"Why is it that men can be bastards and women must wear pearls and smile?" - Lynn Hecht Schafren
Okay, SO... this post is more or less about WOMEN. Now don’t run away... It’s not to prove that either one of the two sexes would be better or worse than the other; and it will definitely not be a long and provocative speech considering female empowerment. The only reason for me to exclude men from this post is that there wouldn't be any point for me to write of men since my own experience is delimited in being a woman. And what comes to feminism... Actually I’m so fed up of using that word since people have loaded it with so many misconceptions. Feminism doesn’t hold in itself an attempt to make both sexes similar, neither it aims for situating women somehow above everything else as something special or unique. At least academically, it’s simply a view which argues that in the world where we live -whether we want or not-
the sex matters (may it be male or female), and it’s important both for society as well as for individuals to find out and recognize how and when it influences, in which ways and what consequences does it have.
To start with, I guess no one can really deny that being a woman is one hell of the task and includes all these contradictions... we are expected to look beautiful and perfect, still we are always made fun of just because of our ways to take care of our appearance... either we are floppish and vain or boring and unattractive... we are suppose to create the spirit of the home, be loving mothers and wives, still we are not appreciated for being "passive" housewives but for finding and creating our own way and career... so if we concentrate on the family, no one will really appreciate the work we do at home; if we concentrate on our career and personal life and perhaps won't get married at all, we are going against our nature and not fulfilling our real female mission as mothers... as if anyone would have a right to define other person's mission of life, just because your body is capable of certain functions. Actually I find it really enlightening how the unknown author has described the need for woman's movement in 1980s... eh, up to some extent still very much current, right?
"Because women's work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repetitious and we're the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it's our fault and if we get beaten we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we're nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we're nymphos and if we don't we're frigid and if we ask our doctor too many questions we're neurotic and/or pushy and if we expect childcare we're selfish and if we stand up for our rights we're aggressive and "unfeminine" and if we don't we're typical weak females and if we want to get married we're out to trap a man and if we don't we're unnatural and because we still can't get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can't cope or don't want a pregnancy we're made to feel guilty about abortion and... for lots of other reasons we are part of the women's liberation movement." - Author unknown, quoted in The Torch, 14 September 1987
GEEZ, so what the heck is this all about, what are we as women expected of? For sure I don't have answers for that... just wish to bring out some thoughts and incidents which in my own case have provoked thoughts about the topic...
From the real life 1/3: babe, u look so good!
Eurovision song contest 2007, held in Helsinki, Finland. This was extremely important event for us Finns since a year before Finland had first time ever won the whole recognized competition with Lordi’s monster rock causing a sensation and creating a huge media fuss about it all around Europe and even as far as in US... So next year the competition was held in Helsinki and the winner was Serbian Marija Serifovic with her beautiful ballad Molitva. She’s a small, sturdy lady with short hair, and she performed her song wearing a black trouser suit with only minimum make-up. Compared to all those other female singers in their flimsy dresses and high heels, who seemed to be competing more of the shortness of their miniskirts than singing, she really made a difference... But Marija’s song was definitely best of all, besides she’s an awesome singer, so she won the whole damn competition. Well, what else could you expect than... As also her singing was praised by media, still next couple of weeks journals were full of speculation about her style and clothes and appearance searching for possible reasons behind it, pointing this out with such a strong emphasis that it almost became more primary interest in people’s minds than her music itself. What if the miniskirt girls or any of the male artists would have won? Then I’m positively sure their appearance would have not been such a great interest to anyone... And what about me? Well, I just LOVED both her song as well as her style. And most of all I really admired her courage to go against the dominant style and the expectations for female artists. If you wanna see her performance, then here’s the link (since I have no idea how to put these youtube videos on my blog..):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sp9OOoxCJo
From the real life 2/3: soft, fragile women??This is really very personal story. And why am I putting it here on the web... even I don’t know.
My grandmother is definitely among the people I respect the most, her lifestory being for a spoiled kid like me uncomprehending. She had the most difficult childhood: her mother died for pneumonia when she was just a kid and she grew up with her alcoholic dad who led the whole family to live in immense poverty, finally forcing the children to live in children’s home. Since her dad’s example molded her opinion of men to be overly negative, she decided she would never have a husband to destroy her life... but a child she wanted. And without going into details,
voila, so it happened... She took perfect care of her child -my mother- even if it was not at all acceptable in the eyes of the society to be a single mother in around 1950s; they even tried to take the child away from her to be adopted to a rich family but she just refused. At that time, right after the war, Finland wasn’t yet the welfare state it is today. So for a woman with almost no formal education, it was difficult to scratch a living. She worked in so many different places with such a lousy salary, living wherever she could find a shelter, as in the kitchen corner of relatives... Sometimes she just skipped the meals that there would be enough food for the child and as a consequence fainted at the work. But little by little -with a lot of effort- things got better, both in my grandmother’s life as well as in the Finnish society. As I have grown up without ever needing to face any kind of shortage of material goods, it really makes me respect her even more... And the most appalling part is that she did it
all alone, even in the midst of hostile society. Now
don’t ever tell me that women are not emotionally strong or capable of handling practical issues under pressure etc etc...
From the real life 3/3: president or a woman president?"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours." - Grover Cleveland,
1905Finland's Presidential Election 2006: in the election's second round the two presidential candidates left were Tarja Halonen (she) and Sauli Niinistö (he). One day at my workplace we were discussing with my workmate about the elections, who are we going to vote for and why. She told me she was about to vote for Sauli Niinistö, just the reason for that was quite interesting... She said she was so fed up with all these women voting for Tarja Halonen just because she's a woman (this was
her perspective; with the same logic it could be said that all the males who voted for Niinistö did it just because he's a man). So she had chosen to vote for Niinistö because she wanted to prove she's not going to vote for anyone just because of his/her sex... uh... now beg your pardon?! Isnt't it so that as voting for this male candidate not because of his political views but just because he's a man she was actually very strongly choosing her candidate by the sex? Or did she saw it in such a way that a woman candidate is more strongly defined by her sex, as a male candidate is somehow more neutral, defined just by his views or personality or whatsoever...? Hmmm.... sometimes people's way of thinking is too hard to follow.
(irrelevant but useful bit of information: Mrs. Halonen won the election)
Other side of the coin... what the heck is going on in the world??In the world we live today so many things have already changed for better, that I do know... But as because of my studies I’ve become overly familiar with all these more or less boring oops I meant interesting world state reports etc etc I wouldn’t feel this post to be adequate without even a brief look what’s actually happening in the world. So before I finish, here just few captions of some lately published UN reports...
UNIFEM: Progress of the World’s Women 2005
"For women, progress, while steady, has been painfully slow. Despite increased parity in primary education, disparities are still wide in secondary and tertiary education — both increasingly key to new employment opportunities. And while women’s share of seats in parliament have inched up in all regions, women still hold only 16 per cent of parliamentary seats worldwide. Finally, although women have entered the paid labour force in great numbers, the result in terms of economic security is not clear. According to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals Report 2005: “Women’s access to paid employment is lower than men’s in most of the developing world... Women are less likely than men to hold paid and regular jobs and more often work in the informal economy, which provides little financial security” (UN 2005)."UNIFEM: Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009
"Who answers to women? The evidence reflected throughout this Report suggests that despite generous formal guarantees of equality, progress for many women, particularly the poorest and most marginal, has been far too slow. Every time legal systems turn a blind eye to injustices experienced by women, every time public service systems respond to women’s needs only in relation to narrowly defined traditional female roles, and every time structures of opportunity in markets favour men’s enterprises or limit women to vulnerable or low return employment, we are faced with an accountability failure that reinforces genderbased inequality."
WHO: World Health Report 2005, Make Every Mother and Child Count
"Yet, even in the 21st century, we still allow well over 10 million children and half a million mothers to die each year, although most of these deaths can be avoided. Seventy million mothers and their newborn babies, as well as countless children, are excluded from the health care to which they are entitled. Even more numerous are those who remain without protection against the poverty that ill-health can cause."UN Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing 1995: Platform for Action, Mission Statement
"Absolute poverty and the feminization of poverty, unemployment, the increasing fragility of the environment, continued violence against women and the widespread exclusion of half of humanity from institutions of power and governance underscore the need to continue the search for development, peace and security and for ways of assuring people-centred sustainable development. The participation and leadership of the half of humanity that is female is essential to the success of that search. (...) The advancement of women and the achievement of equality between women and men are a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice and should not be seen in isolation as a women's issue."Now definitely time to stop...There are so many things I actually wanted to include in this post... but because it just exploded and tends to turn into a novel I’ve better stop here that I won’t exhaust others as well as myself... may be some day I will write part 2 or 3, if and when I get in to the mood. So what did we learn from this post? Probably the correct answer will be
nothing but at least I had fun in writing it. :-) So bye for now... time to change the topic!
