A Woman's place

Forty yean ago the celebrated French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir declared that "The
free woman is just being born". It's been a difficult birth, but today a woman's place is not only in the home.
Women are now more independent, more self-reliant, more confident and more powerful than ever before. After generations of subservience and oppression they now have official, if not always actual, equality and liberty. Just look around: women are found in almost every profession and walk of life. There are women doctors, professors, fire-fighters and carpenters. In the north of England
there is an j drivers*; in i women farrr Turin is com vestigators; j staffed by a course, Brit; ister.
I But wait a women in al many? We i group here; 50 per cen shouldn't b politicians, there is an association of women truck drivers in America there are groups of women farmers.
  A detective agency in Turin is composed entirely of female inestimators; a car showroom in London is staffed by a female sales team. And. of course, Britain has a woman prime minister. But wait a minute — we do indeed find women in ail sorts of jobs, but just how many? We are not talking of a minority group here; women make up more than SO per cent of the population. There shouldn't be just a handful" of female politicians, there should be thousands. Not just one detective agency but hundreds.

A long way to go
Undoubtedly1* the women's liberation movement has made remarkable progress, but there is still a long way to go. Many men argue that women are just not suitable for certain jobs; they say that they are weaker more emotional and less practical than their male counterparts. These arguments, however are not convincing. Research has shown time and time again that the differences  within each sex are greater than the differences between them. There are just as many weak, emotional, impractical men as there are strong, resilient, practical women.

 

The basic problem is one of prejudice, which is rooted28 in our upbringing and education. We say that women are adept" with a needle and thread, so why shouldn't they make first-class surgeons? We assume that women are better at listening and solving emotional problems than men, so why few women priests? To some extent things will improve in the near future. The drop in the birth rate has meant that women are now being encouraged to go out and work and the changing world economy demands a major re-think of female roles. In the 1950's Simone de Beauvoir's free woman was just being born. Now in the 1990's she is learning to walk.