Ngayairing Rungsung
Feminism today is not a label, it’s a way of life but here’s the catch-if we remain indifferent to history, we risk losing it all. Consider what held women back a generation or two ago. There was complete lack of occupational opportunity .When you think about it, there’s no end to the battles a woman has to fight. The obvious ones are of course the battle for space, identity, strength, integrity, freedom of choice regardless of her geographical location or economic standing.
Thankfully, things have come a long way today. The women’s liberation movement may not have done enough but what it did do went far beyond the immediate. It created a whole new generation of women who felt the need to redefine not only their own sense of self worth, but also the way they were perceived by the world around them.
Feminism can be defined as women’s ability to think about their subjugated role in history and then do something about it. The 21st century have somehow seen the end in inequality but only if women absorb the habit of historical self awareness, becoming a mass of people, who rather than do it all, decide at last to change it all.
‘The future is ours to lose’, since there has always been some scattered awareness that women’s low status was unfair, we could say that there has always been a backlash- Men were granted and granted themselves more and more equality and women of all races were left in history’s tidewater. Once again we are at a turning point. This decade had seen one new landmark after another politics, police, army, entrepreneurship, sports, literature and space travel are only some of the male bastions that have fallen to women power recently .A feminist sitting on the supreme court; a woman in change of foreign policies. Indeed feminism has become mainstream. Oprah is talking about how to walk out of an abusive marriage-This flood tide could either crest further to change the landscape forever, or it could recede once again. What determines the outcome is the level of historical awareness we reach before the tide inevitably.
History tells us that whenever violence predominates in society, women are marginalized in social and political affair; their dependence on men for safety and security increases; their rights get more circumscribed and lives get devalued e.g.- one of the steady omission of women are featured in only say, fifteen percent of the front page news and then usually victims of crime or misconduct . So despite tall claims by women libbers- they are still at the recurring end of male chauvisms and much needs to be done to ameliorate their lot.
The recurrent ideological theme is that if women take themselves seriously –they will lose feminity and social status. If they do, think, worry about and long for does not matter, surely it’s not important that history pays them attention .Instead of remaining dependent and ignorant; women must catch the taste of techniques of activism like a hit song of the month wafting through the air. They should be the agents of their own change. Every woman must know they have a will, a voice, they have skills and they can use to carve a place for themselves. Be it in the workplace, home, on the international runway or the railway station bridge. Their world is changing and they are the agents of their own change. Woman is her own person, if she is allowed to fly high and fly free, she can stand up with the best and be counted best among equals.
If the past generation is far too gone, then the next can be made to care –women have known the pain at the receiving end of a great deal of violence and deprivation. Therefore women must claim this generation as an epoch of peace, integrity and happy feminity.
