Guest Blogger Ti-Grace Atkinson on Feminism’s (Lack of) Progress
Feminists have to stop lying to ourselves about all the progress we’ve made. For example, we’ve been losing ground on abortion steadily since the 1970s. And the average wage of a woman in the work force is 38 cents on the male dollar, not 78 cents as we’ve been claiming. Maybe if we put the FACTS out there, women will be outraged again enough to take to the streets. No woman can survive as a free individual on that wage. This doesn’t even factor in wives and mothers who are paid nothing for their labor.
A familiarity with feminist history illustrates a long series of “splits” which represented many ideological differences. Feminism has always been as “factionalized” as the left, yet there are certainly conditions which join us.
In the 1970s, we quickly backed up into an issue-oriented politic, since anything more complicated or nuanced brought out our differences immediately. But even something like abortion, which seems to represent all of women’s interests, has revealed the “differences” or factionalizing in the interests we have sacrificed since Roe v. Wade in 1973. In 1976, we had the Hyde Amendment which cut away women on Medicaid from free access. In the 1980s, women in the military were disallowed. And closely related but with even more sweeping consequences were the Supreme Court appointments: under Reagan, Antonin Scalia; under Bush, Sr., Clarence Thomas; and under Bush, Jr., Roberts and Alito. We are on the brink of losing not only abortion but anything else of significance for ALL women.
Now we raise a cry about the Stupak Amendment. Rightly so. But poor women—and few of us are NOT poor on our own—have been disadvantaged in their reproductive rights starting with the Hyde Amendment in 1976. And the Women’s Movement was not galvanized by this loss since most women who identified themselves as ‘feminists’ after the late 1960s and early 1970s still had access themselves.
When poor women are forced to have children, this guarantees high unemployment which undermines wages for all. And when you have high unemployment and the safety net has been seriously undermined, you have poor people forced into the military. We/they can die of starvation here (or be in prison) or kill and/or be killed on foreign shores.
