Women and choice

After reading this I can no longer avoid my blog.

My questions, what SHOULD a woman do and become? Why do we need to justify our choice? What is the ideal life and role for woman? Who should set that ideal?

To be honest, I was not dumbfounded that a woman choose to be a mother, I was more dumbfounded by the implicit idealization of woman. The writing I cite (if this is the correct term for grabbing one's article and putting it on my own page) here, in my opinion, tries to provide a counter-argument for 'feminist' woman-independence arguments. The article proudly argues that a-could-be-carrier-woman CAN choose to be a mother. Be it. But shouldn't the availability of choices is more important than what a person choose?

This is my problem. The author idealization of woman somehow presents (or should I say imposes?) an idea what a woman should choose? Don't you think we should ask the women on what they want to do in their lives, instead of deciding for them on what they SHOULD do?

So, is a well educated woman doomed to be a carrier woman? I never and will never say that! But does our society ever try to listen to the voice of women who are felling 'trapped' in their family routine and wish to accomplish something outside the family boundary and shadow? I don't think so. Everybody has the right to choose, although not all of us have choices. I don't think the could-be-carrier-women who choose to be mothers and housewives should be regarded more highly than the should-be-mothers-and-housewives who choose to be carrier women, and vice versa.

But I do think that all women should have all choices available to them. Most importantly, we should not need to justify ourselves when we choose to break away from the social expectation of woman. Social expectation is constructed throughout time, it is not and will never be in the absolut term.

So, give us education, give us opportunities, give us choices, give us freedom, give us voices and congratulate us for WHATEVER choice we will make in our life. Self-fulfilment choices are not comparable to one another, as 'the self' should never be compared and judged!

Is woman independence that scary and unwanted?

By the way, I wonder if you are aware that one main policy advice to solve rural chronic poverty and population pressure is actually women education? Women empowerement is not an empty slogan, it is actually the remedy of many social problems.

As my favorite advertisement says "Derrière les progrès, il y a toujours des femmes".