Open Writing

Elements of the media have been taking a retrospective look at the fate of the Feminist Movement, the ‘revolution’ of the late 1960s and early 70s aimed at shattering glass ceilings and giving women equal rights all round.

Exactly why articles suddenly started to appear I am not sure. Perhaps someone, on a whim, thought it might be a good idea to ‘have a go’ at reviewing the state of play three decades down the line and, like lemmings, other feature writers and columnists, including me, jumped on the bandwagon of analysis.

Personally, when I look back, I missed whatever prompted the beginning of the concept. Was it a desire to fight oppression in whatever form, influenced by the Civil Rights Movement? That may well be the case, but although I was of an age to become a militant and cast my bra onto the burning pyre, the feminist cause never surfaced on my horizon at the time. It was only a few years later, when, knee-deep in nappies and broken nights, I realised that there had never been a question of who would put their career on hold to look after the children. Would I have had it any other way? Apart from giving me the opportunity to spend irreplaceable hours with my family, those years also provided a chance to reassess my future working life.

It was in the quiet hour induced by Watch With Mother, whilst my three youngest slept like rosy-cheeked cherubs, that I began to write. It became an obsession, a pen and notebook always on top of the fridge, waiting for the muse to strike. Fortunately it struck enough for me to believe I might make a living from it and fortunately I have, rising through a profession where you are judged on your ability not your gender.

With the idea of writing this in mind, I aired the subject of Feminism over tea with a friend. She brought me up sharp by reminding me of some of the little things that were once a bone of contention.

“Do you remember how orders for anything like coal or gas, had to be in our husband’s name?” she recalled. “And women were never considered for a mortgage in their own right. No, our daughters have a lot to be grateful for. They have no notion of what it was like before because we won the rights for them and they have never known anything different.”

She was spot on. Our grey matters ground into gear and we began a recollection session that encompassed how women were paid less than men for the same job, the fair sex could never go into a pub alone without being stared at and a comedian’s throw away line about ‘her indoors’ was no joke. We have come a long way.

But let us think about the subject with a degree of historical clarity. The Feminist case was not suddenly hatched in the 1960s but started a long while ago. Boudica for instance, taught the Romans a thing or two about freedom fighting. Joan of Arc was no shrinking violet and our own Virgin Queen, Elizabeth the First, as she paraded in front of her troops prior to the Armada vowed she ‘had the heart and stomach of a king, and a King of England too.”

Within the last 100 years women famously won the vote through the endeavours of the Suffragettes, first in 1918 for those over 30 years old, then in 1928 from the age of 21, on a par with men. In 1919 Viscountess Astor became the first women to enter Parliament and within five years a women held ministerial office as an Under Secretary of State. Is that why men were against women having the vote for so long? Were they afraid we would take over? Heavens, they needn’t have worried. It took more than half a century before we had a female Prime Minister, but when we did, I suspect Boudica and Elizabeth I were cheering in the wings.

So finally I turned my attention to the great icons of the Feminist Movement, and in particular Germaine Greer, whose book The Female Eunuch became one of the bibles of the era. There were lots of references to her on the web. The one that really caught my eye was very newly posted and reviewed an album by a group from Melbourne, Australia called Augie March. The album has a track ‘Mother Greer’ that even the songwriter admits he has no idea what he was trying to get at but penned it after reading an article by Ms Greer that caused him deep and troubled thinking. Wow!

Nothing would please me more than to conclude that the Feminist Movement put the world to rights for women once and for all. Sadly that is not possible, there is still a long way to go I do believe and partly it is our own doing. Think of it in terms of today’s bright young women heading for the top, certain to crash through the glass ceiling, then bingo, what happens? The biological clock ticks and maternal hormones take over. A generalisation I realise, but is there not a grain of truth there? We are sometimes are own worst enemies. To shatter glass, or taboos, or any other perceived barriers, we have to be ruthless and too often we are not.

Now that I have written my self into a corner and not ‘ruthless’ enough to pen a hard and fast last line, I am going for the soft option and handing over to one of my daughters to provide a postscript. Here are her thoughts on Feminism in the 21st century.

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PS by Elizabeth Kidman

“What does Feminism mean to you? “ Mum asked as we sat in the garden watching my small daughter playing cooking with stones. I had never given the subject much thought, so covering up my ignorance I waffled on about women getting the right to vote while soaking up what Mum knew about feminism like a sponge and making a mental note to look it up when I got home.

My take on feminism is rather naive and probably a little selfish. Having listened to Mum’s view it opened my eyes to a world I had never thought about and one I have always taken for granted. As a single, divorced mother, with a full time job, a mortgage and utility bills to pay, I had no idea of the world of difference I am living in compared to the world of the 1960s.

I should be grateful, and indeed I am, for the privilege of being able to choose a life as a single mother without recriminations and whispering in the streets. What Feminism has done for me is allow me the freedom to choose to walk away from an unhappy relationship and a then husband who did not want his daughter. Rather than have a termination, or be unhappy, I decided to have our beautiful baby and to divorce my husband. Not a rare thing in the 21st century and something that us ‘modern’ women take for granted. We think nothing of filing for divorce, getting a mortgage, paying our bills in our own name. Everything I associate with normal life was far from normal in Mum’s youth and for my freedom to choose I have to thank past generations of women who have fought for my rights.

I put the same question ‘What does Feminism mean to you?’ to my ex husband. His reply “It’s about women who hate men.” Possibly another reason he is my ex husband!