WALKING between classes last week, I overheard one University student comment on how hard it is to be a woman at the University. While everyone is entitled to his opinions, I couldn't disagree more.
Much is made of made of women's studies and feminism, and women often are grouped with minorities in terms of similar experience with oppression and discrimination.
I am not oppressed. As a fairly well off white woman, virtually no roadblocks have been put in my way as a result of my gender. Numerically, women are not a minority in the world or at the University. Historically, women have not been lynched, beaten or forced to live in separate areas. Contemporarily, discrimination against women in the United States is much less widespread and much more readily overcome than that against racial or ethnic minorities.
The University became co-ed in 1970, much later than many public institutions - the University of Michigan, by comparison, admitted women in 1870. Since their admission, the number of women has grown to exceed the number of men at the University. Clearly the environment at the University is not hostile toward women.
That is not to say that special programs and seminars designed to make women feel welcome and represented are wrong. Nor is it to say that a Women's Studies department is invalid. Both are important to the University. It is, however, vital that such a program is both academic and inclusive.
According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, a graduate student teaching an introductory women's studies course "said the texts she works with are all slanted toward the view that gender is entirely a social construct; that too many courses focus on feminist ideology, playing down detailed research on women" and that she "was expected to disabuse her students of the notion that they are fully equal to men, and teach them, instead, that they are oppressed victims" ("Will the Real Feminists in Academe Please Stand Up?" Oct. 6).
In order for Women's Studies programs to be valid, they must focus on an academic study of women, rather than a study in the practice of feminism. Over-emphasis of feminism leads either to self-pity or to the establishment of the classroom as a separatist environment where women can feel comfortable and loved free from the restrictions placed on them by men.
The dangers of the first option are fairly obvious. Self-pity is not constructive and will not aid students in their lives beyond the classroom.
Evils of the second option are less clear. It is important that women feel comfortable expressing their views and opinions. It is, however, important that women also feel comfortable expressing these views in diverse groups, those that include men.
Creating separatist environments is not productive as the world itself is not separated in such a way. Professional women must express their opinions to men on a daily basis. The only roadblock in doing so is lack of confidence. Confidence is built not in separatist environments, but in integrated classrooms.
Feminists of the first eight decades of the 20th century were radicals. They fought for the right to vote, then forced their way into the classroom and into the male dominated professions.
Feminists of today are the women who take advantage of the opportunities they have. True contemporary feminists are not the women who spend their time bemoaning what they see as the subservient position of women in society.
True contemporary feminists are the women who pursue careers which were not available to them 50 years ago. Or they are the women who raise families because they choose to, not because it is expected of them. Or they are the women who do both. It is these women who serve as role models to the younger generation and prove that women are socially equal to men.
The so-called glass ceiling is invisible for a reason; it doesn't exist. And if it does, running through it is the way to make it break, because simply looking at it does nothing to break it down.
(Megan Moyer's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily.)
Read More
BURSTEIN: Federal workforce cuts target Virginia — and Youngkin’s response falls short
By Carly Burstein | YesterdayForcing employees to choose between uprooting their families or losing their livelihoods is not just callous — it is economically reckless.
HUYNH: Virginia’s proposed ‘whippets’ law is laughable
By Viet Huynh | 2 days agoAs people continue to be harmed by nitrous oxide abuse, Virginians will see this new law as the ineffective, ultimately harmful policy that it is.
EDITORIAL: We can demand more of our university presidents
By Editorial Board | 3 days agoWe hope for greater transparency because for the principles of solidarity in this statement to be enacted and effective, stakeholders must be treated as partners in resistance.
