The Kitchen God's Wife

Feminism And Gender Equality In The 1990's

Overall,

the rights and status of women have improved considerably in the

last

century; however, gender equality has recently been threatened

within the last decade.

Blatantly sexist laws and practices are

slowly being eliminated while social perceptions of

"women's roles"

continue to stagnate and even degrade back to traditional ideals.

It is

these social perceptions that challenge the evolution of

women as equal on all levels. In

this study, I will argue that

subtle and blatant sexism continues to exist throughout

educational,

economic, professional and legal arenas.

Women who carefully

follow their expected roles may never recognize sexism as

an oppressive

force in their life. I find many parallels between women's experiences

in the

nineties with Betty Friedan's, in her essay: The Way We

Were - 1949. She dealt with a

society that expected women to fulfill

certain roles. Those roles completely disregarded

the needs of

educated and motivated business women and scientific women. Actually,

the

subtle message that society gave was that the educated woman

was actually selfish and

evil.

I remember in particular the

searing effect on me, who once intended

to be a psychologist, of

a story in McCall's in December 1949 called

"A Weekend with Daddy."

A little girl who lives a lonely life with

her mother, divorced,

an intellectual know-it-all psychologist, goes

to the country to

spend a weekend with her father and his new wife,

who is wholesome,

happy, and a good cook and gardener. And there is

love and laughter

and growing flowers and hot clams and a gourmet

cheese omelet and

square dancing, and she doesn't want to go home.

But, pitying her

poor mother typing away all by herself in the

lonesome apartment,

she keeps her guilty secret that from now on she

will...