dToday is International Women’s Day. I am struck by my good fortune to be a woman born into a middleclass, California family. I grew up knowing that everything was possible, and I could have any career I chose. In the eighth grade, I remember telling my father that I did not need to type because I was not going to be someone’s secretary. I rejected any stereotypical role such as teaching or nursing (um… yeh, let’s not go there).
I walked a path of education, marriage, parenting, divorce, career building, and most recently career changing. At an early age, circa 1967, I rejected church and any organized religion; thankfully my parents did not protest, even though my father, and his before him, preached at the Methodist church. I could walk my own path, form my opinions, and discover myself, as long as I didn’t date until college, “Okay, high school.”
My life story is not that of all women. Generations before me, women in this country and around the world were often considered the property of the men in their lives. First their fathers then their husbands, and in some women’s lives, their brothers and uncles. I am thankful to the women who have stood strong throughout time and fought for the rights of women everywhere.
I cannot imagine a life where someone else controlled my belongings, my movements, my body, my rights. I cannot imagine never having gone to school or voted or being able to represent myself in a court of law, or simply speak my thoughts.
As wonderfully independent as my life may be and as far as society has come, there is near endless work to be done. There may be laws to protect women’s rights, but they are ignored, unenforced, rendered impotent by where one lives and the powers that are allowed to be. If a woman does not know her rights how can she stand up for them and resist the violence, neglect, abuse and control?
The education of women on their human rights must be global and ongoing. Centuries of being considered second class citizens, if citizens at all, has placed hurdles and road blocks just beyond each goal attained. (My thoughts drift to our current government and the novels: It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood.)
We each, in our own way, can be the educator, the example, the haven that empowers our daughters and theirs, that enlightens our partners and sons, that accepts, with the love of humankind, women, men, children, rich, poor, powerful, frail, young, old, black, white, bright, stolid, round and square.
I am a feminist. I am a humanist. I am a sentientist. I celebrate International Women’s Day, as it reminds us of how far we have come and provides us the sustenance to persist.
Isabella