Let’s “dismantle” the “Master’s House” with the Misses’ Tools

Women in today’s world are more aware of the gender inequalities and injustices. We have many more women with leadership positions than we had before. While there has been some progress in achieving gender equality, have we really come to a time when we are sure that women rights will be protected and can we firmly state that we have achieved equality between women and men? The reality is that many people think we have truly achieved equality and that women in today’s century are making a big fuss about nothing. However, while there has been some process of closing the gap of inequalities between women and men, we are still a long way from achieving equality. There is still a big income gap between women and man that hold the same positions. Even when women are in leadership positions they are undermined. Many times in political positions women are doubted as incapable of governing a society and are unacknowledged of their merits gained through their experience. It was less than two weeks ago that the first female president was elected in Costa Rica. While this is a great accomplishment for Laura Chinchilla, many people claim her success as a consequence of her popularity when she was the Vice president of Oscar Arias. People in the media and some of her critics portray her as Aria’s puppet. In the newspaper it says, “Critics worry he will try to govern behind the scenes. One of her rivals' campaign ads depicts Chinchilla as a marionette, spouting answers to tough questions while a puppeteer resembling Arias pulls her strings.” This idea of becoming a puppet again shows the inability of our modern society to understand that women leaders are able to have independent thoughts.
I believe it is unfair that this achievement is given credit to Arias rather than her respected experience in politics and her highly intellectuality in politics. Chinchilla went to George Washington University to get her Master’s in public policy and was vice president. She visited prisons and saw the environment in which people in jail lived in. It seems like Chinchilla really embodied the theme of change in Costa Rica. As the article said, people were dancing, honking their cars and everyone seemed excited about her election. While she put a great effort and worked on her election, people ignored the sacrifices and accomplishments she had made claiming that the only reason she was elected was because that was the only way to keep power in the party. Her achievements in the political sphere as a leader of Puerto Rico are diminished and ignored by people thinking that one of the few reasons she won the election was because she knew Arias. This does not only apply to foreign women leaders but even the leaders we have in our society. Some argue that the fact that Hillary Clinton went so far in the presidential election was not coincidence she was the wife of Bill Clinton and his popularity help her get this far. Again, women’s achievement and success in their job field are completely overlooked something that would not happen to male presidential candidate. When it comes to presidential candidates they don’t have to associate with another man for winning but rather with their own merits. This is something men do not have to worry about. Laura Chinchilla is the president but is she really holding the power? Has the power even shifted since Arias is the one governing behind Chanchilla’s back? It would be almost impossible to hear any of Obama’s critics to say that Obama is the puppet of anyone. However, when it comes to a women like Chinchilla we cannot think she made it this far because of her intelligence and experience with domestic policy but rather than she is close to an ex-president and is being used as an element to keep the power in their political party. The idea of seeing women rise up and succeed for their own merits. This reminds me of what Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tool will never dismantle the Master’s house.” While this is a little pessimistic it’s true. It seems that this is not longer inequality by itself but it has become a state mind that we are all in and we contribute to it in different ways starting from laughing at jokes that insult women as stupid being to posing for Playboy magazines. The challenge is figuring out how do can we do it with our own tools if we do not yet own anything. The majority of people in power are not women but men. Men still have the power.
So how do we dismantle the house with our tools, or lack thereof? Maybe the first step is making all women aware of it and all of us working towards the same goal towards an equal society. Many women, however, are not compelled to fight back the status quo because they have not felt oppressed because of their sexuality. Missy, a classmate in my women’s studies class, commented on a blog on Johnson. In this blog I agreed with Johnson on the fact the both women and men are equally in fault and it us, men and women, that keeps this inequality and we should fight the status quo. Missy commented, “I just haven't yet felt compelled to change the system because I personally have never felt my sex as oppressive.” Missy is, of course, very different from women in Iraq that see gender inequality as soon as they wake up by their partner’s violence or porn stars that have to continuously object their bodies to make a profit. These gender inequalities are not as harmful and obvious. Missy, like many other girls on this campus, has not experienced inequality towards her gender. Many of us have been told we can do anything guys can do and that seems to have stayed in our minds- ignoring anything that might be otherwise. I feel like sometimes we put the blame to ourselves if we fail in a job interview or if we made out in a night club to get guy’s attention. We may claim is our own choice and we decide who we kiss but is this really true? We live in a patriarchal society and we look for male acceptance. The little skirts we wear to go to the clubs is many times to get the attention of men and feel “empowered.” Therefore, if we do these things such as wearing small clothes, making out with other girls to be looked at as important by men really our choice? If we have been taught by bombarding ads that send the message that one’s beauty is what defines one’s worth, we cannot really not care about our appearance because this is what is normal and expected and not doing so would just make you unattractive and therefore less worthy. So do we really have a choice? Is this equality that we have been told about real or is it an illusion?
The gap of income between women and men is still very big. As it is of today, “the unemployment gender gap – in favor of women – has widened further 55.3%. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/income-gap-between-men-and-women-falls-1647358.html). Even when both men and women are equally educated and have high earning position there is still a big income gap. Catherine Rampbell conducted research on this and even with outside factors that may not allow women to make as much as men, the disparity persists and is bigger. Rampbell says in her article, “jobs paying more than $100,000 — the salary gap between equally qualified men and women is still vast.” We can choose to ignore this and argue that women that earn less than that make almost as much as men. However, that’s not the point. It is not like women are becoming too obnoxious and over exaggerating things; it is what is right and what is fair. Women’s work should not be valued less than men’s work.
While more women are taking well respected positions there is a huge difference between the amount of women and men in Congress. In today’s government “there are larger disparities between the Congress and the general citizenry in term of sex and race. In the House, there are currently 357 men and 78 women. In the Senate, there are 18 women and 82 men,” (http://www.thisnation.com/congress-facts.html). The difference between the number of men and women in Congress is big. This number in percentage would be 82% of male representatives 28% women representatives in the House. The disparity is huge and should not be overlooked or thought of “normal”. The common excuse for this statistic is that women are more focused on careers of service and not politic. It is women’s fault that they do not want to pursue a political career. The overwhelming amount of men in political positions can easily discourage, scare and send the message that women’s place is not politics. Why is it that men dominate the field of technology? We know that is not because they are smarter than women. The argument that men have bigger brains than women and consequently are smarter has already been well disproved. So why do women go for service jobs. Could it be that this division of what was socially acceptable for men and women to work as was a way to keep women oppressed and restrained from achieving more than this patriarchal society wanted us to achieve. This could be a barrier for women but if more women like Laura Chinchilla keep rising up, taking leadership positions this will challenge the status quo well. Maybe this is what we need, women owning the “tools” and making the “Master’s House” the “Misses House” that Johnson talks about, maybe then the ideal society in which men and women are treated the same may be tangible.