ‘old maid school teachers’, much less ‘old maids’, unless you’re playing that card game. The spinsters, battle axes, and buxom broads, and the little woman, the missus, my old lady, and all the other stereotyped gals have left the building.

But there are still thorns on the rose. An old cigarette ad, aimed at the newly ‘liberated women’ of the late 60’s, used the slogan “You’ve come a long way baby,” yet, as Helen Reddy sang: “I’m still an embryo with a long, long way to go.” We senior women have it fairly easy of late, but younger women, especially those in the work force, still have to put up with stereotypes, sexist labels, and discrimination. Lisa Abeyta, writing in The Huffington Post, has said:

“Until there is more gender balance among leading roles in entertainment, government and corporate leadership, our sons and daughters will continue to believe the stereotypes perpetuated in the news, media, and their everyday lives.”  

THE GLASS CEILING

 

This is Friday, so naturally I had an essay all ready to post. It’s a brief bit, complete with pictures, about all the furniture and things my husband has made. You’ll enjoy it, but you’ll have to wait.  A featured article in this morning’s N.Y. Times  really piqued my interest and I had to hazard my own opinion on the subject: The Glass Ceiling.

Here are the lead paragraphs:

 

Before Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, started to write “Lean In,” her book-slash-manifesto on women in the workplace, she reread Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.” Like the homemaker turned activist who helped start a revolution 50 years ago, Ms. Sandberg wanted to do far more than sell books.

Ms. Sandberg, whose ideas about working women have prompted both enthusiasm and criticism, is attempting nothing less than a Friedan-like feat: a national discussion of a gender-problem-that-has-no-name, this time in the workplace, and a movement to address it.

 

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I didn’t read the entire article and I’ve never read The Feminine Mystique. Just the topic alone can set me thinking, without need to refer to what others may have thought. I’ve got news for Ms. Sandberg in her quest to spur a women’s movement: all she’ll really be doing is selling books. As for the “gender-problem-that-has-no-name”, if it is still a problem of the proportions imagined, which I sincerely doubt, it will now be with us for nigh on to forever.  Why do I consider myself qualified to comment on this? As the saying goes: “been there, done that, have the business cards to prove it.” 

In the late 60’s I became the first woman officer of the bank at which I headed the computer department. This was all back in the day when a CPU, with less capacity than my cell phone, was the size of my refrigerator.  At that time the banks gave great benefits, but the salaries were relatively low.  Because it was the new field of data processing I was able to command a higher salary than some of my male banker counterparts. I was in the right place at the right time.

Also because it was data processing I got relatively little grief from males in my own bank because they knew relatively little about what was going on. Data processing was a male-dominated field because there were more males in the workplace, but because it was new to everyone, anyone, male or female, was respected if they seemed like they knew what they were doing.

In the fifty years since the publication of The Feminine Mystique, men have come a long way – and so have women.  The men are much more welcoming to women in the workplace. If the gal knows her job, most men are now more than happy to accept the fact. It would seem like the mothers of the late twentieth century have raised them that way. A few misogynistic men will always be around, along with a few misandristic women, and they will have to be dealt with when the need arises. Case closed. 

Many of the gals who’d been with the bank for years were a bit miffed, shall we say, when I was chosen for the computer department: why her?  It sounds mean of me to say this, but they didn’t have the mindset I had for the job. All the bank’s employees were tested before the bank converted to computerized accounting in the early 60’s – I was originally a clerk in the Loan Department – and I came out on top with the aptitude for the data processing field.  When I was made an officer of the bank I had a lot of the female employees asking me how I did it. I didn’t set out to do it: I was just good at my job, and in the right place in the bank’s newest department to be made an officer when they needed one there.

Over these years I’ve come to believe that while many women doing the same job as men do get paid less – that’s a sticky area addressed only when there are exact job descriptions and pay levels in force – many women think they are as good as any man doing their job, but many times they aren’t.  I believe that unless the higher-ups have their head in the sand, the latest crop of executives recognize the abilities of their workers and pay and promote accordingly. Unless they are totally oblivious to the bottom line – profits – they’ll want the best performing people.

As more women realize their potential, decide on what they want to do, and point themselves in the right direction, their numbers are increasing in the upper echelons of business, politics and medicine. I’ve also come to know that the vast majority of women don’t want to reach any heights in any field.  We females aren’t usually programmed that way, and all women aren’t created equal. It’s wonderful that today most women can pretty much lead the life they’d like.

I don’t feel I’m wasting my life because I prefer to be CFO at home – because of my banking experience I do keep the books. I worked to live, not lived to work! When our financial outlook improved, our retirement funds were growing nicely, and we could afford to live on my husband’s income, both of us were delighted for me to retire from the bank. Heck, six years later both of us were retired and we’ve been quite pleased to be unemployed for the last twenty-five years.

I’m sure Ms. Sandberg will be enjoying her “fifteen minutes of fame”, but I don’t thinkshe or her book will have the same effect as that of Betty Freidan, a woman in the right place at the right time with a message we all needed to hear.  

On March 3 last year I posted Women Have a History . March is Women’s History Month, after all.  You might want to read that essay – it was a pretty good one if I do say so myself. 

 

 

 

 

Today is also the birthday of George Washington, Edward Gorey, and Edna St.Vincent Millay.  That’s a diverse group indeed.  Happy Birthday lady and gentlemen.

WOMEN HAVE A HISTORY

March: Women’s History Month.  Well of course we have a history - it goes all the way back to Eve, that naughty girl!  We’ve been slightly naughty (well, some of us!) ever since.  It still amazes that me that in the majority of cultures around this world we allowed men to convince us to ditch the matrilineal line of inheritance and descent. Barring a DNA test, unless you are the spitting image of him, you might never be sure of the identity of your father, but you can usually be sure of your mother. 

Today we know about the mitochondrial Eve, who, according to Wikipedia, one of my favorite sources, is “the most recent common matrilineal ancestor from whom we are all descended”.  There are little pieces of her in all of us.  These days, I think there is a little bit of the biblical Eve in many of us too.  We’re not too content to just go along to get along. Inquiring minds want to know, and to test, and to push against what might hold us back.

Boadicea, or, if you prefer: Boudica or Boudigga, was a feisty Celtic woman from the first century.  There is a lot of the ‘it has been said’ about her, and she is a recurring favorite flavor on many of the ‘learning’ channels. It’s probably not her real name, and the spelling is beside the point, but it is what the Romans called her, and it’s a variation on the Celtic name for the Goddess of Victory. Victorious she was for a while, yet in the end she lost it all to the better-equipped Romans.  But lead and fight she did, in a time and place where it was natural for a capable woman to do so.  Can you think of any other historically prominent women from that time until the late Renaissance and Queen Elizabeth I?  Oh, maybe Eleanor of Aquitaine or Isabella D’Este, but just in passing.

In the seventh century, the Council of Nantes argued that women were “soulless beasts”, defectives (defectives! Now, I ask you!) who could be treated as such by men, their natural masters. Whew! It is only in the last century or so that women have started to reassert themselves beyond the realm of farm, hearth and home, and to shed some of the sentimentality assigned to ‘the soft sex’.  Women became teachers, secretaries, authors, even actresses - these and other professions had been open only to men.  New professions such as nursing - thank you Florence Nightingale - came into being, and they, in turn, spawned other professions: the first airline hostesses had to be registered nurses.

Women have had a harder time breaking into the sciences.  Women physicians had a tough, uphill battle just to get their education, much less practice.  Women were thought to lack the mental skills to compete in fields such as astronomy, physics, or chemistry.  Marie Curie, after years of arduous research and many important discoveries, was one of the first to disprove this idea. Just two years after the prize was established, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she is one of only four people who have been awarded it twice.   Granted, the percentage of women who’ve won the prize still remains relatively low, but we’re working on it.

Over the ages, women were allowed to vote for various things at various times and under various conditions.  In some places they could vote on local issues if they were the head of the household, paid taxes, or owned property outright.  The move toward the unrestricted right to vote or hold political office, usually tied to the literacy rate of a country’s women and to the enlightenment of a country’s men, was quietly led by the Scandinavians. They were closely followed by the United Kingdom and the United States, where the women were a quite bit more vocal about the subject and had a lot more persuading to do. In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that, among other things, introduced voting rights for women into international law.  Sadly, some countries have yet to get on the bandwagon.

Today we’ve all but finished chipping away at that invisible barrier, the ‘glass ceiling’ that denies many women the positions for which they are eminently qualified in government, banking, and industry. The pay scales may still be a bit askew, but the numbers of successful women are on the rise.  There is an increasing number of women - and men - who are home-makers and hearth-keepers just because they want to be and because they can.  The Feminine Mystique, written almost fifty years ago, uncovered the feminine mistake that made many of us believe that our identities were of value only in relation to our husbands and children.  These days we know better, and young or old, female or male, we can pursue, pretty much without criticism, whatever kind of life makes us happy.

Ladies, let’s give ourselves a round of applause and pat on the back - we really are mah-velous!