Women We Are

 

In honor of Women's History Month, I would like to refer to a movie I saw yesterday on Hulu, "The Wife ". Glen Close was riveting as Joan, the author, Joseph Castleman's wife. He has just gotten the news that he has received the Nobel Prize in Literature. When an aggressive biographer accuses Joan of ghostwriting her husband's books, she denies it, yet she begins to fume within, until in one of the final scenes, after hearing Joseph tell fellow Nobel laureates that his wife didn't write, she blows up, and asks him for a divorce.

 It seems that the irritating biographer, though unpleasant, had hit the nail on the head. Joan had been warned that women could not succeed in publishing, so she instead wrote her husband's books, since his writing was much inferior to hers. She took no credit. That Nobel prize was rightfully hers, as Joseph realized when he threw it at her on the way back from the Nobel Ceremony.

 I see this show as a metaphor for the roles women have been expected to play to support men as wife, mother, housekeeper, child care director, nurse, etc. Since the 1960s Sexual Revolution, a few more active, vital roles have opened up for women. Still even the eminent J. K. Rowling felt she had to use her initials rather than her name on the Harry Potter  books, to disguise  her gender.

 Will there ever be a woman President of the United States? There have been women presidents of a few other countries--New Zealand, Germany, Iceland, Ceylon, Argentina, Namibia, Bangladesh, India, the United Kingdom, and others. Surely, the United States is progressive enough to elect a woman as president. Yet Hilary Clinton couldn't pull it off. Could any woman? In this country? I think we are so enmeshed in gender role expectations that it will take a major shift in cultural mores before women can attain such an exalted status as president of the United States. And with the ultraconservative backlash now wherein Roe v. Wade has been dismantled, and the right to abortion and other women's health care has been taken away, the hope of a woman president is sadly fading.

 I urge women to stand up and oppose these new draconian laws, and to assert our rights from the top of the mountains. It will take a lot to move this country forward, out of the pit it has fallen into. We can do it. It will take everyone of us, though. Every single one of us, sisters and supportive brothers. Let's do it.