It’s only in the last 100-150 years, following the Second Industrial Revolution, that Westernized women have gone from being property to owning property. The first movement for equalizing women’s rights began in the latter half of the 1800s, starting with the right to vote. After the British Parliament rejected a proposal in 1867 to grant women the vote, the National Society for Women’s Suffrage was established in 1872, marking the beginning of the First Wave of Feminism. It wasn’t until January 1918 that the British House of Lords finally gave women over thirty the right to vote. It took another ten years before British women over the age of twenty-one gained the vote, finally bringing women’s voting rights into line with those of men. While Canada granted women over twenty-one the federal right to vote in 1918, this excluded Indigenous and Asian women. The US Constitution included the right for citizens of the United States to vote regardless of sex on August 18, 1920.

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The fight for equal rights and freedoms for women in Western countries continued, reaching a crest in the early 1970s with the Second Wave of Feminism. At a time when a woman in the US still needed her husband’s signature to get a credit card, “feminists” took to the streets in droves, where they marched, lobbied, protested, and organized strikes. Women from Black and marginalized communities added their voices to the protest, calling for the rights of all women, not just middle-class white women. One of the big wins in the US was the 1973 Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, which gave back control of reproductive rights to women by striking down many state restrictions on abortion, access to which the British had made legal in 1967. Campaigning continued throughout Western societies, with improvements to laws protecting women from physical, mental and sexual abuse in the home and workplace, reducing income inequality and improving equal access to job opportunities.

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While a few Islamic countries experimented with improving women’s rights and freedoms during the 20th century, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1980s saw a reversal of these brief glimmers. Although reversing centuries of social conditioning in just decades or generations is difficult, the notion that some women supported the reversal of Western liberties in favour of laws that permit men to beat, starve, or kill their wives for perceived family dishonour is hard to fathom.

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Unfortunately, the recent rise in fundamentalist doctrine worldwide is a worrying trend. Nowhere is this more of a concern than in the US, where Christian fundamentalism has infiltrated US politics to the point of reversing the decades-old Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, raising the unthinkable spectre of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Jessamine Chan’s novel The School for Good Mothers. The exponential rise of banning books on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality, challenging the fragile, hard-won rights of those in the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities, is another troubling development in a country based on the founding principles of Equality, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

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Perhaps it’s more uplifting to look to countries which have achieved great strides in gender equality, where women work effectively with their male counterparts to create societies where the feminine and the masculine are in balance. This is nowhere more apparent than in the Nordic countries. With its progressive childcare policies, including universal childcare and generous parental leave policies, Iceland has topped the list of the world’s most gender-equal societies for over a decade. Norway’s supportive parenting policies and subsidized childcare have led to a near-even distribution of male and female workers, with many women holding positions of power. Sweden has the most generous parental leave policy in the world, with parents entitled to share 480 days—or around 16 months—of paid leave following the birth or adoption of a child. It ranks number one on the index of men versus women in ministerial positions, reaching equal numbers in 2016. Historically, Finland played a pioneering role in bringing about gender equality, becoming the first European country and the third in the world, after New Zealand in 1893 and Australia in 1902, to not only grant women the right to vote in 1906 but also the right to stand for parliament, the first in the world to do so. As the only top-ranked Nordic nation to close the gender gap in educational attainment, women make up 42% of Finland’s parliament and 38.5% of its ministers. In 2023, the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index ranked Denmark as the top country in the world for women, based on metrics such as women’s access to a bank account, a gender-equitable legal code, and women’s access to justice.

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While many Westernized countries have achieved significant strides in gender equality, education levels limit these gains to affluent communities. In communities dominated by immigrants and people of colour, higher levels of education are often difficult to achieve, and women find themselves disenfranchised, living proof that equal access to education and job opportunities remains elusive for all, even in Western societies.

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R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Though the gains have been significant, women are still fighting to have their voices heard, still fighting to be seen as more than objects of lust or as the bearers of babies. The rise of the #MeToo movement, the recent success of books like Lessons in Chemistry, the proliferation of female-focused podcasts, including one titled, funnily enough, “Breaking Down the Patriarchy,” and the emotional resonance of the Barbie movie all speak to the ongoing struggle. Even as women advance into positions of power across the world, and pop icons like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé champion female empowerment, the reality is that men still control the narrative.

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When laws handcuffed men against the use of violence to relieve their anger and frustration on women, they turned to the subtleties of language. Words such as angry, bossy, complainer and bitchy are used to describe strong, assertive behaviour in women, the same qualities praised in men as signs of ambition, drive, and leadership. The word luck, as opposed to skill, is often used to describe a woman’s success, as is the phrase “being in the right place at the right time.” Headlines such as “Attorney General’s Wife Appointed Caricom Assistant Secretary General” often suggest that a woman’s success is because of a man in her life, not her own abilities. And all too often, people ridicule and ostracize women who aspire to rise above their current position, claiming they are getting above their station.

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It is time to recognize the strength in both the feminine and the masculine and that, for too long, the voice and traits of the masculine have reigned supreme. We need to understand that we’ve silenced not only women’s voices but also the voice of the feminine, which is found in both men and women. We need to realize that the feminine approach of consensus has as legitimate a role in negotiations as the masculine application of brute power. Perhaps there is much to learn from Indigenous practices where male and female elders had an equal say in the governance of their communities and where the women elders were the ones who chose the tribal chief. We can also learn from ancient Egypt’s egalitarian society, where men and women were treated with equal respect.

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As women of the 21st century continue the movement started by their predecessors, we must acknowledge the need to amplify not only women’s voices but also the feminine essence within every individual. We face an uncertain future where, for the first time in our existence, the possibility of extinction through technology confronts us. A balance between the yin and the yang could well be the key to our navigating the existential risks posed by AI by balancing innovation with compassion, reason with intuition, and efficiency with care.   

 

A sample Bibliography:

The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World by Robert Garland

Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, Harper Perennial, 2011

Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz, New York: Viking Press, 2005.

Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own by Kate Bolick

World History Encyclopedia

Podcasts Slo Mo by Mo Gawdat and Archetypes by Meghan Markle

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-secret-evolutionary-weapon-monogamy/