Feminism has been around for many years (starting in the ninetieth century to fight legal inferiority), but is it an out-of-date philosophy in the 21st century? It is an ideology with many different facets. Basically though it is about females and movements that work to obtain women’s rights. Most men think that feminists are simple women who hate men! But that is blatantly false with many feminists (but by no means all – including English born Elizabeth Blackwell, the 1st American female Doctor and 1st on the UK Medical Register) some indeed being married, sometimes more than once, or in relationships and having children (such as Emmeline Parhurst leading English suffragette, Betty Friedan US authoress of the book ‘The feminine Mystique’, Florence Nightingale statistician & famous Crimean war nurse ‘Lady with the Lamp’ & social reformer – but only had men as friends, American Margaret Sanger birth control pioneer, Mary Wollstonecraft English born writer, Edith Summerskill Baroness Summerskill) British physician and MP & Government Minister, Alva Myrdal Swedish sociologist and Nobel Prize winner).
In many parts of the World women have now been granted the vote – in the UK, for example we gave them partial voting rights in 1928 (if aged 21, British University graduates, or property owners). Since then they have been granted full rights here – was that a waste of time? Women can’t seem to be bothered to vote these days, or if they do they vote under strange compunctions – very rarely for their own gender (and certainly they don’t select them as Parliamentary candidates – you see they are a jealous part of the species by nature!), so good looking attractive men, who are excellent at kissing babies, and can ‘pretend’ to be reliable family men, they seem to get supported; or men get voted for, if even on instruction from a female’s own male! How else can you get a sleazebag elected and re-elected as President of the United States (examples being the subsequently, since assassination, revered John F. Kennedy -and the rest of the clan in other selections; followed later by Bill Clinton). In the UK Parliament we select and vote in again and again men (and women) whose prime effort goes into fiddling, or getting away with, the greatest possible amount of public money by way of expenses!
Men have allowed some women to progress into business management these days, and even a few actually as high as the Boardroom nowadays – but the prettier the better and certainly not if they are going to be a threat to male dominance. Unbelievable progress don’t you think?
In the war (WW2) women were allowed to show what they could do by undertaking work that traditionally men used to do (though Churchill decreed that they weren’t tough enough to shoot down enemy aircraft with AA guns, yet they were allowed to parachute into France to be captured, tortured and killed as spies!), but they worked on the land, as welders, in teaching, as carpenters, serving in the civil service, in factories, as engineers, as electricians, or assembling tanks & cars, or heavy manufacturing, or building aeroplanes, and working with munitions et al – some women wanted to join the forces but that was stopped so they could farm for us in remote communities instead!); but men soon put a stop to that when they got back, having got their aggressive instinct satisfied, (so women then lost their new found jobs – particularly if they got pregnant – and had to go back to being secretaries, or cleaners, or glamour entertainers, or factory assembly girls, or housewives, or nurses, or domestic servants, or tea makers, or kitchen skivvies, and the like)
In Britain a law was passed in the Equal Pay Act of 1970 (replaced by the Equality Act 2010) to say that women must be paid the same as men to do the same job – even in the war that hadn’t previously happened (actually causing a strike at Rolls Royce’s Glasgow factory in the midst of war 1943 – so to resolve this their female skilled workers were given the rate as the semi-skilled men!). Don’t worry men, it has been widely flouted – but as Birmingham City Council found out to their cost in 2012, employers may not always get away with it (many other offenders are now quaking in their boots in fear of further lawsuits!).
Women have the strange idea that they are equal to men! Just because they can do the same work as men (quicker sometimes) and can do things that men can’t do including multi-tasking, home building (& tidy & clean it), conceiving & bearing children & coping with pain, and create milk, excellent parenting, are better at school, are able to converse casually (talk the hind legs off a donkey!), are able to walk in high heels, more then men graduating from Medical Schools as Doctors, look after their appearance and dress well, do what they promise & finish the job, diet (never successfully though!), can deal with both sexes, are expert manipulators, can drive a car with 3 screaming kids in the back, and can read tea leaves & look in crystal balls!
In some Islamic countries and strict extreme cultures supporting Sharia Law (rather than a country’s secular law), they have a totally different view about women – they are definitely second class and not equal to men; they should stay in the home, not be educated, work or drive; they should be clothed from head to foot in black robes with their faces covered – this said to stop them abusing their attractiveness to men (but perhaps it is because their families or husbands don’t want others to see how unattractive their oppression has made them?) Is there a lesson there then?
[Women have it made in this day and age – don’t they?]
ramblings007 