Way back in 1941, the popular women’s magazine, the Ladies’ Home Journal,
adopted the slogan, “Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman.” At that time,
however, women’s magazines were written for ladylike housewives, and the
original thought was that women had the power, through persuasion, to lead their
men to make the “right decisions.”
That 1941 issue also had a large
advertisement for Chesterfield cigarettes, proving there was at least one
company anxious to give women equal opportunity ... to smoke. There have also
been sayings like, “Never underestimate the power of a woman’s intuition,”
“Never underestimate the anger of a woman scorned” and “Never underestimate a
man’s ability to underestimate a woman,” spoken by Kathleen Turner as detective
V.I. Warshawski in the 1991 movie of the same name.
Now, women represent
almost half of the workforce. They are the equal if not the main breadwinner in
four out of 10 families, and they now receive more college and graduate degrees
than men. However, they still make about 77 cents for every dollar earned by
men.
The Internet is only one factor helping to alter that as women are
using new ways to communicate and changing buying habits to form many different
kinds of start-up businesses.
And now 98 seats in our new Congress are held by women; 20 percent of the 100
in the Senate and 17 percent of the 435 in the House. Where it would have gone
unnoticed before, President Obama has been loudly criticized for giving all the
best Cabinet and White House jobs to white males.
From March 4-15, the
57th session of the Commission of the Status of Women will be held at the United
Nations. One of the major topics is the prevention of violence on women and
girls.
One of the promising examples of governments initiating change is
Australia’s landmark A Right to Respect, a 10-year program to prevent violence
toward women. They learned that unequal power relations between men and women
are a key cause along with adherence to gender stereotypes and cultures of
violence. They also instituted family counseling where couples could learn
nonviolent conflict resolution.
While we are aware of gender stereotypes
in India, where the rape of young women is an everyday occurrence, we are not
without deeply held prejudice in our own country when elected officials like
Todd Aiken can qualify some rapes as “legitimate”; in which instance, a woman
would not be impregnated. Can we expect our children to learn nonviolent
conflict resolution when the heroes in our movies resolve everything with their
fists or a gun, and our political parties seem unable to compromise and work
together, even when the immediate future of the country is at stake?
In
1920, the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote was finally passed. The
Women’s Suffrage Association had made the argument that women’s superior
characteristics, especially purity, immunity from corruption and concerns with
children and local issues, made their votes essential in promoting
reform.
While I’m not so sure we have lived up to all those lofty ideals,
now that we have both the voting power and increased financial independence, we
must make our voices heard whenever we see unfairness, injustice or violence of
any kind. Only then, will we truly have “arrived.”
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