Women are Perfect...

Almost 6 months ago my little daughter, Neyla, was born.  We had decided to find out early whether it would be a boy or a girl and of course it was a girl.  My wife was “secretly” hoping for a girl, but I wasn’t sure.  I didn’t really care, it’s that old cliché that as long as they have 10 fingers and 10 toes I’d be happy, but when I found out it was a girl that really made me think. 

I thought about what it meant to have a daughter and to be a good father to her.  I wondered what it would be like for a girl to grow up in the early 21^st century.  And I was thankful that as a woman she would be growing up when and where she was. 

Throughout history no group has been treated with more disrespect and inequality than women.  They make up roughly half of the world’s population, always have and always will, yet until the last century they were not allowed to vote, own property, hold office or inherit wealth in most parts of the world.  Until recently a woman only had four roles that mattered; daughter, sister, wife and mother.  Not to say that those are four unimportant roles, but to be strictly limited to that by society is stifling at best.  The progress attained by and for women over the last century has been astounding, but more is still to be done. 

Only a generation or two ago very little was expected of a woman outside of the limitations of the aforementioned 4 roles even after much legal and political equality had been attained.  Women were not necessarily expected to go to college or earn a descent wage, much of that was implicitly still left up to men.  The rub here is that as more and more equality has been achieved, the expectations upon women have increased exponentially and this has always made me concerned for my female students and now I share that concern for my daughter as she grows older. 

Young women are now still expected to be exceptional at those 4 roles (I’d argue much more than men), but now you can add to those already sky high requirements the high expectations to be exceptional students, have a certain body type, graduate from a great college, have an outstanding job and provide for their families.  The irony of this is that while equality for women has increased over the past century, the expectations upon women have only gotten greater and weigh women down more, all while the expectations upon men have changed very little.  Heart disease among women is at an all time high.  Eating disorders and depression are higher than ever amongst young women and in my opinion these can be traced directly to these added expectations. 

The truly amazing aspect of all of this is that while the weight bared by women has increased so greatly, they outperform men academically, graduate more often from college and on average have greater professional success quicker.  Again an appalling irony exists here in that women are still paid 33% less than a man for similar jobs. 

Men are all too ignorant to the situation of women in our current American society.  Typically men just see women as having achieved total equality, and although there is some truth to that, men do not see the added pressure, but even add to it with their inability to respect women in the professional and personal realm. 

I am not arguing that all men are disrespectful towards women, but all too many objectify women in their personal relationships and the statistics on pornography are truly disturbing in that this industry is responsible for more objectification of women than any other industry in the world. 

When will women truly attain equality in our society?  This won’t happen until we all realize that we are not there yet and that women are truly remarkable in ability to balance all of these weighing expectations that American society has placed upon them.  Then and only then will I feel truly secure in “letting go” of my daughter.  I feel like it is going to be so much work (in a good way) for my wife and I to raise our daughter with a less sense of weight and stress on her and more of a sense of personal identity and proud to be the woman that she is to be. 

I remember a line from one of my favorite films entitled, “With Honors.”  At one point Joe Pesci, who plays a homeless man living on the Harvard campus states, “Women are perfect… Don’t matter if they’re skinny, blond or blue.  If a woman is willing to give you her love it’s the greatest gift in the world.”  Women may not be perfect, but they certainly amaze me.