Women were best known by their homemaking skills and cooking skills. Because of the feminists in the last wave of women’s rights, women can now choose what they want to be in life. Women can choose to be just about anything. They are in the military, in the tech sector, they are doctors and engineers. Back in the day, you could be a secretary, nurse or teacher. I have three daughters of whom I am very proud. They know it isn’t easy to be a woman and to take care of themselves and give to their children and husbands. One has three children, teaches special ed and just got her Master’s Degree. She is thinking about getting another degree to be able to teach blind children in schools but also in other institutions. When she finished her Master’s Degree, she made me promise not to let her go back again, and she has relieved me of that promise. We laughed together as we talked about how my promise only lasted for fifteen months. My second daughter, has a good job working in an organization that promotes business in her city. She is also married and has twin sons. She travels often for her job and must weigh all the facets of her life and she takes tennis lessons for herself. My youngest daughter is a stay at home mother. She does have a catering business and is able to balance the three youngest grandchildren. I will admit she has the best laid out kitchen I have ever seen. It is not the most expensive kitchen but working in it is a dream. I am telling you these things because they are women I know the best. They didn’t reach this balance easily or quickly. But they have created the type of lives that fits them. It took work to accomplish all of this but they are young women I am proud of.

“But every contradiction

Has the condition of resolving

Itself through the process

Through the process of

Becoming, becoming, becoming,

Becoming, BECOMING!”

—-Megan Terry, Approaching Simone

Women writers have shown that their characters may transcend social roles to become fully human beings who respond with joy and anguish.  They share their experiences as women to show their commonality with that of other women, and through their writing they validate the experiences of all women. Such writing helps women readers overcome their feelings of isolation and encourages them to stop internalizing their failures as purely individual. It promotes sisterhood, and it offers male readers a basis for comparing their experience. Other writers concentrate on frank explorations of the “problem that has no name,” Betty Friedan’s words for women’s unease about their socially imposed roles. Many writers are rewriting old myths from a feminine perspective. Feminists emphasize process more than achievement. Women are seen finding ways to be self-creators, distinguishing between themselves as objects of others’ perceptions and as perceiving, imagining individuals capable of making their worlds. Women have come to realize that education is vital for all women. It doesn’t mean that they must work outside the home, but young women are learning that education only gives a woman more choices.

The equal rights amendment must pass this year..

“Relearn the alphabet,

relearn the world, the world

understood anew only in doing,

understood only as

looked-up-into out of earth,

the heart of an eye looking,

the heart of a root

planted in earth.

Transmutation is not

under the will’s rule.”

—Denise Levertov’s Relearning the Alphabet (1970 )

                                                                                                                                                    Women are people too!

Today, we hear a lot of people talking about man caves. A place where they can be privately in touch with themselves. Feminists understand this need and though they are willing to share space with a man, she too needs her own space in which she can continue to make herself “at home.” Though this may seem selfish, it is clearly  a vital need of all human beings. I recommend that you read  A Room of Her Own, by Virginia Woolf. There are many misconceptions about equality between women and men. Women do not want to raise up women and be over men. Equality is not something that allows one gender to rule over the other. It creates a society where both genders do what is right for themselves, their families, their communities and each other. Many women are looking inward to find themselves and are being rewarded with the joy of self-discovery.

                                                                                                                  Women are capable of being great athletes

Women need to be able at last to live within, and not to move to the rhythm of others. Women deserve, all around the world, to live they choose, and not a life they are forced to live. Many women’s lives continue to deny, remove, isolate, taking the children one by one. They live now as then in their own solitude. In this solitude women win a reconciled peace. But women deserve more than a reconciled peace. Women need to grow, to discover themselves or to become all that we are meant to be. Everything. No longer tied to husband, children and the house. Women have much to contribute. Women have much they want to contribute. And women have much they will give no matter who stands in the way. Women in countries around the world, despite cultural and religious differences are strong emotionally. They want educations and to contribute to their communities.

Unlearning to Not Speak

“Blizzards of paper

in slow motion

sift through her ,

In nightmares she suddenly recalls

a class she signed up for

but forgot to attend.

Now it is too late.

Now it is time for finals:

losers will be shot.

Phrases of men who lectured her

drift and rustle in piles:

Why don’t you speak up?

Why are you shouting?

You have the wrong answer,

wrong line, wrong face.

They tell her she is womb-man,

babymachine, mirror image, toy.

each mother and penis-poor,

a dish of synthetic strawberry icecream

rapidly melting.”

—Marge Piercy, a feminist author of novels and poetry