Through Coffin Wood to Earth
Charles Jeffrey Danoff
In the movie "Kill Bill", the female protagonist Beatrix Kiddo was placed in a casket and buried alive by a male antagonist. After panicking, Beatrix gathered herself and began punching the box's lid. She had inches of wood and feet of earth preventing her from freedom, but she punched anyway, even though it seemed to viewers like she was wasting her sweat.
Twentieth century women did the same, punching the box male society buried them in for centuries, as people watched saying they were wasting their time. They grew up unable to vote, attend college, or work as professionals. A century later, millions are educated, working, and contributing to political life en masse for the first time in recorded history.
Given what early twentieth century girls were able to imagine and accomplish without examples, it is not idealistic, but practical to say this century's girls with role models will surpass their foremothers. The next step is not female domination, but working equally with men to solve modern life's myriad problems, including raising the kids.
Same as last century the power to break the box will come from college educations. A bachelors degree is essential for individual intellectual liberation and for competitive twenty-first century workers. Last century women matriculated, now their graduation rate shall exponentially grow.
Graduates will enter a workforce unable to ignore them. As the global competition flattens, it is necessary for businesses and nations to employ their females. The Old Boys Club will fade, as those that try to keep the status quo will fall dangerously far behind those, which chose not to ignore half their population.
As new professionals smash through the wood and earn management positions, they need to remember this is not a winner take all game. Powerful ladies must give the same respect to the opposite gender that their male superiors who promoted them showed. When considering who shall lead a company project they need to choose the most qualified individual - not a less talented woman ahead of a man, just because she's a gal.
Indeed it seems the biggest danger facing females in this century is not the male oppression but how they will use the power they inevitably shall receive. The noble use is not burying men to pay them back for women's historical treatment, but to collaborate effectively, remembering the past, but not letting it be a block of future progress.
What is progress?
Working side by side with men to raise the quality and nobleness of modern professional life, by only working for money until one's family's safety, leisure, and children's education are financially secure. Then professionals should devote their lives to the world, sharing their knowledge for free and striving to eliminate our race's most shameful choice - fighting to settle a dispute.
Additionally, women cannot forget what was left behind. As women rushed into the world of men, their old world of the home lost respect. For many it was not a badge of honor for a woman to be a Stay at Home Mom, but a sign of weakness, accepting their male given role. A woman at home was not brave enough to go out there and punch for equal rights. Is a woman who chooses to maintain the house and raise her children somehow a tragedy?
No, she is a saint.
This is not disrespect to those mothers who balanced work and home, or failing to acknowledge those godly figures that did both alone because there was no man around. Women choosing to work in the past century was necessary for societal evolution, they did not knowingly sacrifice time with their children for nothing.
This is merely to say that having one parent around at home for the kids is fucking important.
Perhaps in the twenty-first century, the home's sanctity shall be restored. Whichever half of the parents is able to stay there will not be regarded with contempt, but with equal honor to the one who leaves for work.
To conclude, women cannot and will not be kept down any longer. As the world moves away from physically dominated control to an intellectual place where those with the best ideas instead of the most guns prosper, women will not only refuse to sit on the sidelines, men will be on their knees begging for them to help.
Ms. Kiddo left the coffin. As twenty first century girls leave as well, they must remember life at home and to punish men for the sins of the past by moving forward together.
Bibliography
Triumph of a Dreamer, by Nicolas D. Kristoff
Kill Bill, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.
3 Guineas. The web edition published by eBooks@Adelaide. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/W91tg/complete.html>
Justin Hall's Recording of his Mother's Speech - "benefits and burdens of a woman having a career"
Time spent as a human on earth where observation, interaction and study of women is unavoidable.
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Charles Jeffrey Danoff has a personal homepage at
http://danoff.org