The space shuttle landing was beautiful! With the
world watching, Commander Eileen Collins brought the shuttle's journey
to a perfect end. After a trip fraught with worry over repeating the
Columbia's doomed flight, this female coolly and competently did her
job. |
Even chauvinist males had to admit that this woman performed
every bit as well at this difficult task as a man would have done.
Her performance was a glorious testament to the fact that given equal
education and equal opportunity, modern women can contribute equally
well to life in the modern world. |
Young women need to realize that it was not always so.
In fact, it has been only in the last half of the last century that
women have been able to enter careers of their choosing. This journey
has been a lengthy struggle against the perceptions of patriarchal
religions that women were destined for only one purpose. As Martin
Luther stated: Women "should remain at home,
bear and bring
up children. If a woman
dies from childbearing, it matters not
she is there to do it." Modern evangelicals still preach that
a "woman's place" is in the home. |
It is up to today's young women to continue the fight
so that the opportunities finally available to modern women are not
lost by the resurgence of oppressive religious beliefs. This is already
happening in Afghanistan where the Taliban brand of harsh religious
fanaticism has returned in many areas to deprive women of an education,
forcing their dependence on male members of the household. Women are
hidden away in their homes, or totally obscured by garments when in
public. |
It is happening in Iraq, where the latest draft of the
new Iraq constitution would let religious authorities curtail the
rights women have enjoyed since 1959. Women were freer under Saddam
Hussein's tyranny than their neighbors in Iran or Saudi Arabia where
clerics set the laws. They had been among the best educated in the
Middle East, but now 35 percent of Iraq's girls are dropping out of
school as Muslim clerics gain power there, threatening to return women
to the restrictions of Islamic law. |
It is even happening in our own country in insidious
ways. Education is imperiled by religious leaders' attacks on public
schools, but perhaps more important for modern Americans is the assault
on women's reproductive independence. The 20th Century saw a long
struggle against religious forces who opposed the use of birth control.
It was only in 1965 that the Supreme Court's Connecticut vs. Griswold
decision gave married women the right to use contraceptives. Single
women did not gain that right until two years later. Prior to this,
Margaret Sanger and other crusaders were jailed for their efforts
to better the lives of American women by giving them the ability to
plan and space their families. |
But now the newfound political influence of birth control
opponents threatens this hard-won freedom. Perverted sex-education
promotes ignorance. Catholic legislators deny rape victims the use
of emergency contraception to prevent pregnancies. Some insurance
companies refuse to cover contraceptives and religious pharmacists
refuse to dispense them. |
A comprehensive education, coupled with the ability
to control their reproductive functions, has given modern women the
power to become whatever they want, to achieve whatever they dream.
Religions must not be allowed to destroy this. |
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