Gender inequality is a man's problem

Joan Chittister National Catholic Reporter November 4, 2014
The headlines are confusing. The questions they raise are even more so. For instance, we ‘empowered’ women, right? After more than 2,000 years, the Western world finally woke up, in our time, to the astounding recognition that women, too, were human. Almost.
By 1922, most English-speaking countries, including the United States, finally allowed women to vote for political leaders. The struggle was a fierce one, and churchmen and politicians alike considered that breakdown in society to be simply the beginning of the decline, ‘the nose of the camel under the tent’ of civilized male society. As Cardinal James Gibbons is said to have reflected, ‘Imagine what will happen to society when women start hanging around polling places.’
And sure enough, the floodgates of immorality swung open: It wasn't long before women were allowed to own property, to work outside the home, to drive cars, to keep their own money, to get an education, to enter into legal contracts, to become ‘professionals’ -- at first, teachers and nurses, but eventually even doctors and lawyers and now bankers and engineers, astronauts and college presidents. Not all at once, of course, but at least a little at a time………
The temptation is to think that at least in the United States, women are free, independent, secure, respected, welcomed on a par with their fathers and brothers everywhere…….
Yet there is another set of headlines, more powerful, more telling than the first, that expose the lie of it all.
This set of headlines -- women groped here, kidnapped there, murdered everywhere, disappeared forever -- headlines bold and ubiquitous, remind a woman always not to misunderstand, not to assume that she can walk down a city street in the United States and expect to get home safely, in one piece, alive. These stories remind her that however much she achieves, does, saves, earns, manages, or assumes to be her human right, her life is really not her own. It is at the eternal mercy of fraternity boys, football teams, stalkers, prowlers, sex addicts, women-hunters, and rampant testosterone…………..
[Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister is a frequent NCR contributor.]
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