Have women really lost their voice?
Summary from Stylist magazine 26.01.11
According to free lifestyle magazine Stylist, women today have lost their voice.
With numerous issues to protest about – budget cuts, unequal pay, foreign wars – the article sets out to understand why there are so many ‘twenty-and-thirty-something women who, on the whole, aren’t making much noise at all.’
Stylist identifies past protest movements, such as the spirit of empowerment felt by women in the 60s, who were able to rebel against their parents’ conservative lifestyle.
But, post-Thatcher, it argues that because so many young women now have a university degree and the ability to progress up the career ladder, Conservative policies in the eighties, ‘saw group solidarity give way to individual pursuit of wealth and success.’
But is it true? Are the lives of women today just too hectic to engage with anything outside of their own immediate existence?
Stylist certainly thinks so. It concludes that due to the numerous and subtle pressures on women today its only by the time they get to their 40s and 50s that ‘they are likely to be motivated to engage with the world around them, and equipped to make a difference.’
Perhaps its true that we’re a bit older before we ‘engage with the world around us’ but it’s not because women are apathetic.
It’s because the enemy is not so well-defined. Whilst older generations could change history through their national politicians, we have to fight faceless global banks and corporations that pull the strings behind government policy.
Every individual is integrated into a global economy, into a series of global networks and international laws. When we protest, the consequences reverberate around the world through global media. In that sense, we have to be more careful when and how we take action, but subtlety does not equate to apathy.
There is little evidence that women have lost their voice. Facebook is alive with daily protests, online campaigns and protests by women on a variety of issues. Much of the protests and comment is done online through iphones and blackberries at any hour of the day.
Remember – just because women are not out in the streets, or sitting in parliament square, does not mean we have lost our voice.
I think a large inhibitor of women standing up for themselves in numbers is the relentless media tirade against feminists that makes a lot of younger women feeling unwilling to have any political viewpoint at all in case they get labelled as a radical.