I was on Radio NZ Nights tonight, talking about why we still need feminism.
I’ll be on again a few more times this year, talking feminism, under the umbrella topic of “why we still need feminism.” The individual topics are up to me, so, dear family and friends and readers, please suggest suitable topics. Or unsuitable topics.
I listened to the interview. Wonderfully articulate! Thanks. Much of it resonated, especially young women perhaps being the triumph of feminism. I experienced an uneasiness when you touched on “womanism”. I have a number of caregivers (low paid/wanting as many hours of work as possible, mostly women) and I am thinking of one in particular who has at least five grandchildren. She has always worked because she and her husband have barely made ends meet. She does not see inequality between men and women, rather inequality between those who can access a good school and those who can’t. And when she talks about a good school she’s talking about one that gives kids breakfast, diagnoses and acts on learning difficulties and makes learning interesting. This is straying off “feminism”, but feminism seems not to have helped the women in her family. Her daughter only works when she can borrow a car and child care is an ad hoc affair within the family. “Affordable” child care wouldn’t help much. And as an aside she rubbishes Maori immersion schools, and her “nan” friends have also withdrawn their grandchildren because their English is poor. What would you have to say about feminism and men and women in low paid/part- time work? Perhaps our equivalent of womanism except it’s low paid vs better paid. What would you say about feminism and Maori women? (She doesn’t have anything good to say about the “top people in my iwi driving around in Mercedes, while the little man gets nothing”) Sorry, so easy to go off topic, but then feminism crosses right across every aspect of society … Or does it?