Washington, DC – Here we are once again, a special time set aside for a special group, women. Curiously there is no “special” time set aside for the most special group of all, men, or most particularly white men in this western “civilization.” That’s because that particular group already has all the days and just throws a bone to everyone else. A bone, mind you. Not equal access to jobs or equal pay, just a day here, a month there.
Most of us unparticular folks have finally figured out that a day here or a month there doesn’t pay the bills. So, the particular group has started feeling aggrieved. White men are the put upon, the victims if you will, in a country of folks looking for victimization everywhere. It’s hard to recall that there was a time, not so very long ago, when being a victim was considered a bad thing. Remember Gary Cooper in HIGH NOON.
Those dear little ladies who once agreed that they shouldn’t worry their pretty little heads and let the big old boys do the protecting have figured that, to quote the King of Siam, they’ve been “protected out of all they own.” However, most of those women weren’t allowed to own anything anyway. That left women unable to extricate themselves from unsafe or just unhappy situations. It’s only been in the last half-century or so that fathers have been held responsible, more or less, depending on which judge or family court one found oneself before.
Women who work a second full-time job out of the home wonder why they don’t get the same salary and respect as their white male counterparts. I realize that nobody gets the same respect as their white male counterparts, but I’m writing about women now. We already know that while we work outside the home, if we are in a relationship, we need to demand equity there as well.
I’ve heard that one reason is that women are just too timid to ask so for a fair wage, and apparently, that means those hiring them are too mercenary to give it. We’ve had this “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore” moment, resulting in the above mentioned ‘poor me’ male response.
Another reason offered is that women need to take time off if their children are sick. Men have children too, and the kids are theirs as well. Or they change jobs quite often. There is support for the notion that those job changes are frequently a result of work conditions, harassment, or assault that management will not address.
After millennia of women being in the place designated by not women as their place, women have elbowed their delicate timid little way bit by bit into a different place – one chosen for themselves. They have noticed that the workplaces they find themselves in are still hostile, still unequal, still dominated by the male ethic of “Mad Men.”
So, here we are, another day, another march. What’s different is we know that the deck is heavily stacked against us. We finally know how to fight and what to fight for. We need to be women united, not divided by race or religion or whatever else is used to try to keep us from working together. We need to fight for fair pay. We need to fight for non-hostile work environments. We need to fight for control of all the organs in our bodies just like men have, not just some of the organs in our bodies. We need to fight for those things that support the children of the world: good health, safe food, clean air, education. They may not be our children, but that is of no importance.
Working women have been working two full-time jobs for way too long. Women are, in fact, full card-carrying human beings, not partial people with partial rights grudgingly allowed by the “not women” of the world. You need to know that for a fact, not just believe it.
