Waking up on the first day of a new year, I remembered a thought that came to me yesterday. I was thinking about the changes that have happened in terms of women’s options during my own lifetime. We (in the US at least) have had birth control, which has meant that we could reliably control our fertility, opening amazing possibility for alternative activities and accomplishments. We can drive and fly and travel long distances, expanding our geographical horizons. We can become more educated, expanding our minds. We have easy access to the internet, which expands our human connections (and possible collective action) as well as our knowledge. We have access to amazing technology that allows us to do things faster (though perhaps not better) and thereby expands our productivity. For women, I know from experience that even simple dishwashers and washing machines make a huge difference. We (or many of us) can now find answers instantly to any question human beings have an answer for (and purported answers for many they don’t, actually).
As I contemplated these life-altering changes, I wondered, if we women are making the kinds of difference this should imply. My husband just read off one of today’s New York Times headlines: “Supreme Court Justice Blocks Health Law’s Contraception Mandate”. This relates to the US federal requirement—designed to take effect 1 January 2014—that religiously-affiliated organizations, along with non-religious organizations, must still offer health insurance that includes birth control coverage, under the Affordable Care Act (popularly known as Obamacare). And who blocked this legislation that would be a godsend for women who cannot afford contraception (with all the improved health and life chances—for the women themselves and for their children— such access implies)? One of the three women on the US Supreme Court: Justice Sonia Sotomayor (a Catholic herself, responding to an appeal from the Little Sisters of the Poor, Catholic nuns in Denver, Colorado). Like so many elements of present-day American politics, I find such decisions difficult to comprehend—particularly so when it’s well-established that most American Catholic women use birth control of their own volition, despite the Church’s disapproval!
But, although I can lobby politicians about such decisions, I cannot directly affect them (being unwilling to stand for office myself). So what have I done, what can I do, to contribute to a more just world? Much of my lifelong professional emphasis has been on equity, fairness—trying to see (through research and analysis) if we can make these advantages/improvements that I so appreciate available to people (women and men) who remain in more difficult situations: where a woman’s ability to control her fertility is either out of her hands entirely or requires abstinence that most humans find both undesirable and unsustainable; where formal education or health services are minimal; where drudgery-reducing technology is unavailable. Many are also hindered by social and economic systems that (while containing many admirable features worth protecting) denigrate women and fail to encourage children to fulfill their potential. These disadvantages are compounded by a global socio-economic framework that inflates the worth of some people (from ‘First World’ countries—like me) while denigrating that of others (from ‘Third World’ countries—like my family in Borneo).
The work and lives of Third World women are particularly invisible, simply not seen—our blindness to what is evident, before our very eyes, can be mind-boggling. This invisibility is again compounded by inattention to the vital unpaid functions women perform in the domestic sphere. Humanity could not persist without much of the work that is disproportionately performed by women—work for which societies typically provide no financial remuneration, little prestige, and oftentimes minimal simple appreciation:
- the enculturation of the young, the bearing, nursing and bringing up of children (produced in a usually cooperative act by both genders);
- maintenance of livable and culturally appropriate, sometimes even aesthetically pleasing domestic environments;
- edible foods, often grown, harvested, processed, and/or cooked by women, according to local tastes;
- domestic hygiene, affection and informal health care for the sick and aged.
And for many women, these indispensible services are performed on top of active, economically productive work lives.
My professional resolution for this year is to try to better understand the balance for women and men between what we anthropologists call productive and reproductive [domestic] work. Both these spheres of work are crucial for human well being. I can imagine worlds in which the work is more equitably divided and the domestic sphere more highly valued, more consistent with its worth. I can imagine that, besides the gender inequities scholars have already identified for women, we may also be under-valuing much domestic work done by men. I would like to do analyses that help us better understand and value the contributions of both men and women—something I hope might lead ultimately to a world in which justice plays a bigger role. I am comfortable with setting my goals high and being patient with the small steps I am able to make from day to day, year to year. I take solace in many of the changes I have seen in the world, during my lifetime; and can only hope—recognizing that in complex systems we cannot fully predict the impacts of our actions—that my own small efforts contribute positively to a more just, sustainable, and gentle world.