Categories: uncategorized
Date: 28 January 2006 15:42:12
The snapshots I am going to give in this mini-series kind of relate back to what I was on about here .
This is a story which is specific to it's time, starting in the mid- 1980's:
I was 13 or 14 and ready to take my options at school. At that time I didn't realise it, but the system had labelled me and I was being put on a treadmill - labelled "middle-class", "academic" and "non-gendered".
As such I was one of the girls who would naturally take Business Studies rather than Office Skills, I would be doing subjects such as Sociology and History, rather than Childcare and Home Economics. When a clash was discovered between Drama and Religious Studies, (and I insisted upon standing my ground and dropping drama and taking Religious Studies whatever - because I was v. confident I would get a reasonable grade in it) I was encouraged to think about adding Information Systems to the Business, rather than anything else. When I was forced to take a science I was allowed to take Physics, rather than Modular Science.
In short, you can see that I was going to be of those who showed what second wave feminism, a generation before, had achieved, i.e. a curriculum and system that enabled and encouraged girls to do exactly what the boys did, and set us on the same course to go succeed; (i.e. go to 6th form and then university, if we wished, and finally a career rather than a job). So I am part of a generation which was set up to be a visible sign of the victories won by the feminists in the 1960's and 1970's.
In all the time I was at school it was never acknowledged that there was one big hitch with this plan, and one area which had been ignored, we were still women and would still be likely, one day, to have children. Those who had been labelled as "less academic" were prepared through childcare classes and the like, but those like me were left to believe that we could have it all and socialised into not acknowledging our feminity. In the eyes of those who put together this masterplan we were evidence of equality, and just "people", rather than women.
It took me a long time to see that my generation have been cheated, and that fitting us into the patriarchal system on an equal basis had not been the victory that some feminists have claimed. I'm not saying it's all bad, and hasn't been positive overall but as the snapshots to follow will illustrate not tackling the problem of patriarchy itself, merely incorporating us into its structures has had a price for my generation and it is one we need to recognise much more so that we may be able to try and not make the same mistakes with our daughters.