my life with 3 Princesses

Happy Birthday to The Pill: She is 50 May 2, 2010

Finally the sound of silence prevails in this house….

I came across Richard Stengel’s introduction to the cover story of Time of May 3, 2010 dedicated to The Pill, entitled ‘Revolution in a Pill’, earlier today. I dare add nothing to the story Nancy Gibbs wrote in this issue.  I have only had time to skim through it but she is too good and will definitely cover all there is to be said.  It’s one of Richard’s statements that inspired me to write this post.  He states:

Countries that educate and empower women tend to be less violent and unstable and more likely to develop socially and economically.

I take this to be a fact.  Moreover, my gut feeling is that the human race has only developed roughly half the potential it could have developed had women left the kitchen earlier and took a more active role in society earlier.  However, sadly, we will never know how it could have been. 

Sadder still is the fact that there are still numerous situations that I sense miss the contribution of women in the country where I live, a country we like to call modern, developed and democratic.  I will not go into specifics except to say that too often I find myself thinking…”only a man could have thought that up…it’s so stupid”.  My excuses to all intelligent men but there are some circumstances that if we had to go into them one by one  I am sure any man reading this would agree with me.

In the jobs I held before I took this current break from work (to raise my 3 princesses) I never thought of myself as a female this or that but only as my job title.  But I have to admit that I’m in favour of gender mainstreaming and not completely against positive discrimination for women.  From my unscientific observation of how things proceed in my country and in some others,  there are still people men in key positions who need this to be imposed on them, although I’m also sure that no matter what legislation says, unless one believes and practices the equality creed, women and tokenism will be always be, for them, interlinked.

A popular blogger recently wrote about precisely this issue.  She quoted a conversation with (then lawyer) Ena Cremona, now a judge at the European Court of Justice, who she interviewed in the 80’s.

“I never pigeonhole myself as a woman lawyer,” she told me, “and I avoid participating in seminars, interviews and articles that pigeonhole women as special cases. It implies that men are the mainstream and women are not, and it is self-defeating.”

To this I can add nothing.  In its simplicity this reasoning is spot on.

However not there are still women living in countries where despots rule and weirdos say that promiscuous women are causing earth quakes (remember the Iranian cleric?).

Where am I rambling today?

What is the link between the Pill, gender mainstreaming, positive discrimination and the cleric?

Put simply, the common denominator is women and me being one of them.  However radical the Pill has been in giving women power over their bodies, there are still millions of women the world over who have  not yet tasted the sweet taste of freedom – to be, to work, to study, to have fun. May all women (and men) have the possibility for education, advancement and choice to be able to fulfil their potential.  Sounds utopical? Mabye.

A penny for your thoughts…