- Not earning as much as my male coworkers, even though we have the same job titles, although I have the additional responsibilities of opening for the day, closing, and training new employees. This is recent news to me, and I'm still kind of pissed about it. Grr.

- The expectation, (in my family at least, although everyone experiences something similar in their lifetime) that I will finally settle down, get married, and get pregnant. At 20. Yeesh. And that I will stop digesting everything feminist-related for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

- That I have to be skinny and pretty just to "make it". That I have to conform to a certain type just so that people will

What do you think it means to be a woman? Well, I think it's harder at the moment to be a female than to be a male. I'm reading a great book called "The W Effect: Bush's War on Woman", edit. by Laura Flanders, and it's really infuriating at the ways in which America has degraded itself regarding women- and family-related issues.

Personally, however, a woman to me is a mutable quality. At the basic level, it's physical differences from the boys and men. Otherwise, a woman can be many things. She can be hard/soft, caring/spiteful, demanding/nurturing, yin/yang. I think that females can accept the yang side of us far easily than what males can accept their own yin side. Does that make any sense?

I think women wear a lot of different hats. For an example, I have a sister-hat, a daughter-hat, a museum-grrl-hat, a feminist-hat, a Wiccan-hat, an artistic-hat, a farm-worker-hat, a friend-hat, and a teacher-hat. I probably have others in my closet as well, but they're too dusty to read the labels.

What is our role? I think women can choose their own specific lines/parts, but that we- along with ALL people- are all part of the same play. That is: live our lives, try to make the world a better place, and act in ethical ways. Follow the rules of conduct, so to speak.

Do I think we have gender equality? Hell, no! There's never equality when someone is trying to one-up someone else. It's a truism that "your freedom ends when it becomes someone else's burden", but it still seems like not everyone realizes that/gives a darn. Mostly, I think, because it's a)easier not to, and b)this double-standard has been in practice for so long I don't think people know (or could imagine) anything else different.

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Originally posted by ShyViolet417:
what do you think it means to be a woman? what's our role? and what do you think about the way things stand in terms of gender equality? the feminism & nurturing thread kinda made me think....so, what do you think?

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Originally posted by paxamillion:
I've also heard stay-at-home moms say that working moms care more about themselves and their careers than their children. So, the nastiness seems to go both ways.

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Strangely, it's kind of like going back to the very beginnings of the second wave when it really was about having the right to choose.

I'm in agreement with you, though... It's funny how women are often the most judgemental about other women: whether the issue is parenting or career choices or what constitutes being an "authentic" feminist, we're often our own worst critics.

I don't know how many courses I've sat through in university where "patriarchal" women are derided as unenlightened because of their life choices. Or other social venues where gender and other feminists have been derided for theirs. Or seen stay at home Moms and career Moms trade broadsides over the "right" way to parent. It's all such a waste of energy.

I do not believe in a monolithic, universal model of woman. Women of different races, social standings and cultures with have varied perspectives and may all evidence different models of female experience. If they are leading happy, productive, self-fufilling lives, I'm all for it, even if their paths fundamentally diverge from mine.

I have benefitted from feminism.Great jobs, paid as much as men wherever I worked. So I have no complaints. I loved women's studies, and I worked in various capacitites in sexual assault centres and battered women's shelters. I consider myself a feminist.

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Women who juggle kids and careers and after-school lessons and volunteerism, etc., etc., and survive on Prozac and fast food are more respected than women who choose to stay home, take time to smell the roses, cook from scratch, and read to little Johnny or Jane themselves.

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I'm troubled by this division. What about single, working mothers (like me) who juggle kids and "career", AND volunteerism, AND read to our little Johnnies too? What if we get take-out on the nights when we are exhausted from working, AND bake from scratch other times? If I had the choice to stay home and be a full-time homemaker, I would do it. Unfortunately, somebody has to pay my rent.

I once had an interesting conversation on a long bus trip; I was arguing fairly agressively with the young fellow behind me over his simplistic idea of what caused the European Renaissance [neither of us being experts, mind you]; then across the isle from him was a woman who was being absolutely sweet and nurturing and making him feel wonderful about himself. It was quite a contrast, although behind the mannerisms I think she actually mostly agreed with me.

*Room silent with anticipation*. Then saith Holly, " Diamond ???; you've got to be kidding ..., make it a big honkin' 40 foot yatch, and then .... we'll talk ! "

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she gets-it-by-herself-for-herself-and-makes-no-excuses-for-being-herself!

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I'm troubled by this division. What about single, working mothers (like me) who juggle kids and "career", AND volunteerism, AND read to our little Johnnies too? What if we get take-out on the nights when we are exhausted from working, AND bake from scratch other times? If I had the choice to stay home and be a full-time homemaker, I would do it. Unfortunately, somebody has to pay my rent.

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Hmmm. See, I don't think I would choose to be home full time, even if I had the choice.

Here's an interesting thing, if you visit a lot of parenting fora, to observe. I find that a lot of women who are full-time homemakers will often go on the offensive and say things to working mothers, such as "Why did you even have children if you're just paying someone else to raise them", or use terms like "mothering substitute" if you use babysitters. For some women, even a couple of hours with a sitter is an unforgivable sin. Now that's not the interesting part, but this is: The working mothers almost always respond with the economic argument, that they would be home full time if they had the choice.

What I'd like to see more of, in the future -- although right now would be even better -- are more parent-friendly workplaces. On-site daycares, where parents can go have lunch with their kids, that sort of thing. More telecommuting and flexible hours. We'd wind up with a much more productive work force in the end, and it would also free up some of the dads to be more involved with their kids. I think that's something that would benefit everybody -- men, women and their offspring.

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I'm in agreement with you, though... It's funny how women are often the most judgemental about other women: whether the issue is parenting or career choices or what constitutes being an "authentic" feminist, we're often our own worst critics.

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I think that women having to choose between having a career and staying at home with their children is very unfair. Having to choose on the basis of economics is sad. Choosing to have a career instead of staying home is great, as long at it is your choice. It is so sad when women criticize each other over their choices.

Originally posted by steffie:

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In my experience, men who give gifts want something in return. Even if they don't expressly say so, there is usually an unspoken "so now you owe me one"...

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Originally posted by windymustang:
The poverty level that women endure speaks for itself.

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Originally posted by thrantos:
- Not earning as much as my male coworkers, even though we have the same job titles, although I have the additional responsibilities of opening for the day, closing, and training new employees. This is recent news to me, and I'm still kind of pissed about it. Grr.

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Uh, "kind of pissed about it"???? The same job title, more responsibilities, and lower pay???? Welcome to the 21st century, boys and girls. I guess we can assume you don't belong to a union. Maybe you should organize! (Easier said than done, I know.)

I'm quite disgusted to hear this, and yet I shouldn't be so surprised. I belong to a unionized profession and have for so long that I'm afraid I sometimes forget that inequities like what you describe still exist.

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Originally posted by Fata Morgana:
A bit off topic, I suppose, but I'm a little surprised that no one else on this thread picked up on this. Perhaps the rest of you are so used to women being paid less than men for the same job that you don't even remark on it anymore.

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With regard to women, mothers who work only in the home, and those who work outside as well, Kukuchai has ascribed some fairly judgemental attitudes to mothers working outside the home which I don't think reflect reality.

The vast majority of women I know who are also mothers work outside the home. When asked whether they would rather stay at home, most of them have said, "no, but I wish I could afford to work part-time" or "no, but I wish I could have stayed home longer after the kids were born". For me,ideally, I would've liked to have stayed at home for about a year and a half, worked part time until my kids were in school full time, and then devoted myself more fully to a career.

I'm envious of women who have more choice in how much and what kind of work they do than I, but don't feel any particular resentment towards them. I have many choices open to me that other women don't. Staying at home with your children, if that's what you choose to do, presents a particular set of challenges and rewards, just as going outside to work has its own challenges and rewards. The key is choice.

In fact, I suppose it can be said that the number of choices one has available is indicative of several things - socioeconomic positioning (class), upbringing, education, location (affluent/urban/industrial state as opposed to impoverished/rural/developing state).

I am unambiguously a feminist, first and foremost. What that actually means to me is subject to change in marginal ways depending on life circumstance, but there is one constant that has never changed...the demand that my voice be heard.

I am woman, HEAR ME. That's all. Whether I am roaring, laughing, philosophizing, or gawd forbid, crying, I demand the opportunity to be heard. That doesn't necessarily mean I always WANT to be heard, but the opportunity should be available without any gender pandering.

There was a time in my life, one that I lovingly refer to as my militant femme decade, that I was adament and somewhat fanatical in my feminist identity. And, then there was another time when I tried, to the best of my ability anyway, to play the role of the pseudo-subordinate wife. Neither shoe seemed to fit very well, but at least the former offered room for growth.

I may have sounded judgemental only because in the past 2.5 years I chose to care for my elderly mother and to homeschool my two boys. I managed to pull it off despite the fact that I am a single parent. Where I would have expected support from other women I received criticism and derision, not because I wasn't doing a good job, but because in their minds old people belong in old folk's homes and children belong in school and I belong in an office somewhere carving out a career and financially supporting my family. If I was married and doing the same thing I know that the reaction would have been different because I would have had a visible means of financial support.

I have raised 3 children who are now 13, 15 and 22. Through them I have met many children from many different backgrounds. The observations I made earlier about working mothers are based on fact and reality.

A single parent working full-time (or more these days) can't possibly keep track of her children at all times. I've seen too many kids (from 6 to 16) left on their own for hours at a time. Summer's are particularly bad. If there is an involved other parent, grand-parents, aunts, uncles, etc. and the children are supervised while mom's at work, that's one thing. But I'm talking about single parents without that support (dead-beat dads, families far away, etc.) What happens to those kids? They're on their own. And they will get into trouble. And they do. I have seen it. Too much booze, drugs, sex at an ever earlier age, trouble with the law.

No. My comments were based in reality. I have seen too many women choose to leave their parents in an old folks home despite allegations of abuse and neglect, to drug their ADD kids with Ritalin or Dexedrine without doing their research, and then drug themselves with Prozac, in order to maintain the status quo and all their material possessions.

The reality is this: if I had made the other choice 2.5 years ago, I would still have my $50,000/year career but my mother would most probably be dead and my older son would be a Dexedrine freak and/or high school drop-out.

I made a choice "outside the box" and it worked yet, to this day, my worst detractors are career women.

This is the third wave of feminism where a women can make a choice "outside the box" and receive support from other women and from society in general.

My point is when I made my choice I did not receive any support from the working women I knew at that time. They were over-achievers too and would much prefer to drug their kids or leave their 14-year old daughters unsupervised while they pursued their careers.

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A single parent working full-time (or more these days) can't possibly keep track of her children at all times. I've seen too many kids (from 6 to 16) left on their own for hours at a time. Summer's are particularly bad.

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My eldest, now 20, has an excellent entry-level position in the IT industry, and my youngest, age 3, thrives in a child care environment that provides structure, stimulation, nurturing and and an excellent early years learning environment, while I work to provide all of us with an adequate standard of living. Adequate is what $50,000 a year provides these days. Not much more. I do not work to provide frivolous material gratification, and even if I could afford to, wouldn't. What makes a good mother, a good parent, isn't whether he/she stays at home with them, but rather whether there are adequate supports for the choices he/she makes. Well-compensated and lengthy maternity leaves and excellent affordable child care are two of those supports.

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Originally posted by Ravenscript:
Crimson writes: "And, to be honest, I don't really get the whole 3rd wave thing...smells a little too much like a marketing ploy in its constant need to have 'one-up' on the 2nd and 1st wave feminist ideologies."

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Originally posted by kukuchai:
You misunderstood me. My son was diagnosed with ADD and the only thing the teachers did for him was to tell him he was stupid and would never make it. If I had kept my job and left him on his own he would not have made it for sure.

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ADD doesn't prevent your son from doing well in school. It just means that he has to have good self control and ignore the people who tell him that he can't make it. (Which includes you, if you teach him that he can't be held responsible for his failiures because of his teachers or because of his ADD or because of King Ralph or beacause of whatever).

[ 22 September 2004: Message edited by: Gir Draxon ]

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Originally posted by Zoot:
Actually, Gir, the school system is not an ADD-friendly environment, nor is ADD something that you can just decide to be more disciplined about. Impulse-control is very hard for ADD sufferers. I have no doubt that kukuchai's son had a rough go of it.

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Yeah it can be rough at times, but it is still entirely possible to suceed. I know it is hard for people with ADD to control impulses: I am one of them. I was on ritalin for a little while, but hated the idea of it so I stopped taking it early in my school career. And I still managed to graduate from high school with honors. I'm not saying that kukchai's son isn't facing some pretty steep challenges, I am saying that there has to be more to it than that- ADD alone does not prevent sucsess.

So ending the thread drift...

The role of women is:

1) Mothering children, because they have the equipment and men don't.

2) (insert all other roles that humans could possibly have here)

[ 22 September 2004: Message edited by: arborman ]

Anyway, I would like to learn more about what it means to be a 3rd waver from those of you that see yourselves as one. I have a minor in WS and was raised by 2nd waver (also a single mother) who was herself raised by a 1st waver, though I doubt my grandmother would've considered herself such. (But, she did move here from Ireland to escape poverty only to find herself knee deep in the Great Depression. She completed nursing school, worked full time until she retired and despite everyone's best efforts at talking 'sense' into her, she refused to wear dresses or skirts!)

Sorry, I got a little sidetracked....
Anyway, I just cannot seem to fully grasp the 3rd wave concept. The 'marketing' I referred to earlier stems from media statements such as these:

Media messages supporting my right to have children or not; to work full time or not; to embrace my inner femme or not, etc. ad nauseum. But, cultural messages still dictate whether (or not) my *choices* are in keeping with the status quo, and far too often, these *choices* are not choices at all.
And, on another note, advertisements telling me that in order to establish my 'womanly' independence I ought to wear an expensive diamond ring on my right hand.
More advertisements linking my gender to flowers and all things 'essentially' natural, yet my own personal aroma is so offensive that it must be reigned in with an assortment of feminine deodorants.

The list goes on...and maybe I'm completely off the mark here with my perception of what this 3rd wave thing is all about, but thus far I haven't experienced the unconditional, cross-cultural, cross-socio-economic support that the 3rd wave intimates. But, I have seen more and more clever ways to re-define what it supposedly means to be 'female' in this modern western world via media and advertising. Still a box, still just as limiting and oppressive, but quite a bit more expensive.

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Originally posted by Fata Morgana:

Uh, "kind of pissed about it"???? The same job title, more responsibilities, and lower pay???? Welcome to the 21st century, boys and girls. I guess we can assume you don't belong to a union. Maybe you should organize! (Easier said than done, I know.)

I'm quite disgusted to hear this, and yet I shouldn't be so surprised. I belong to a unionized profession and have for so long that I'm afraid I sometimes forget that inequities like what you describe still exist.

A bit off topic, I suppose, but I'm a little surprised that no one else on this thread picked up on this. Perhaps the rest of you are so used to women being paid less than men for the same job that you don't even remark on it anymore.

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Hmm, which brings me to a question. Are we truely apathetic towards unequal wages, or would we rather just have our jobs?

What I mean is this: while I am a bit miffed (still!) about the lower wage/higher responsibility, I'll take it anyway, because a job is equal to $$$$$ which is equal to higher education which is (hopefully) equal to a better job with (again, hopefully) equalization of wages.