How about we treat everyone decently, allow them to do whatever they want, and work to eliminate discrimination of everyone due to stupid reasons?
I am a late, late boomer. I don’t recall a time in my life where girls, and then women were not treated as peers. Even in grammar school we were taught anyone can achieve whatever THEY want. It took dedication, commitment, and work.
When did we go back to the 1800’s where women are not allowed to do that?
Of course, as a woman you have the choice to have children. This is nothing new. Children consume a ton of time and resources. And yes, raising them requires attention.
If people choose to be single parents (and with the obvious exceptions—it is a choice) then they will ALWAYS be behind the curve.
Women are empowered. But they are also responsible for their decisions. If they make bad decisions, that is part of evolution.
Populations can be empathetic. And we should be charitable to those less fortunate than us. But, people who chose to make decisions that put them at a disadvantage do not deserve EXTRA rights.
Speaking for the early boomers, white middle-class Christian women in my cohort were not encouraged to form careers other than schoolteaching, nursing or secretarial work. In high school and if they went to college, many teachers or professors were patronizing at best, and others were sexually harassing. Some parents disapproved of women “getting above themselves” or “trying to be so smart” and some would pay for college for their sons but not their daughters. Many parents and professors alike would say, “Why waste the money? You’re just going to get married.” Meanwhile, the Vietnam War was heating up and many marriage-aged men were getting drafted.
If an early Boomer woman did try to find employment other than the above three (schoolteacher, nurse or secretary), she might often hear, “Why should we hire a woman? You’re just going to get married and leave.” In fact, there weren’t yet laws agains sexual harassment or firing a person if she became pregnant. One such case went all the way to the Supreme Court, when an elementary school librarian became pregnant out of wedlock. But married women also faced this particular discrimination.
Based on observation, and creditable reports that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest intelligence in American subcultures, the Jewish families in our mid-states zip code did not appear as discouraging of female achievement; the fathers and mothers having faced egregious discrimination, they were more likely to encourage any daughters who wanted to become engineers, lawyers, professors or medical doctors, and I knew of several from my town.
Part of the so-called Youth Rebellion that led to the so-called Women’s Liberation and Sexual Revolution movements of the late ‘60s-early 70s was the demeaning attitudes towards women. Those movements were the first to demand that grown women be called “women” instead of “girls”, which had previously been the custom at all ages for married white women except in formal situations like church.
Other early movement goals with which conservatives can agree were “equal pay for equal work”, because there really was a substantial pay gap then, and “sisterhood is powerful”, which encouraged women to help one another in employment situations and not treat other women as competitors for the attention or patronage of a man. I got my first professional job at a corporation from a woman whose father had worked at corporations. She was one of several sisters, so her father was not threatened that one of them wanted to go into business. My father also worked at an international corporation, but actively discouraged me from “working outside the home,” another common buzzword of the day.
But I did take that job, made a lot of money for my company in my first year, and at my first yearly review was told by my boss that I would not receive a raise unless I spent the weekend with him in a motel when his wife was out of town, so I left I started my own business, which I pursued for the next 35 years, always having to prove myself to every new client. It took me ten years to break into the “boy’s club” and gain recognition, chiefly through entering competitions under my gender-non-specific name, “Albion", and having my work judged blindly. At job interviews from the 60s through the 90s, I heard interviewers say, “Oh, when we read your resume, we didn’t know you were a woman.” The only difference being that in the 60s, they would then add, “Sorry, we don’t want to hire a woman.” But in the 90s, this statement was against the law. The equal employment law had been signed in 1967, but it took many expensive lawsuits by women to have its enforceability penetrate to the consciousness of most employers across the country.
That said, I think Meghan and Harry are full of crap. I deplore their arrogance in the face of Elizabeth, one of the world’s most accomplished diplomats, who has been a woman of great sagacity in a top job of maximum visibility since the 1950s.