What’s Wrong with Feminism
Everywhere I turn there are men and women slagging the feminists. Women don’t want men who are too feminine, the way they were in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, I hear. And I hear that women can’t have it all and are angry that feminism fooled them into trying. And I hear that feminism isn’t to be credited for increasing female representatives in government. Thank God for politicians like Julia Gillard, then, who knows perfectly well that the battles of women for equality aren’t over and have always been more complex than the chattering nabobs of the right wing punditry would acknowledge. This isn’t about “having it all,” a phrase that the media and politicians seized upon to implausibly describe the implausibility of feminism; it’s about a society that won’t support half its population to participate beyond the track worn in the carpet between crib and kitchen. Some women want to be mums and some want to be lawyers (or even Prime Minister) and some want to do both without being penalized for either, but instead get paid equally for equal work and credited appropriately for their efforts at home, regardless of how they choose to distribute their ambitions. Fair enough, I say, but then I was raised by a mother and father who valued each other’s contributions to the family and the world at large, who could understand feminism as more than bra-burning or whinging. The anti-feminist backlash now underway reminds me of the kind racial politics that wants no notice taken of race differences, the anti-multiculturalism that’s more often a disguise for bigotry than it is for the inclusiveness it claims. Virginia Haussegger has a point, but I’d be cautious of the critique of feminism itself. I’m sorry she feels cheated of having children, but the struggle for equality didn’t force that choice on her, and the problems of equality are not so simply reduced to child vs. childlessness. The argument may need to evolve, but feminism’s goals remain worthy and not yet fulfilled.