Woman

Today is a perfect day for reading. I’m quite sedentary and love to be surrounded by books. They are my delicious treats, my lovely pastime. At this moment I’m reading Lisa See’s The Island of Sea Women, a novel about Korean women who  dive to the sea floor hunting the nourishment waiting there — abalone, octopus and crustaceans. They sell that food and feed their families with their bounty. These women are the ones who provide.

Women like them have been providing forever, but are rarely valued for their part in keeping humanity alive, so my thoughts today are about that injustice. Even in recent times we find women treated as little more than slaves. In some places, they are covered and not allowed to drive or be seen out of the home without a man; they are uneducated and devalued, viewed as necessary servants or commodities to be exchanged for goods. They have little protection from mistreatment, few rights of ownership, and endure scorn from people who think them inferior.

Not so long ago, if you were writing a tale for children or a story to teach morality to readers, your champion would be a man. If he showed kindness to a woman, he was exceptional, a paragon of goodness — Jesus is a good example. In recent history it took an uncommon generosity of spirit to see anything of value in a woman.

I’ve lived long years and watched as women I knew worked to gain respect and equity. A friend couldn’t leave a bad marriage because without a male partner she was denied credit. Many talented classmates of mine were excluded from some professions because they were women. Only teaching and nursing were open to us then. Female musicians were not given premium places in symphony orchestras till auditions were held behind screens. Colleges and universities had quotas for women students, and women were denied advancement because of fears that they’d get pregnant and leave the workforce forever. Reasons for such prejudice must have come from ancient beliefs that men are stronger, smarter and more capable — beliefs that originate in priestly teachings devised to protect men.

In accounts of women’s lives today, I find low opinions of women still prevail. Here we are, asking women to obey their spouses in marriage, paying them less in their jobs, giving inferior care to them in medical settings, keeping them in lower ranks regardless of their talents. JD Vance’s degrading remarks about childless women remind us that sexist bigotry is right in front of us now. In her recent study — after the last election — Sophie Gilbert calls this mentality an “onslaught of hatred” (“The Gender War is Here,” The Atlantic, Jan. 2025).

It’s clear to me that our screenwriters and cartoonists have infantilized women, portraying them as immature creatures who can’t think like adults. Not so long ago female characters in comic movies and cartoons were cute, silent or stupid, or — like Wilma Flintstone and Alice Kramden, their intelligence was usually hidden as they supported needy husbands.

Luckily it’s no longer a contest to see who’s smarter, who’s more attractive, who’s most able, because the evidence is clear: differences between the sexes are complicated. To assume that men are superior is foolish.

Now we’re advancing women in the military and sending them into combat. I find that an absurd triumph over centuries of bias. In the current film Six Triple Eight Black women in the military are given a mountain of work as an impossible challenge, and manage to finish the job and astound their leaders. What a satisfying story! This was the 1940s, when assumptions were that women couldn’t carry as much responsibility as men, couldn’t sustain difficult jobs or figure out solutions to problems.

In the novel I’m reading about the Korean women of Sea Island, Grandmother advises the divers, “Fall down eight times; stand up nine.” Good advice for women wherever they attempt difficult tasks even in this enlightened time.

I’m in awe of males who want to change their gender and become women. It seems that within our souls is an affinity for a certain way of being, so much so that some men find in the feminine spirit a comfortable place, and their bodies must conform. I’m baffled by it all, and yet I know of one who has happily made the change and lives a satisfying life. In the theater of my experience, I bow to the courage it took for a man to choose to become a woman.

Evidently there is more to the human being than biology. Instead, we are complicated, multifaceted, intriguing people who have inner lives that seek creative answers to the mystery of who we are.