Peaceful revolution and women’s lives

“But it’s also terrible for the political and family health of our entire nation.

Let’s start with politics. For both the mullahs in Iran and the rightist-fundamentalist alliance in the United States, “getting women back into their traditional place” in a “traditional family” has been a top priority. There’s a basic reason for this. Rigidly male-dominated societies are also authoritarian and violent. Along with the imposition of a brutal dictatorship by the Nazis, their mantra was returning women to their “traditional” roles in a male-dominated family. Nor is it coincidental that the 9-11 terrorists came from cultures where women are terrorized into submission. Or that regressive fundamentalists in the United States (who also believe in top-down rule and “holy wars”) first organized as a powerful political block around a “women’s issue”: the defeat during the 1970s of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

By contrast, in Nordic nations such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland, the move toward gender equity (for example, women are 40 percent of national legislators and are frequently heads of state) has gone along with more political and economic democracy. Not only that – and this takes us to how “women’s issues” are also key family issues – as the status of women rose so also did funding for activities stereotypically associated with women. These nations have far less stressed families because they support child care, health care, paid parental leave, and other family-friendly policies.”