Alfred Lord Tennyson’s lines are obviously outdated for the 21st century especially when women from orthodox/patriarchal countries are showing the nerve to break the shackles of bondage to old-fashioned ideas that interfere with the progress of nations. I had to go through a transformative process to get where I am today cruising through love, marriage, divorce, deception and disappointed with offspring’s adolescent phase of rebellion, which though not unusual due to the hormones kicking in and other identity issues, and the system’s complex compliance requirements that nullify an individual’s previous achievements of a female employee fighting for acknowledgement or recognition in a male dominated leadership circle on one’s own terms. And I am not about to allow female doormats to send the fight for women’s rights thousands of years behind.
Not to say I am ashamed of the fairer sex who being mislead by antediluvian philosophies of women directed others with false ideas of happiness and duties, I condemn such for misrepresenting facts and for not spreading awareness of women’s rights. Knowledge is wealth and such wealth is women’s weapon against injustice, inequity and to emerge progressive setting parameters for posterity. I am right in entertaining the opinion that women who preach unrealistic ideas are not only an embarrassment but either are truly blissfully unaware of the factors that lead to the birth of feminism and other struggles or fights put by thinking women to win the rights that today’s women take for granted. Instead of ensuring that we don’t lose those rights won by idealist women of yesteryears to advocates of the old Australia, they are setting the wrong standards for young women of the 21st century.
Recently I had the opportunity of viewing the film titled ‘On the basis of sex’ in which the word sex stands for the gender and the central female character’s struggles to gain equality for women through representing a male caregiver who was deprived of allowances and benefits as it was assumed by the then government that only women were and would be caregivers. The idea that stereotyping women also affects men in unimaginable ways if not the ones from affluent families has been clearly highlighted in the film. The film based on the true story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg compels us to note that it took almost a lifetime for a dedicated woman with the power to change law to convince the government to amend the 170+ laws that supported gender discrimination; an amendment that would benefit the contemporary women’s daughters and grand daughters. There are many films like this that represent many women warriors’ fight for gender equity.
Next time, when thoughtless women, misguided by illusions argue in favour of patriarchy and female subservience, I urge them to remember the selfless sacrifice of visionary women and not take for granted the privileges they are enjoying today.
A Writer's Exposé 
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