It's 8.30am in the UK and our esteemed BBC Radio 4 announces the death of feminism. I wouldn't mind, but I only started reading the Female Eunuch by Germain Greer this weekend and know absolutely diddly squat about the F word. I have some catching up to do and the damned thing is already in decline.
The item on the Today programme explained that the rise feminism and womens' rights in the 60's led to the proud recognition of Women's Studies as an academic topic worthy of focus. York University has a particularly active department; well funded and well subscribed to. However, elsewhere the take-up of undergraduate degrees in this area of study is tailing off. Is the job done? And what was the job anyway?
Germaine Greer's angry radicalism attacked the position of women in society as passive stimulants for men; muses, wives, the fairer sex. This has certainly shifted in the UK - but shifted in a weird way. Jodie Marsh (TV star and glamour model) talks about getting her boobs surgically adjusted to be "blooming enormous" while Hilary Clinton is a serious runner for President of the USA. My stomach is turning a bit at the polarity. Is this progress?
The MA in Women's Studies at York actually looks very interesting. Students learn about what the concept of 'woman' means starting with the notion of gender, then considering 'race', age, class and sexuality. The economic situation of women in the Britain is compared with the Middle East, and there is a chance to view Britain from the Middle East, problematising western norms. How women appear in modern culture, the influence of gender on historical texts, the development and impact of feminist ideas - it's all in there. I'd spend a year on that.
Some are not so impressed. "Feminist scholarship has become predictable, tiresome and dreary, and most young women avoid it like the plague," said Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for public policy research in Washington and author of Who Stole Feminism? "British and American societies are no longer patriarchal and oppressive 'male hegemonies'. But most women's studies departments are predicated on the assumption that women in the West are under siege. What nonsense."
I asked my daughter, aged 16, what she thought of the Women's Studies syllabus. and she said "How does separating this out help the progress of equality? Surely this kind of stuff will cause men to shrug their shoulders, roll their eyes and say oh for fuck's sake....I like the idea of equality but it's a bit separatist. That's all I'm saying.
I just need to catch up with 'the movement' and see what needs doing. My gut feeling is that the job isn't all done; it's just needs a different approach. Meanwhile my own feminine realisations rumble on. More of that next post.
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