Women’s Issues are Human Issues
Hypothetical: “A female Prime Minister was strategizing with her all-male cabinet about how to address a string of recent sexual assaults on women throughout the capital city. Someone suggested a 9:00 pm curfew, which the cabinet thought was a good idea. The Prime Minister also nodded her head in agreement. Then she added, “Yes. No men are allowed out after 9:00 pm.” Her cabinet was shocked and said that was unfair, it was women who should stay in after 9:00, in order to ensure their safety. They only had the best interest of women in mind, they insisted, and the curfew was for “their own good.” The Prime Minister replied, “It is men who are committing the assaults, not women. Why should women’s movements be restricted?” from Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education p. 57. Sensoy and DiAngelo, 2012 Teacher’s College Press, Columbia University.
I have been saving articles, notes, and books as topic sources for this blog. What that has driven home to me is that as soon as you start paying attention to gender inequality – really paying attention – it is everywhere, and none of it should pass unremarked. I see stories evidencing gender inequality, discrimination and victimization on the news and the internet, hear them on the radio and in conversation, literally every day. The stomach-churning surplus of material tempts me to despair.
I am familiar with the argument that of course I will see it everywhere if I’m looking for it, that if issues aren’t all that noticeable until I look for them, I am just making mountains out of molehills. That is not an unnatural way to think, and it is more than simple denial. Acceptance of objectionable norms permeates our society. The simple fact of the matter is that we are all socialized from birth to accept those norms as natural and inevitable. They fade into the background, invisible but ubiquitous.
All of our social institutions – government, religion, education, law enforcement, the courts, media and entertainment, business, and more, the architects and authors of our societal narrative - were created by and for white men. Normal, as in what we learn in school, what we see on television, what is categorized as aberrant or criminal, what is socially and legally acceptable in public or private, even what is considered public or private, is, and always has been, determined by the dominant group. In the world at large, that means men. In the U.S., that means specifically white men.
White men have been the dominant group in non-indigenous American society since Europeans landed on North American shores, and in the larger western world far longer. Societies where men are not the dominant group are exceedingly rare. For hundreds of years we have been socialized to accept male dominance as natural, normal, just the way things are. So much so that, 150 years after Angelina Grimke, an early feminist and abolitionist, said “I recognize no rights but human rights – I know nothing of men's rights and women's rights” it is still sometimes necessary to point out that women’s rights are human rights.
Similarly, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, women’s issues are human issues, and human issues are women’s issues. Pay inequality, often framed as a women’s issue, applies to other groups as well; the right to live free of sexual assault applies to everyone. These issues are framed as women’s issues because women are either the largest group affected or the group for whom those particular rights are most often violated. Violence and the targeting and exploitation of women, children, and the otherwise disenfranchised; discrimination; inequality; all are societal issues. But the issues, and women themselves, are too often defined in terms of victimization, and the common practice of victim-blaming puts the burden of avoiding victimization on the victimized.
The hypothetical at the beginning of this post is perfectly plausible. It really shouldn’t be. We need to teach both our daughters and our sons to respect themselves and others, to never devalue or disrespect anyone, for any reason, and not to stand by in silence when someone else does. But before we can teach them that women count, we have to learn it and live it ourselves. We are half the population, and there is no corner of society or the world where we should not be involved and making decisions. If we act together, if we persist, we can make it happen.