...before women's liberation? I know of course there was a terrible oppression and suppression of women in achieving their goals and dreams. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century they thought a woman novelist or playwright or actress was about as ridiculous as a dog dancing on its hind legs in a dress. Women were a mockery essentially even though there were instances where women transgressed the bounds of their gender like Ann Radcliffe and Austen and things. In a way though, when society was so structured, women were closer to the spiritual centre of life. Women were encouraged to be ego less as they did not predicate their whole worth on being a doctor or lawyer or politician. They were the 'other' to man. As inequitable as that might have been, I think the human ego is the source of so many hardships and cruelties and abuse in our society from workplace bullying to ruthless competition to the crabs in the bucket mentality to entire megalomaniacal dictatorships pretty much. In a Buddhist text I read it stated that because of our previous position in life as nurturers and not breadwinners women were more spiritually evolved than men because we reliquished worldliness and were encouraged to be peacemakers and compassionate and kind and all those other qualities espoused by world religions. These days, women and everyone else actually has become narcissistic and egotistical. Several psychological studies have indicated as such including one re: my own generation (21) who are said to be the least empathetic and most selfish, entitled, self interested group of individuals there ever was. In a way, doesn't Western society encourage empty ambitions that often come at the expense of our characters and spirits if you believe as such? The idea that women have now gained the whole world but lost our souls? Or if you have seen the Michael Caine film and book by Willy Russel 'Educating Rita' where this working class woman attends Uni courses and where at the start of the film she is delightfully natural and unaffected, by the end she has become everything the Professor most hates about his Uni culture. She is antagonistic, argumentative, belligerent and intellectually arrogant. She insults people she has a different point of view with.She has quite literally 'gained the whole of literature and lost her soul'. She is not a better human being. So I ask, where women's liberation is concerned, is it another case of gaining the whole world and losing one's spirit? Are we farther away from Enlightenment and Spirituality now than we ever have been as mothers and wives by contending with the world on a daily basis and competing with our peers?
edit: APOLOGIES FOR WALL OF WRITING.
edit: APOLOGIES FOR WALL OF WRITING.