"If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it." --Sojourner Truth, former slave, abolitionist, Methodist minister, and early U.S. women's rights leader
International Women's Day began 99 years ago. With so much progress accomplished since 1911, yet so much more remaining to be done, it seems to me that it's time for women to change our approach to something closer to Sojourner Truth's.
Her advice to women as she stated it in the above quote to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the influential anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, when they met in 1853, comes from a position of knowing her own power. Despite being been born into slavery and experiencing oppression, poverty, and discrimination far greater than most women reading this blog in 2010, Truth was way ahead of many of us in her perspective about how to advance equal rights.
Without question, in many places around the globe, women remain as oppressed as Sojourner Truth -- born Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County, New York, and once sold for $100 and a herd of sheep -- was before she "walked off" from her master.
But even in the most gender-repressive societies such as Yemen, there are Sojourner Truth-like women and girls such as ten-year-old Nujood Ali, who was married off to a man three times her age but had the idea of a different, more just life, the intention to get it, and the courage to divorce her husband despite male dominant customs.
In the U.S. as in many highly industrialized nations, women have become not just free to choose their mates and manage their own fertility, but we are the majority in the workplace and almost 60% of college graduates, we make over 80% of consumer purchasing decisions, and own over 50% of start-up businesses -- just for starters.
Yet we hover around 15% of corporate board memberships and top executive positions, we earn 78 cents to a man's dollar, and though we're 52% of voters, we're only 17% of Congress and around 25% of state legislatures. Why the disparity?
I have been researching the question for over a year now, and I keep coming up with the same answer as Sojourner Truth. We need to just take what we want.
All indicators are that our learned behavior has not yet allowed us to break free, or to see ourselves as fully powerful. So women don't put ourselves forward for those top slots in numbers and with intention sufficient to break through to parity once and for all. We don't assume equality at all levels as our perfect right, as boys and men are socialized to do from birth.
At See Jane Do's Passion Into Action conference recently, a woman shared this story as an insight to how we might break the bounds that keep us from reaching equal rights and responsibilities: it seems that trainers of baby elephants tether them to a posts soon after birth. After a couple of weeks, the newborn stops trying to break free, for she has come to believe she lacks the ability to do so. Once grown, the elephant has plenty of strength to pull up the post or break the chains. But because she doesn't realize she has the power to free herself, she remains tied to the post, held back by her own previously inculcated experience.
Women can only be disempowered from reaching full equality if we stay tethered to old constraints of custom and behavior that remain in our thinking. We need to understand our own strength, embrace it, and have the intention and courage to use it, for our own good and the good of the world.
What IWD started in Copenhagen as a Socialist movement for better working conditions and voting rights for women at the turn of the 20th century has unquestionably helped to change the world for the better. Now it's up to today's women to finish the job -- no excuses if we don't.
In her most famous speech, delivered to a women's rights convention in 1851, Sojourner Truth proffered another piece of advice that we would do well to heed: "If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!"
Let us pledge to turn the world aright, with equal rights, by IWD's 100th anniversary next year. All we need to do, after all, is "just take them."
Gloria Feldt is author of three books. Her fourth, No Excuses: Nine Power Essentials for Women to Lead an Unlimited Life, will be published by Seal Press in October. A teen mom who rose to become president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she continues her advocacy for women as an independent keynote speaker and commentator. Vanity Fair named her one of "200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers," and she's been honored as a Women's e-News "21 Leaders for the 21st Century." She serves on the board of the Women's Media Center. Visit GloriaFeldt.com to learn more. Contact her at Gloria@gloriafeldt.com or @heartfeldt on Twitter.
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I think there are often many choices women do not accept as possible for themselves which go beyond standing up for themselves in terrible situations. I spoke to a woman's group last week when one participant asked, "What do you do when after asking for a raise, you were treated poorly by your manager?" She then said she wished she has never asked for what she felt she deserved. This was a smart woman with degrees and experience. I asked her why she stayed in her position. She said it would be a terrible blow to her family if she left.
Is this true? Sometimes. And sometimes not. When we give into our fears, we often are giving into something that isn't defined or often, not real. I have coached many women who left unhealthy or just plain boring job situations. Standing up to their bosses or the company was a dead-end. They couldn't just take what they wanted. But they could plan for something else, even if it took a few years to acquire what they needed to move on. And move on they did regardless of the economy.
Therefore, I would add to your title, "Just take them, wherever they might be."
And yes, this goes for men as well as women.
Groups have much more power to advance social change. We are not, despite conservatives best efforts, merely a bunch of "rugged individualists" that just happen to live next door to each other. We are a society; with norms becoming law through the action of society.
Each person could - maybe - "take their freedome." But what about the women or gays or differently abled behind them? Do we not have a duty to our fellow citizens?
The common weal is NOT dead - except in the heads of conservatives.
In the eyes of the law, we are all equal. I know for a fact, there is legislation on the books, being enforced, that are not in line with this. These should be targeted for removal. Any law that favors or disfavors one group over another should be jettisoned.
But you can make your own way. It is irrelevant if you are of a specific gender or ethnicity. If we spend less time worrying about the group and concentrating on the only thing we can affect (ourselves) we would be much better off. Waiting to ride the coattails of others of your gender or ethnicity is to abandon your own possibilities. Believing you are responsible for others of your gender or ethnicity is to chain yourself to the success of all of your gender or ethnicity.
By your reckoning, scientists should "re-invent" the wheel every generation. Why should the next generation of researchers care about what came before or what will come after?
It's just your sort of thinking that makes people believe that they can pollute the air and water as long as it benefits them; the rest of society, our children and grandchildren be damned.
I am glad that your sort of thinking, while all too prevalent in our society, remains in a small minority. I would hate to live in a society that was built around your lack of compassion. I am glad that the small minded and small hearted are a minority - albeit a too often heard from minority.
I always hear women making excuses for how they are not allowed to succeed. One of them, is "no one ever asks for my opinion". They never notice that men who succeed don't wait to be asked, they OFFER their opinion.
Watch how often women use words like "allowed" "empowered" "invited" etc.
JUST DO IT.
Women who do x are called ___ while men who do x are called ____.
Stop caring what you are labeled and I bet people will stop labeling you.
Rather than forwarding a collective thought, we should be pushing the individual, excelling for the benefit of himself or herself. When we advance a gender or ethnic centric message, we overlook the individual in favor of the group, presupposing one group has an inherant advantage over another group. This is one of the reasons we are in the environment we are in.
The message should be: YOU want equal rights, YOU take them. If there are laws (I'm not talking about customs) favoring one group over another, they should be overturned. It is up to the individual to achieve for himself or herself. It is not the group's responsibility to forward the group, nor is it the responsibility of the individual to forward the group.