"Dear Daughter," Davis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRHKHF7ITy8This song is about a daughter who wants to change and grow but feels trapped by the same struggles her mother faced. Being modern is to come from a historical context, but it also to be different from that past. Modern women come from the same struggles and past as their female ancestors, but they have the ability to make a new future for women. In my own family, for the last four or so generations the women have faced similar problems in their marriages, families, and mental health. But each generation it gets a little better and it comes from pulling strength from the previous generation and moving forward.  |
| Women's March on D.C. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/21/world/womens-march-pictures.html Over the last century women have gained incredible access to their rights. Being a modern woman makes one a benefactor of these gains. With benefaction comes the responsibility to ensure that current rights stay rights and that new rights are given so that, one day, all women will enjoy full access to life. Some ways to help future women are through political demonstrations and volunteering with at-risk populations. |
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| Girl in an Afghanistan school https://borgenproject.org/why-female-education-fights-poverty/
Today, with 82.7% of the world's women literate, it is
fair to say that a hallmark of the modern woman is education. Women's education
is one of the surest ways to increase individual women's and communities'
health. Educated women tend to have fewer children, so the children they do
have have more resources and grow up healthier and more successful. Educated
women also make more money and make better healthcare choices for themselves
and their families. Female education is great! Despite its greatness, fewer
women than men are literate or graduate from school. Equal educational access
for is a major human rights concern.
"I Survived Sex Trafficking," Buzzfeed
Although globally women have more equality than ever
before, the same sexist evils that have imprisoned women for thousands of years
are still present all over the world. What makes us different today is that we
have the legal, technological, and structural force to fight back and save
abused women. Media like this video increase awareness about abuse and slavery;
jobs like Tika’s are relatively new and make helping survivors more possible.
Women farming
To be a woman is to work and create opportunities.
Whether that is as a mother, teacher, farmer, politician, janitor, business
owner, or seamstress, women work. Women in different parts of the world have
different work opportunities available to them, but regardless of the work they
promote change and create a foundation for others.
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My favorite picture of my mom, about 2004.
Motherhood affects all women. Regardless of whether a woman
is, or physically can be, a mother, the potential to be a mother shapes all
women’s lives in some way. To not be a mother—to not fulfill the role that society
has conflated with women for thousands of years—is a conscious choice, and
society will treat her differently for making that choice. The inability to
have children often brings severe emotional challenges. Once a woman becomes a
mother, she is always a mother; even if her all her children die, she will
never not be a mother. For many women simply having sex must involve choices
about motherhood (to take birth control, to not take birth control, what type
of birth control?). Motherhood is a part of all women’s lives.
Eloise, Kay Thompson
Women have incredible inner resources of strength. Often times, like clever, crazy Eloise, those resources do not fit societal norms, but they allow women to go forth and change the world.
quote from The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
People are a mix. No man is the perfect stereotype of
male and no woman is the perfect stereotype of female. Every person has some
“maleness” in them and some “femaleness” in them. At our cores, before we are
men or women, we are human. The breaking down of traditional gender roles
allows people to be authentic and be humans first.
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| comic by Kate Beaton, Canadian cartoonist and feminist supreme https://eloriane.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/kate-beaton-and-clever-clever-comics/ Being a woman is sometimes having to remind people that her femaleness doesn’t make her incompetent; nor does she lack the ability to make things that are relevant to both men and women. |
"Touch Me Not," Minerva Teichert; the resurrected Christ appearing to Mary
As an LDS woman, a major part of being a modern woman is
that I have the ability to participate fully participate in Jesus Christ's
gospel. At no other time in history, other than for Eve and her near
descendants, has this been true. Women, and men, can take part in all the
covenants and ordinances needed to be exalted. With the restoration of Christ’s
gospel, God has also revealed that women are men’s equals and must be treated
as such.
Me with my friends the Barnetts
Being a woman, being human, is to have relationships with other people. Our relationships with society, friends, family, and others allow us to fill our lives with meaning. Relationships are the mirror in which we view and understand ourselves. They are how we find joy, and being a woman certainly involves joy.
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