Ever have those days where you can hear yourself talking and wish you could stop? Or at least wish you could better articulate your point? If nothing else, this class has taught me how important it is to to get your point across in a concise manner, because feminism and women's issues are such tricky topics. When talking about women's equality, I do believe that it is difficult to be equal if women want to be treated differently than men. While the "add women and stir" method falls short of recognizing that women have different needs and problems than men, it does treat all people the same. For me, equality means everyone gets the same opportunities; the status of women needs to be improved and their important contribution needs to be recognized. That was the point I was trying to make in class today, and somehow ended up on an unfortunate tangent that was completely out of context.
While the international community has made incredible steps toward equality, we still have a long way to go from here. The video we watched in class showed that scholars do recognize that there is still a lot of ground to cover. However, I wonder if the World Bank is the best institution to handle the future challenges. Financially, it makes sense because the World Bank can fund programs to improve the status of women such as the program to have both the husband and the wife's name of a land lease.Yet the World Bank is known as an "evil corporation" that perpetuates the exploitation of Third World countries and makes it harder for them to repay the loans that they desperately need. Are they really the best equipped to deal with advancing the status of women? I think they might as well have a chance to try. Sure, they might not end up improving anything, but at this point it is going to be difficult for them to make things worse. The progress that has been made will not be easily overturned, but we cannot stop while we're ahead.
Globalization has affected women differently than it has affected men. As discussed in class, globalization is a spread of ideas. It is also a perpetuation of masculine norms. Globalization can be criticized as being the spread of white, Western, male ideas and norms that have been imposed upon others. Rather than forcing these norms and Western culture on other regions, we as a culture should use the technology provided by globalization to explore and understand other cultures. Women should take advantage of the abundance of technology to learn and understand other women. Globalization has contributed to the spread of technology, such as cellphones and the Internet. Thanks to globalization, women have been able to speak out in ways some never thought possible. Who would have thought that a Saudi Arabian woman would be able to post a video of herself driving, to prove a point? Who would have thought that women in Asia and the Middle East would be able to instantly connect over the Internet with women from Europe or North America? At the same time technology has also had a negative impact on the social aspects of life; people talk via Facebook, Twitter or MSN instead of face-to-face. Transnational corporations, non-government organizations and global movements have taken advantage of globalization yet people on the ground have not necessarily benefited from those policies. Globalization has not drastically improved the condition of not just women but people in general.
Although we have made incredible progress since the beginning of the 20th century, there is still a long way to go before women can be considered equal to men.
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