In New York they can go topless anywhere a male can go topless.
I’m with you. If “equal pay for equal work” means anything, it’s that a person who doesn’t do equal work for whatever reason (family commitments, etc.) should not expect to be treated the same way as everyone else. No one should get preference because of gender, but only because of merit.
Feminism means that a woman can choose the work that fulfills her, without concerning herself that her choice is somehow inappropriate or retrograde. If a woman decides that she is more fulfilled by being a stay at home mother to her children than by being a rocket scientist, why shouldn’t she choose that?
I would think that when there is true sexual equality, fathers and mothers will share in the amount of time they have to be away from work for childcare duties.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women’s salaries were at 76% of men’s when the last census was taken. Those are median salaries of full time, year round employees.
Further, it may be getting worse.
Source: WageGap.com
The day when you and the guys are no longer “helping her” but are “sharing the work” we will be a step closer. Can you image your wife saying that she helps you to cook and clean? As long as you are “helping” we all know it’s really her job.
Also, how have you guys managed to juggle a career and family. 
isam, look in the dictionary under feminist. Then explain why you are not one!
I look forward to the day when women at the Dope aren’t told they need to “butch up” or “grow some balls.” That really doesn’t convey much to women who don’t identify courage with male sex organs.
“Okay, weren’t gonna play a little five card draw. Ovaries to open, trips to win…”
Feminism, defined most broadly, is concern for social problems that primarily or disproportionately affect women. A good poster project on the issue might go through what those concerns have been over the years, and how they’ve changed.
I don’t think “legal equality” is the most important part when it comes to gender equality. The law can enforce equality up to a certain point, but it can’t force people to change their ideals.
For example - rape is obviously illegal in Korea by law. But there are many cases where the man gets off free because the woman was seen as “asking for it”, as in she was with her boyfriend and she got pissed drunk so he had to take her home, or she went into the boyfriend’s house for some reason or other, or she was wearing provocative clothes, etc, etc.
So the law can pat itself on the back about treating people equally all it wants, but people can follow the law without really accepting it (as in they follow it because they don’t want to go to jail, not because they believe it’s right), and the law itself is never watertight and foolproof.
And (for me, at least) being a feminist doesn’t mean aggressively promoting the idea that women are victims in a male-dominated society. Being a feminist means that you believe women, like men, are human, and both deserve to be treated equally and fairly. Even if I live to see perfect gender equality achieved, it wouldn’t mean I’d stop being a feminist.
Not having read anyone else’s response before writing, to me, at base, it is the ideal that neither law nor society should limit your choices, deny your rights, or assign your responsibilities based on your gender.
How that’s applied is a different question.
Oh, and I am a woman and a feminist.
To me, feminism means:
- To realise that men and women don’t have equal opportunities and rights
- To think that this is wrong, and that it should change
Under that definition, those “I’m not a feminist” statements puzzle me – like someone saying “I’m not an anti-racist” or “I’m not an anti-homophobe”. Sure, you might not be out there on the barricades, but to disagree with 1) indicates a weird world-view, and to disagree with 2) – well, lets just say that while everybody are entitled to their opinion, there are some opinions I have less than full respect for. I do realise that there are other definitions of feminism out there, though. Especially, a lot of people seem to reserve the word for those on the barricades of the fight for equal rights.
It’s definitively about equal rights for both genders, not just improving the situation where women are short-changed while ignoring stuff that’s unfair to men.
Does your poster have to do with “the activist movement feminism”, or just plain “feminism”? Because if it’s the latter, I’d suggest look at everyday, down-to-earth-issues. Look at areas where men and women or boys and girls are treated differently, try to figure out why, whether the different treatment in each specific case is a good or bad or neutral thing, and what would happen if equal treatment was introduced.
Several have people have critisized me for saying that I am not a feminism. What I meant by that was not necessarily that I do not support men and women to be equal in society but instead that I am not an activist in the feminist movement.
Yes, that’s how I try to interpret those “I’m not a feminist” statements, unless there are further comments which show another view 
Some suggestions for looking at feminist issues in everyday situations:
[ul][li]What do we teach young children about gender roles? Take photos of the rooms of young siblings, or look at toy magazines. Or look at children’s clothes. (There’s a thread somewhere here ranting about the difficulty of finding clothes for young (7 year old) girls which aren’t sexy.) Or children’s books.[/li][li]How are men and women described in your textbooks? How many men and women are described in your textbooks? (I’d expect 'em to be pretty good feminist-wise in this age, but you never know. At university, we had a course in leadership. The people holding the course were very good about picking men and women equally often in their examples, but all the women were referred to by first name, and the men by last name. Not a big deal, but amusing to notice that even people who were counciously trying to treat the genders equally had some blind spots.)[/li][li]Look at some newspapers. How do they portray the genders? In what situations do they specify genders of the people involved in the stories, and when do they just say “a doctor” or “a 38-year-old” or whatever? Could you replace a man’s name with a woman’s, or vice versa, in a story without noticing anything amiss? (Some years ago, one of our newspapers ran a story about our prime minister’s succesful diet, and how much more healthy and attractive the prime minister looked now. Guess the prime minister’s gender )[/li][li]Get some comic books for various age groups. Count men and women. Look at how they are portrayed, what kind of things they do.[/ul][/li]Of course, just because something is different it doesn’t mean that it’s bad. If you find differences, think about whether they are problematic or not, and which gender (if any) gets a bad deal out of the difference. Are there situations where different treatment mean that both genders are worse off? There’s also that big, tricky question of whether different treatment comes from the free choices of individuals, and to what extent those free choices are based on cultural pressure. (I see young girls wearing tight clothes with bare stomachs, and young boys in baggy clothes, and I remember how body-conscious I was when I was in puberty, and imagine how uncomfortable I’d have felt in clothes that showed every change in development. Each boy and girl chooses how to dress, but what would they choose if models of both genders were showing both baggy and tight clothes?)
I’m sorry Zoe but while this is factually true, it isn’t the whole picture. Read this and this.
This I do agree with. Socially, there is still much inequity. In both directions.
It would be nice if all inequality in a relationship was freely negotiated. It would be nice if father’s careers suffered just as much as mother’s careers (on average). It would be nice if fathers had just as much chance at gaining custody as mothers do (on average). There are many social inequities, however a lot of them are partly the cause of people’s actions as much as society, so how do you solve it? You can’t. So everyone gets to make their own choices, under a legal framework that offers them that choice, not discriminates against them for no good reason.
Well let’s go back and take a look at what you said:
I bolded the highly debatable part. I could toss in a truckload of statistics but I think that would get off the subject.
It’s all about choices, I think, and the freedom to make these choices without being impeded by other folks’ perceptions of gender roles. I’m imagining a poster showing a man and a woman standing at a crossroads, looking down the different paths.
She asked what it meant to me. I answered.
Equality in all areas is a hard thing to be definitive about. Workplace, probably, home, probably.
What about combat areas or any other “hazardous” areas where women might not want to be?
Or the highly specialized, qualified women that want to be somewhere but the majority of women could would not be up to task?
Firemen are but one of many examples. Any time you have to lower expectations to “fit” a woman into a job suited for a man is just not right. Lowering qualifications gets people killed.
Like I said above, SOME women, as well as some Men, are suited for certain types of professions, but you shouldn’t ever lower standards just so a woman can fit the bill.
I wish for that, too. I have been a feminist for a long time, but I don’t say it that way in public. There’s always some fool who will think it means, “I’m effeminate.”
Who cares what the fool thinks?
Daniel
isam, you might want to check the difference in prices on clothing. Some small women that I know buy boy’s shirts because they are so much cheaper than buying women’s shirts in a small size. Check the prices on haircuts too.
Look of the American Film Institutes list of top 100 films and note how few of them are primarily about women – or even equally about women and men.
Notice language. Why do people almost always say “he or she” and “men and women” in that order?
Have friends, parents, and teachers briefly describe characters for a book. Ask them to describe for a minute or two a psychiatrist, a corporate attorney, an English teacher and a criminal. See if a pattern emerges.
The feminist movement has probably done more to make both sexes aware of gender inequality in both directions than any other social movement in our history.
pigs, wings, etc.
I don’t see that anyone’s career needs to suffer because of one of the basics in human society. The workplace can adjust to the reality. There are alternatives.
I could not agree with you more and have commented on this in previous threads.
I agree that many people cause some of their own problems and that, for example, sometimes men have been their own worst enemies by not fighting for custody. The same is true on women’s issues.
But I strongly disagree with you that we can’t solve these problems. I’ve seen enormous progress during my lifetime. I was raised with the values of a Stepford wife. That is not much of an exaggeration. If you’ve seen the latest film version, they even borrowed the hairstyles and clothing of my generation prior to the women’s movement.
What percentage of teachers are female? What percentage of school building administrators are male? What percentage of Directors are male? We can start with parity in our education systems and our federal court appointments. In the meantime, our country has never been willing to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. That would be nice.
My definition of feminism is much the same as hildea’s – supporting equality for all people insofar as they are men and women. Does that make sense? I mean that the feminist movement is a subset of the human rights movement which specifically addresses inequalities between the genders.
It’s also a shame that we have to constantly qualify “I’m a feminist” with “And I don’t hate men, and I don’t think women are better than men, and I realize that sometimes men get the short end of the stick too, despite the fact that throughout history oppression, lack of opportunity, and objectification has overwhelmingly fallen to women rather than men, and I don’t bite…” et cetera, just to keep the audience happy.
Rebecca West
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.
1913
(Nearly 100 years later, I have found this to occationally still be a true statement. If I’m not a doormat, I’m must be feminist - or a bitch.)
Feminism, to me, is two things:
- Belief in equality between the sexes and/or
- The struggle for that equality
Take the easy numerical example of wage. Women earn about 75% of what men earn. Feminism is the belief that women should earn equal wages. Feminism is also trying to acheive parity.
So when someone says they are not a feminist, I think they believe that women should not earn equal wages and should not try to get equal wages. I also know that people who say they are not feminists are thinking about burning bras and yelling at men who open doors. So I try to be tolerant.
I find that I’m a bitch generally when that happens to me. Oddly nobody has ever called me a feminist in that snippy “Bah you must be a feminist” tone 
Although, for the record, I find that I get more static from feminists than I do from even the most bigoted of men for my life choices. Since when do my own personal life decisions bear responsibility for my entire gender? I’ve had more than one self-professed feminist inform me that my career and life decisions are “letting down women everywhere and I should be ashamed” 
I gave them odd looks.
Feminism to me is a big fat “=” sign. Which means not only being given the same opportunities, but being required to take the same personal responsibility for what I make of those opportunities. I think some people don’t understand the implication that equal actually means equal - it doesn’t mean that I get slack because I’m a girl. There’s a tendancy to overcorrect for past injustice - I like that even less than I like the past injustice frankly.