Oh, it will surely gall the feminists of the world, and most surely one of my best friends who has in junior college impressed me with her feminist opinions. Indeed after all the fight and struggle for women’s rights, the right to vote, the right to be seen as equal in the workplace, the struggle to break glass ceilings, the struggle to find our place in patriachial society, what I have to say will not just gall my fellow feminists and womenfolk but probably be a slap in their faces. For myself, I believe that I am dependent on men.
Let me explain myself before I’m ostracised by my fellow women-kin. I totally believe in equal rights for women and men. Our reality of a male-dominated society doesn’t mean that women are not independent people with their own rights. I totally support the women in the workplace and believe that every woman should not be discriminated because of her gender.
However, I feel that in the drive to prove ourselves as equals, we as women have pushed aside the traditional roles. Sometimes even to the point of demeaning the role of a homemaker in their emphasis of the female worker. Even being an office drone is a more viable and acceptable future for any educated woman than saying one wants to be a homemaker (not a socialite: I mean a middle-class family homemaker). Can you imagine the looks people give if one proclaims she want to be a housewife after graduation? Aghast looks of horror and veiled contempt.
Have we been so caught up in the wave of feminism and women’s rights that there is reverse discrimination against the role of traditional woman. With reference to the above example, why is it so shocking that one pursues education for the sake of education and not as a stepping stone to a career in the workforce, as a corporate worker. No offence to women who work, but who is standing up for the women who stay at home?
We try to justify, quantify the work done by housewives, comparing them to cleaners, managers, personal assistants, chefs, gardeners, accountants but do these occupations fully encompass the scope of what a housewife do? Why do housewives always draw the short stick?
We have negative stereotypes of housewives as “aunty”, old hags, gossipy, calculative. Yet possibly the same traits translated in the workplace will be meticulous, good networkers.
Just because most of modern society is composed of dual-income families, families where the woman stays at home shouldn’t be discriminated against. Women should be able to chose either choices without recrimination or guilt. Having an education doesn’t mean that one will have wasted it by become a stay-at-home mother or a housewife.
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rough draft. it seems to keep expanding on its own in all directions.
