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We would like to answer them: Equality of rights has never been the goal of the women’s movement. It was only a forerunner, which allowed women to ap proach the solution of their actual problems. Equality was only the means which permitted us to enter com munity life in the role of co-decision makers and to assume mutual responsibility. Attaining equal rights paved the way for us to begin negotiating and formulat ing a world created and shaped by men, according to our wishes. Is it possible for this complicated problem to be resolved in one or two decades? The task is to bring a woman into the full swing of community life, re-educate her toward accepting new duties, inviting new broader responsibilities. It is to bind one woman, but not one, a million women; to bind them organically and completely with needs, forms, functions of the community, society, the people and the nation. In fact, the women’s move ment is concerned not to waste the value of the women’s spirit, these limitless, dormant spiritual energies. The idea is to awaken them from a long sleep and utilize them in the best possible way in a harmonious complex ity with the male counterparts of our society, to harness them together in the service of the whole, in a creative process of a new and better life. When looking from the historical perspective of say, three thousand years, during which all the cultural values were created exclusively by men, is one decade or two of the so called women’s equality relevant? Against the backdrop of the history of mankind what is the relation ship of time between the duration of the women’s emancipation movement and the length of men’s domi nation? Religion and the philosophical systems, a nation and its laws, an entire mass of knowledge and culture — this is all the work of men. A woman entered this man’s world only very recently. In it she takes the first halting steps, like a child learning to walk. There are near-sighted, small people among us who view the his torical processes which are measured in hundreds of years, from a frog’s perspective. They would like to place the women’s movement in a coffin, because according to them the movement is out of its proper time and women’s organizations are an absurdity. Meanwhile, louder and louder voices of philosophers and sociologists are heard in the wide world who, con trary to the antifeminist tendencies of statesmen and politicians, see the contemporary crisis in the shakeup of the natural balance between men and women as that between two equal forms of humanity. More and more often voices of caution are heard. They say that the world has degenerated due to the deterioration of the women’s and expansion of the men’s positions, and that the only saving grace from complete bankruptcy — for this mechanized, technical, materialistic and irrational world — lies in the influx of women’s power, new unused power. The one-sided men’s social order must find its natural fulfillment in the cooperation with women in all phases of life. However the completion of this task cannot be assigned to one generation. Generations of women must toil to see it realized and the idea of a women’s movement must be nurtured for many genera tions, until it finally is deeply rooted in the conscience of the populace. Women’s organizations are needed as a plane on which to crystallize women’s viewpoints, as territory where the congregation and activation of wo men’s power can occur. If we accept the premise that the women’s move ment is nothing more than a struggle for equality between a woman and a man, can we really say that it is already passe'? Is the struggle over for a woman’s right ful place in the family, in the community? Is it over in education and in professional calling, in all the outward possibilities of development, in her life’s cyde of activi ties? Is the matter of equality resolved? It seems that for the last 20 years there has not been a less opportune moment than now to bring back the call to liquidate women’s organizations and to state that women are already equal with men. In the entire world now there is a marked new wave of antifeminism which attempts to push the woman back from her attained position. We are witnesses to how women are barred from universities, where admission of women is limited to only 10 percent of the student body. We see how in some countries women are deprived of their pol itical rights, while in other countries in spite of all attempts, they cannot gain them at all. In the entire world the economic shortcomings are first felt by wo men, because they are the victims of law which suppos edly is to lessen unemployment. The economic strife between men and women is reborn again, a strife which was unknown even in times before the war, in times of “unequality.” In all countries of the world, also in coun tries where the constitution guarantees women equality, old rules hold strong. They are built on the supremacy of men, and are best exemplified by the patriarchal fam ily where the woman/mother is subject to her husband. Let us leave theoretical musings, let us leave the world its troubles and let us look at how things stand with us concerning equality. What particular burden do women bear in our national and community life? If it is difficult to answer such a general question, then we can divide it into specifics. What percentage of women are members of national organizations? What percentage of women hold important positions in the community, how many women are at least members of regional institu tions, how many are directors of institutions? What is the percentage of women at general meetings of central organizations where attendance is limited to delegates from subdivisions of such groups? And what goes on in our villages? Do we have women in charge of reading rooms or cooperatives? Do we have women magistrates, or at least members of community boards? ’’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛЮТИЙ 1993 19
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