1960's Women's Rights

 

 Pretending to be someone else:

       I am a middle-class mother living in the 1960's. I have a satisfactory marriage, but I hardly ever see my husband. All day, I clean, cook and care for my two children. My friends tell me this should be enough - that doing these things should fulfill me. They don't. For some women, they do, but not all women are the same. Does one say concerning a child, "You will be smart because you have brown hair." No! Indeed, rather they will make judgements about the child's IQ based on their behavior. Why is it, then, that judgements about women's capability are made based on her gender? Women are equal to men and they need to be treated likewise. 

      I have a library science degree and I worked hard for it. I remember painful hours of toil past midnight and how often I sacrificed time with friends in order to excel in my learning. Now that I am a housewife, the social image pushed at nearly all women, I don't have the time to put my degree to use, let alone read. It's true that it was my decision to marry and have children, but even if I hadn't, the road to success would have been much more difficult for myself, as a woman, than for a man. Schools like Harvard and Yale won't even consider women! The fact that this can be said, alone, show's just how much women are degraded in our schooling systems. I thought we were past the times when only boys went to school while girls stayed home completing tasks such as cooking and childcare. Now the same problem is present, but instead it has shown up after high school; men go to college and women often stay at home as caretakers and housekeepers.

      Of the women who do receive careers, few are payed an appropriate wage. My friend Dorothy Green, who works night wages, gets payed half the amount of her fellow male employees of the same job. This scenario is not uncommon. The part that is the most unfair, however, is that if a woman were to risk asking for a higher wage, she would also be putting her source of income on the line. Women are far too easily fired and are consider dispensable in today's world of work.

      I know a woman (she will remain unnamed for the sake of privacy) who is physically abused. Even though all of her friends know, including myself, the topic is awkwardly avoided. If it were instead her child that was being abused, we would all be so alarmed as to find help immediately. It disturbs me that our culture has grown numb to the evil of one human being hurting another who just so happens to be their wife. We all, her friends, recognize that it is wrong, but none of us are brave enough or wakened enough to the raw situation to do anything about it. It's time that the issue of domestic abuse get out of the house and out into the open. 

      Even if you are a man, the struggle for equality applies to you. If at this given time, women are undermined solely due to gender, is it not possible that you as well might one day be oppressed for this same reason? Even in the present, the issue of gender equality applies to you. When society constantly degrades someone, it is very hard to have any respect for them, and it is very hard to love someone you have no respect for. It very well may be that the present pecking order is having a negative impact on your marriage. Also possible, is the reality that it is giving you false pride in yourself for a reason as simple as the difference between an X and a Y chromosome. No one really wants to be or to be thought of as prideful. Besides, you will be seen as more of a man than ever if you decide to give women the chance they deserve.

      How can you help? There are so many ways to be involved! One especially important way is to start treating other woman with respect - and yourself too, if you are a woman. This may include giving an able women a job, if you are an employer, or even, as a woman, giving up the meek attitude we women are taught to have. Exchange it for one of persistence and spirit. You can't expect anyone to agree with you if you don't even agree with yourself. Another way to help is to participate in marches or petitions. These are what really change the law. Lastly, expressing your views through art or the media is important. When we can integrate a certain opinion into our culture, it will in turn be accepted with more ease. The goal is not to turn just one facet of society in our direction, but to change the law, the hearts, and the minds of our nation. 

      For women, life is difficult. We cannot go to esteemed colleges and to go to college at all is looked down upon. In what jobs we can acquire, we are underpaid and often put in an unstable position as our job could be pulled out from under us at any given time. It is also to be observed that women are socially undermined, to the extent that many are abused with little consequence to the abuser. Because this prejudice is based off of something as menial as gender, it could just as easily happen to men. In order to bring the scales to an equal measure, women need to be treated with respect and supported by campaigns and media. We are all, men and women made in God's image. Let us respect God's image and put an end to segregation.

      

Being Myself Again:

      Writing the above essay was somewhat hard because I am not especially concerned with women's rights. I do think women are equal to men and I am glad that I am privileged with many freedoms today in that area, but I do believe in general gender roles. I believe God made men and women differently and that is okay. Yes some women will defy these generalities, and the same goes for men, but what is saddening is when women are thought of as "simple-minded" or "sellouts" for wanting what is natural, to have a family and to let their husband be the main financial supporter. In the reverse, it was not too difficult to write because I used to be an extreme feminist. I had big dreams and a hard head against anyone with the slightest prejudice about women in general. Now, it just doesn't matter to me. God does; and I know how he sees me, so why should it matter how anyone else does?

The 1960's: Flower Children and Happy Families

The 1960's was a decade consisting of both a rise in colorful decoration and prejudice against those with colored skin. It was a time of comfort and quality family time for many, and at the same time, a time of poverty and separation from family for others. Rebellion in youth rose like a tidal wave and brought with it an increase in drug use, an increase in alcoholism, and the sexual revolution. These teens and young adults called themselves flower children and reflected their name in the bright and colorful clothes they wore. On the flip side, members of older generations were very critical of the flower children and they clashed prominently. Besides these, there were working class families with little to no cares and African Americans dealing with prejudice. The majority of people fit into the working class, average family category. Working class at the time really meant a quite nice lifestyle with hardly any money shortages and lots of time to spend with family. Most people, for this reason, remember the 1960's as a sort of golden age.
     My grandma, Bette Wolterstorff, was 19 in 1960. Although she herself was not one, she recalls that flower children would often group together and share a house. Not only did this cut expenses to a minimum and give them an escape from their parents, it also meant more freedom to party and to be immoral in various ways. They were not happy to just rebel a little, flower children went all the way. They wore clothes considered scandalous and pushed for women's rights as well as wearing attention grabber make-up such as drawn on eyelashes. Often, walls between parents and their children either caused teens to rebel or went up because of the excitement of rebellion. For conservative parents, this movement was especially hard, because it often meant their son or daughter shunning them. In the documentary, Family Life in the 1960's(BBC), the Meadow family experiences a taste of this when their girls "move out". Of course, on the other hand, some parents were the ones shunning their kids because of how they dressed or what they did in secret.
     Often, because they were so young with low wage jobs, flower children lived in poor living conditions. In the documentary two girls try out what it would be like to be flower children and live for a few days by themselves. Their apartment consists of one room and a cramped bathroom so dirty, they refuse to use it at first. A lot of the time, this was how flower children had to live. As far as money went, my grandma recalls them having very little and being considered lower class. For some teens and young adults, this was too high a price to pay and so they stayed with their parents under their restrictions.
     For my grandmother, a married mother of two and a nurse, the 1960's were a calm period with no financial strain and much less drama than society today. She does admit, however, that her sweet recollections are partially due to the way memories tend to put the past under a halo. She never really thought about money very much, she admits, because although there wasn't necessarily a plethora of it, it was never lacking either. In fact, vacations were very common for her and she went lots of places, including Canada, Texas, and Arizona. On top of that, her house was pretty nice, though small, and it was about a tenth of how much it would be today. This was partially due to the value of money, but it was also due to a healthy economy. Although events such as John F. Kennedy's assassination shocked and saddened her, (as well as the rest of society) she was never very personally effected by them and so life was pretty smooth. At the time it was socially acceptable to watch your toddler playing outside through a window and people were much less paranoid about kidnapping, so she had more freedom within her time then she would now.
     In the documentary the Taylor family has a similar experience. Both parents were working(like my grandma), but they still had casual free time and flexibility within their budget to go on plenty of vacations. The kids were also not especially supervised and could run around and have fun. They had a pretty nice house for being lower class, too, and didn't really have to worry about money.
     Some other similarities between my grandma's experiences and the experiences of the individuals in the film are the style of clothing people wore, housekeeping trends, and segregation. In both, the girls wore a-line outfits with high waist skirts and shorts and a sort of blunt flair. They also were both involved in bettering their house. in fact, in both accounts, they put wallpaper up to make their house look nicer. lastly, both were aware of and encountered segregation against African Americans.

     

Indrani

 

      

     Indrani, a Bengali film made in 1958, begins with a poor man who has just discovered his new child is a girl. He names his baby girl Indrani and supplies her with quality education so that she might be self-dependent. Once she is grown, he sends her off to college where through a roommate she meets Sudarshan, a young man who is educated, yet unemployed. The two are attracted to each other almost immediately. After only a few encounters with Sudarshan, the two arrange to get married. Because of their opposing castes(social classes), their families are greatly offended at their doing so. It is hard for them to live with Sudarshan's family(after marriage, the women would come live with the husband's family), so they decide to rent/buy(?) a small house to live in together. Being the independent woman she is, Indrani wants to support the couple financially. She becomes highly esteemed in her work while Sudarshan loses respect for himself because he has little to do and is seen as another person riding on Indrani's work. The couple  pulls apart and it is not long before Sudarshan simply leaves. Indrani continues in her work, supposing he is just jesting and will come back soon, while Sudarshan joins an old man in an effort to educate and help small rural communities. When Sudarshan's work appears in the newspaper, Indrani is impressed and leaves behind her job and everything she has to go and reunite with him. At first, Sudarshan is confused and doesn't want anything to do with her, but after a fire in the village he realizes that he needs her and the two are reunited.

     The movie uses some propaganda but is not as obvious in it's use as other movies. It is a hybrid of propaganda and story. No political statements are pushed with prominence, but some ideology can be interpreted beneath the story's veil. Out of capitalism, socialism, and communism, the film matches up the most to socialism.
     In their marriage, both Indrani and Sudarshan experiment with living by their own independence and both find that they need one another. Indrani in particular tries to be "alpha" and ends up failing. The movie puts a negative light on this but it also negatively portrays the other extreme. At the beginning of the movie, Indrani's father is showing a friend an article he wrote about how women need to return to their traditional role. The father is repulsive in his person and portrayal of the article, casting a bad, and even ridiculous light on the idea. Furthermore, at the end of the film, Indrani and Sudarshan come together as equals to rebuild as one. Throughout the movie their relationship and other subtle uses of humor and dialogue point to socialism.
     Even within the music in the film, some socialism is expressed. In the song "break, break, break" one line goes,"break the barriers with hands strong as lightning." The entire song is focused around breaking rocks, their work. Even so, it is a metaphor for how they want to break social barriers. In helping the people in those small communities and even in marrying Indrani, a woman of a different caste, Sudarshan himself is breaking those barriers on a personal level.
     Another example of how socialism is expressed is when Indrani hears what Sudarshan is doing to help the people in Shalboni. People in her workplace scoff at what he is doing because they don't think him capable of it. They believe the news to be bogus and untrue. She becomes angry with them and tells them Sudarshan is doing the impossible, something they could never do. Then she leaves abruptly, forfeiting her job to go to Shalboni and help Sudarshan. In leaving those people of a high caste and going to the low caste of the people of the villages of Shalboni, she shows an indifference to the caste system and pushes towards equality.
     Overall, the film seems to push for a world in which people work, but not for their own glory, for the well being of the community. It also pushes equality between all people and seems to go against gender roles or social classes. These features are part of socialism, the main ideology behind this film. 

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Faiz Ahmed Faiz 

     Faiz Ahmed Faiz is well known in the middle east for his Urdu poetry. His dad was a distinguished lawyer and part of an exclusive literary group. Two years after Faiz was born, his father died. Because his father had been a wealthy landowner, and because Faiz was naturally gifted, He received quality education and even accomplished two master's degrees by the end of his schooling. Even though his poetry took a backseat during these years, it began to emerge more clearly once Faiz was out of college. At first, he wrote mainly about beauty and love, two common but interesting topics. Later, when Faiz was in jail, and even beforehand, his poetry began to take on both new depth and a bleak shadow. The reason for this was both because of Faiz's growth in his thoughts and ideology, but also because of his experience in prison. 

      In much of Faiz's poetry, there seems to be a conflict between Faiz's need for love and his need to make a difference in the world. One poem which illustrates this well is the poem: "My love, do not ask from me the love we shared before". Here is one stanza in the poem that illustrates this concept well:

               beauty still allures, but
              what can I do?
              There are sorrows in this world
              beyond the pleasures of love.

      Here, Faiz expresses his longing for a certain woman, but he also recognizes a need in the world that needs to be fulfilled. The strange thing about Faiz's poetry is how he writes of love and women of an unambiguous nature often, and yet he is married. It is possible that he was either involved with women outside his marriage, in love with the idea of love, or indirectly writing about Alys, his wife. For whatever reason, it is clear that Faiz cherished the idea of women and romance. In fact, in an interview, Faiz interpreted the most important concept of Urdu poetry to be love. 

      Although poetry is what Faiz was best known for and was certainly his area of concentration, Faiz was also an editor for many newspapers, a teacher at two different colleges, a soldier in the British Indian Army, a writer of newspapers, a principal at a college, and many other things. He was a varied man with a busy life. Despite the many things Faiz was involved in throughout his life, he was not an organized man. He would begin to be involved in one thing then become distracted and never return to that one thing. It makes sense that he was like this because he was an artist and artists are often(not always) disorganized. Thee were certain jobs Faiz turned down, however, due to political reasons. For the same reasons, he also exiled himself from his homeland at certain points. 

      I enjoyed Faiz' poetry, or at least that which was accessible to me. It is hard to really get a feel for it, however, because a small percentage of his poetry has been translated to English and a poem translated is not the same poem as the original. The poems which I did read had a nice rolling rhythm and were clearly full of hidden messages. One such poem is this one:

               But the heart and the eye are impervious     
               to who comes, and when, or who leaves. 
               They are far away, galloping home, 
               hands holding tight to the oceanís mane, 
               shoulders crushed under their burden - 
               fears, questions, forebodings. 
      This poem has a beautiful rollicking quality about it, and yet it is very hard to interpret. Faiz is skilled at doing this within his poems and leaving the reader feeling they've read something with weight, but something that will take some work to unpack.