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One news item during the transition period from the Year of the Dog to that of the Golden Pig caught my eye: about half of adult American women live without a spouse, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and as interpreted by the New York Times.
In the annals of human evolution, this is a revolution on par with the invention of agriculture, the Gutenberg movable-type printing machine, or the Internet. Simply put, they all change our lives in fundamental ways.
At the most superficial level, this statistic illustrates the tremendous gains achieved by the feminist movement in this country. It was only in 1966 that women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem founded the National Organization for Women. Forty years later, more women are now attending college and graduating in a shorter time than men.
In three important professional fields, the achievements of women from 1970 to 2002 are nothing short of extraordinary: in dentistry, the percentage of female graduates jumped from 1 percent to 39 percent; in medicine, from 8 percent to 44 percent, and in law, from 5 percent to 48 percent. In another two decades, you will more likely have a female doctor, lawyer or dentist than a male one.
In the context of human change, the first women’s rights convention was held in 1848 at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in part to demand the right to vote. It took until 1920 for women in this country to get that basic right. A large number of American women worked for a paycheck for the first time during World War II when the country had a labor shortage at home, but they were quickly sent home after the war. In that context, the four decades from 1966 have seen lightning-speed changes.
But perhaps the most fundamental change is more silent: what will happen to the so-called “traditional” values in any culture?
Throughout history, and in every society, men have managed to demand preferential treatment in every aspect of life, then codify such treatments into laws, religions, philosophies or customs. To this day, men continue to reinforce their privileges by invoking such authorities. It’s the foolproof and perfect mechanism to gain, and perpetuate, men’s superiority.
In our Asian culture, Confucius has dominated our thinking, our literature, and our lives for 25 centuries. And the Great Master was unambiguous about the role of women with his law on “three obediences.”
“At home, a girl obeys her father,
In marriage, she obeys her husband,
And if the husband dies, she obeys her son.”
It was no better in the West. The Gospels tell us that an adulterous woman was saved by Jesus from being stoned to death for her trespass but nothing was said of the adulterous man, her partner in crime. Cleopatra and Joan of Arc were the exceptions, and in the end, defeated ones at that. Jane Austen, in her book “Pride and Prejudice,” write that the Bennett girls had no other pursuit in life than to catch a husband, preferably one with some income.
Contrast all that to today’s independent female. Not only is this generation of women likely to be better educated than men, today’s woman also is gaining on earnings, on promotion and on leadership. Wimbledon, the venerable tennis championship, announced last week that it will start paying its female champion the same amount it pays male champion. In January, in the U.S. Capitol, a woman shared the podium with two men at the State of the Union address. A few weeks ago, another woman became the first female president of Harvard University. And maybe in just 22 more months, another woman will be sworn in as president of the United States.
More importantly, though, women make their own living and they generally outlive men. So it is no wonder that at the age 55, many American women today discover a new freedom: they have several more decades of active life, they are financially independent, and they can do practically anything they want with that time and money.
What would Confucius say today?
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