Feminism I Can Embrace

Posted by Tina

Tina Brown just held her second annual “Women of the World” conference which was described by Christina Hoff Sommers as a body willing to seriously address, “the genuine hardships and dangers faced by women in Muslim and other cultures in the developing world.” Nonpolitical in nature, the conference speakers and attendees were representative of a broad spectrum featuring such dignitaries as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Secretary Condoleezza Rice, Rupert Murdoch, Barbara Walters and Melinda Gates. The conference organizers made sure the biggest spotlight was reserved for prominent activist women from the poorest, most bereft nations of the world.

Sommers made a clear distinction between this conference and traditional women’s conferences she has attended in the past:

Women’s conferences are usually tedious affairs, organized by women’s studies professors and Title IX lobbyists and filled with complaint, victim-talk, and “anger issues.” But this one was different. Its subject was not the travails of middle-class American women, but rather the genuine hardships and dangers faced by women in Muslim and other cultures in the developing world. ** With few exceptions, there were none of the standard feminist denunciations of men, capitalism, Western colonialism…”

When the modern feminist movement began it focused efforts on improving opportunities for women. Unfortunately it quickly devolved into a man bashing, entitlement demanding gaggle of whining, screeching harpies. I was forever turned off. But this conference has brought dignity to the issue of human rights and opportunity for women by featuring women who face true oppression and insufferable indignities in their home nations:

One after another, women from Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Congo, and Egypt spoke about how they were organizing against honor killings, mass rapes, genital mutilation, child marriage, and gender apartheid–and getting results.

If this article is indicative of what we can expect from feminists in the future this is a women’s movement I can embrace. Women and men working together to solve real problems that bring human dignity to women who are truly deprived of basic human rights and opportunities.