Today's Women of Age

Growing up in the 1960s was a blast. There were lots of kids in my neighborhood with my best friend living next door and a dear cousin just two doors away. We were always doing something fun, usually outside. It was a good time to be a kid, but in retrospect, I can see from photos how exhausted my mother always looked. She had three young children in her care and the unenviable challenge of trying to stretch my dad’s salary to meet our needs. And to top it off he was a spendthrift. He would come home with some major, unnecessary purchase and my mother would wail “Oh Roger! You didn’t! “? And it left her trying to figure out how to juggle bill payments for the next month or two.

By my teens I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my life and I found I wasn’t eager to get married or have children. I wanted more than my mother had. A lot more. I wanted a career and a fun “New York City life” like Marlo Thomas of “That Girl.”

That was the dream. And while I never ended up living in New York City, I did go college just north of NYC and frequently visited. A couple of years after college, still a singleton, I moved to San Francisco for a job and loved it.

In many ways this was made possible because the 1970s brought societal changes for women and new frontiers were opening up. And now some 50 years later we find women holding jobs in all facets of society–politics, religion, education, finance, medicine, etc. We are making our own life decisions, buying property, managing our finances, picking partners with more care and choosing to have children, or not. As it should be. We are literally just doing what men have always been able to do. And no, we are not trying to be men, we are just trying to live our best life. And for some of us that means more than staying at home cooking, cleaning and caring for children and a husband.

Of course independent women have never gone down well with patriarchal men. Currently there is a vocal, growing group of Christian nationalists and Project 2025 men in positions of power and influence in the U.S. who are actively trying to dismantle rights for women to get them back to a place of dependence on men. Some rationalize these views with a few cherry-picked bible verses. They want to do away with our right to vote and continue to chip away at our bodily autonomy and access to birth control. They advocate for policies that would “weaken protections against workplace discrimination and harassment” essentially creating a more hostile and unfair work environment for women. They hope to do away with no-fault divorce because they believe it favors women and harms men and families. This is all done with intent, with a goal of systemic oppression.

And what could happen if Project 2025 and Christian Nationalists continue to make inroads into our government, into policies and laws, as they have this year?

Let’s look at Iran in the 1970s. During that time Iranian women could vote, enjoy public life, go to college, drive cars, wear mini skirts and work in a variety of professions including as judges and policemen. Post 1979 Revolution all that changed. The ruling extremist religious party “reversed these gains, imposing mandatory hijab, gender segregation, and severe restrictions, effectively erasing freedoms for women and establishing patriarchal control under Islamic law.” The contrast could not be clearer.

Photos courtesy of The Independent and Reuters.

The irony in all this is that these zealous men (whether Islamic, Christian or Jewish) claim to be pro-marriage and pro-family, but in reality they are just pro-men. It is all for them. They want wives who are submissive and financially dependent. Preferably uneducated. Wives who are always sexually available and reliable baby makers. In their world, wives have no say in how money is spent or in any decision and frequently any real property and assets are in the husband’s name only. A wife’s focus is inside the home and appropriate religious activities. Period. Some husbands even practice corporal punishment for wives who “disobey.” Religious zealots say this is the God-ordained way to live. It’s not.

It is misogyny pure and simple. It is not about love or family or deep faith in God. It is about control. Domination. Power. Cruelty.

Let’s call it what it is.