~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Women’s History Month is done with for another year.
Women’s history is sketchy — so little written about so few over the millennia; always there but not talked about, the little woman. Or even talked to, in some eras. We know that women were around because the human race is still around.
Most of human history is about guys and the dates of their wars. Except for a couple of exceptions — Helen of Troy, Joan of Arc, maybe Maggie Thatcher — if women were documented in the same sentence as men/war it was to mention that they were raped during the pillaging that went on with the victors.
Men invented and said everything, according to the historians, themselves men. By the end of the 19th Century, women were getting a voice — published more often by then, although some women used male names because it was easier to get a book in print. A hundred years later, on some date in the late 20th century, I quit reading the “New York Times Book Review” and the “New York Review of Books” when it dawned on me that a large majority of the books reviewed and nearly all the reviews themselves were written by men. Women actually write more fiction than men, but reading fiction is sometimes denigrated as a waste of time.
By the beginning of the 21st Century, women had received 10 percent of patents in this country even though they invented many things (like ice cream makers and windshield wipers). It was often a struggle getting the credit even though necessity is the mother, not the father, of invention.
I am a member of the gender that has .8 percent fewer members than the gender in charge. We have been allowed to vote, in this country, since 1920. The Equal Rights Amendment — introduced in hopes of ensuring women equal rights under the Constitution — was first proposed in 1923. It has never been ratified.
Many things female continue to be fodder for public discussion — tone of voice too high; cry too easily or too often; talk too loud or too much; have fat ankles. Often females are categorized as being flighty, bad at directions, poor at math, scared of bugs, immoral for making their own decisions and considered bitchy when making a point. Barbra Streisand, a long-time gender-equality spokeswoman, recently wrote: “Men and women are clearly measured by a different yardstick. And that makes me angry. Of course, I’m not supposed to be angry. A woman should be soft-spoken, agreeable, ladylike, understated.”
Women have traditionally done most of the cooking in the world but male chefs are hired for the famous kitchens around the globe. Did you know that it was women in ancient Sumeria (Iraq/Iran now) who came up with beer? For this alone you’d think men would be worshipping women. Or at least those women.
So far, no matter what work I’ve done, if there was a man in the office doing the same work, I’ve not been paid us much as he, even if he didn’t have as much education or even if I was the one who trained him. I understand pay is more equal if one works for the government.
My history is not shaky like the 200 centuries of women before me — it’s well documented, if slight: I was born a girl, became a woman, got educated and married, had interesting work, two kids, one miscarriage, another miscarriage that needed a doctor to end it. Some people, a lot of them men, think this a sin because it was an abortion. Hardly their business. As Nasim Pedrad, playing the part of Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, said: “If men could get pregnant, abortion clinics would be like Starbucks . . . two on every block, four in every airport, and the morning-after pill would come in different flavors like sea salt and cool ranch.”
Once I die, my children and theirs will remember me. When they’re gone, I’m gone. This is true of most of us, male and female, except for a few exceptionals like Shakespeare and all those guys in their history books. You can see why we might need a women’s history book to go along with the month designated as ours.
I am pleased that we celebrate a women’s history month, established way back in 1987; although that it takes a designated month to recall us to the world is condescending in its own right. As I write this, I can hear, “Well, what is it women want anyway?”
All the months.
