Feminism Is For Everyone

Dec 10, 2008,2:10 PM

The Feminist Issue For Our Time

Hello all, I hope exam week is treating you well. Thank you for letting me blog with you. I am a CLAS '99 grad (Math major, Classics minor) and have found my way back to the feminist movement (or at least, labeling it as such) only recently. I live here in Cville and hope to see more young feminist energy at the NOW meetings (one tonight, 7 p.m., downtown library).

Recently I saw that you had a meeting to discuss what you perceived to be the feminist issue(s) of our era. I am very curious what you came up with in that discussion. Wish I could have been there myself. Maybe next semester.

This morning I was meeting with a group of women and we discussed the notion, or perhaps, the presumption, that career is of primary importance in your (our) lives and that family will be added on, if it gets added on at all. Many women I consider to be in my peer group (women with young children, which means they age from 25-40 or so) feel that society has swung the pendulum far from one expectation (homemaker) to the other (career focus) and has yet to find the right balance. We mused that we may not be providing realistic expectations of the real world to younger women. I have to wonder if this feeling is the same on college campuses today as it was for us. It is this topic, a feeling of being "duped" by society, that many women I know see as a feminist issue of our time. We were told that we could have it all and all at the same time. None of us agreed that that message was correct. Certainly this is not the only issue, but one that is newer to our generation perhaps than in years' past. Perhaps women who never wanted children or wanted to enter previously male-dominated careers were the voice of feminism of the past, but where is our voice for women who plan to have children "someday"? I am 31 years old and am not the only one looking for a mentor. Isn't there something wrong with that picture?

I would love to hear what you feel is the dominant pressure on Grounds today. I know they may be very different than those of my peer group but even that fact may require some examination. Your issues may not be "to work, to work part-time or to stay home" or "to have children young or to wait." These are questions that, if you do not have an opinion on now, I promise you will have an opinion on by the time you are 40. I do not think older alumnae are doing their part by keeping mum on how their perspectives change after they graduate. But we cannot do our part if we don't know what gets you fired up as well.

Thus, a procrastination project for you ;-) is to comment away on what you feel are issues for the college-aged woman and what you perceive to be issues for the future. Look forward to getting to know you! You can get to know me better via my personal blog (attachedfeminist.blogspot.com). Have a great break!