Low Blow Against Childless Women In Politics
Yesterday, I caught this article about Angela Merkel’s childless status in the online edition of The Independant. The elections are drawing to a close, since it’s for this week-end, and it looks like once everything is said, people will once again resort to sex slur to strike at their opponents. Even though I don’t agree with many of Merkel’s points, I don’t think she deserves such a low blow—and coming from another woman, nonetheless. (As a sidenote, I’m aware that it’s just another of the usual pre-elections blows, specially coming from the opposition; I just find it extremely low, and of very bad taste.)Then it hit me—seriously, can women in politics ever stand a chance? Will there be a day when such attacks stop? Why is it that women get this kind of arguments shoved at them, while they wield so much less importance in the case of male politicians? Why does this matter of sex always come back, as if it was more important than criticizing their programs instead (which are the things that should be discussed first and foremost, in my opinion)? Sure, every celebrity gets her deal of flak; once your name is known, even the most insignificant of yours action can become matter to discussion and mud-throwing. But this?If women in politics don’t have children, they’re considered like “not understanding women properly”, “not being true women”, “unable to understand the matters of school and motherhood”, and so on.If they have children, people will say that they’re too busy raising them to properly take care of their duties toward the nation.If they’re young enough to plan to have children, then they’re a no-go because they’ll be busy with their pregnancies and raging hormons, in a nutshell: unable to carry on with… yes, their political duties, again.If they’re old enough for their children to already been grown-up, any action of said children will reflect on them, possibly in the worst way possible, and of course the media will state that if they were unable to raise their offspring properly, how can they lead a country?Funny, how male politicians never (or almost) receive this kind of critics, yet they also have the ability to reproduce. It seems to me that even in our so-called modern world, when it comes to any ability not involving popping out children or raising them, women in politics still have to deal with a middle-ages mentality.
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melly
While I fully agree with almost everything you said, I do want to draw your attention to one thing and that is how women (most not all) describe themselvs. I was going to even post about this, but maybe you should.What I mean is how women always say that they are moms, while men say they have children. Even in blog names you can find so many moms, but not many dads.Women (again, most not all) define themselves as moms, it’s part of who they are, while men don’t.I’m not sure why this is so, but it’s interesting and is contributing to why women are “attacked” on the basis of being childless. As long as women will wontinue to define themselves as moms, it will persist.
Yzabel
This is a very valid point, I had indeed left it out of the post (not that I’ve never happened to post about it, but not on this blog). I’ve actually seen a few “dad” blogs around, even if I’ve never done more than just passing by; it’s true that they’re much more scarce, in any case.The sad thing is that we who don’t define ourselves as moms look like complete aliens in turn—on one blog, I even saw the blogger asking whether women who don’t want children can be considered as “mentally unstable”, or some similar crap (I haven’t bookmarked that to check it, for sure). Why, I’m sure that if I went around saying that any woman wanting children is bollocks, I’d get quite some flak and pointed fingers for being “intolerant” and “a monster”, but seems the contrary isn’t valid. Ah, well.I’m not sure either why this is so, maybe because a woman is more “involved” from the start, given that she has to carry and pop out the baby, after all. Come to think of it, I may indeed plan an entry on that matter, for a day when I feel like being not politically correct at all.