This blog is written by a woman for all other women. In my comments I will refer to my fellow women as my sisters.
You have heard the old saying “I’m going to give you a piece of my mind.” Generally these words are spoken when a person is riled up by something and wants to weigh in with vigor and emotion. That is why I chose “A Piece of a Woman’s Mind” as the name of my blog. I am a retiree starting a new career as an author, which means that I have had the privilege to live through and be a part of much history. Old people often comment that aging is not for sissies. This is because when you become a senior citizen many things happen to you that never happened before and that you are not expecting: parts of your body fail you, family and friends die, things you were counting on to sustain you in your old age disappear or are not what you need. All of those things apply to me, but there is one thing among those that bothers me more than all the rest.
When I turned sixty-five in 2012, I took stock of where I was in comparison to where I thought I would be when I was in my twenties, the decade from 1967-1977. Clearly my expectations as a very young adult were influenced by the historical context. I was born in 1947 which puts me in the second year-group of baby boomers. That year-group proved to be the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. As I grew up, there was never enough room for all of us in the schools. I attended school in barracks and in shifts. I want to state categorically, however, that the schools I attended were robust and provided me with an excellent education even though they were overcrowded. When baby boomers hit the job market, there were not enough jobs, causing us to make different life choices than we might have otherwise. I was part of the hippy generation in the mid-60s that challenged all the rules of society with an emphasis on more career choices for women as well as increased sexual freedom for women due to the availability of birth control (1960 was the first approval of birth control pills by the FDA) and legalized abortions (the Roe v. Wade decision came in 1973). This is to say that I grew up constantly encountering huge changes in American life and learning to think that ultimately these changes would lead to a better life for women.
Lyndon Johnson was President from 1963-69. His presidency included the War on Poverty, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. This legislation resulted in programs existing even today. Some of them are food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid, and Head Start or equivalent programs for disadvantaged children starting school. In retrospect historians have labeled the 1960s as perhaps the most liberal decade in recent U.S. history. I was hopeful that the United States was becoming a country where there was equal opportunity and freedom for all citizens regardless of gender or race. I was naïve enough to believe that when the U.S. Congress passed legislation, it would be funded and would surely produce the intended results for me and all my fellow citizens because the whole country, through state and local government, would implement and follow the federal law. I was so very wrong.
It is clear that although women joined the work force in droves between 1960 and 2024, equal opportunity for women never arrived. According to the U.S. Department of labor, in 2023 White women were only earning 83.7 cents for every dollar a man earned. That gap has been roughly stable for the last 20 years. Furthermore, women of color earn even less than White women. Lower salaries/wages may also mean there are no benefits such as health insurance, unemployment insurance, paid leave time, employer-paid education, 401K retirement savings programs, and affordable childcare. Many women earn a living from several part-time jobs which typically do not include any benefits. If a woman earns less, she obviously has less disposable income to put back for emergencies, savings and long-term investment. When retirement comes, her average earnings equal a smaller benefit amount from Social Security and no other nest egg to meet retirement expenses. The male-controlled legislatures at the federal and state levels still haven’t passed a mandatory minimum wage of $15, and the male-controlled private businesses who hire employees are far from paying that hourly amount across the board.
Sexual freedom for women coupled with baby daddies who abandon their children has resulted in a large number of single-mother households. According to singlemontherguide.com, as of 2023, there were 10.89M single-parent families of which 79.5% were headed by single mothers. Furthermore, 31.3% were considered to be poor, 24.3% were food insecure, 45.4% received food stamps, 20.8% were unemployed the entire year, 9.2% had no health insurance, and 11.2% had not completed high school. The median income for families led by a single mother in 2021 was about $51,168 versus $106,921 for married couples. Among children living with a single mother, 34.9% lived in poverty compared with 9.5% of children living in poverty in two-parent families. You get the picture. My purpose is not to provide a litany of statistics but merely to point out that many women who have chosen or have been forced to have children no longer have spousal/partner support and must go it alone economically.
This is topped by the fact that many states are passing laws attempting to outlaw abortion and roll back or limit access to abortion as outlined in Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court is now conservative after three recent Republican appointments of new justices, and the Court may uphold some or all of these state laws. The State Supreme Courts in Red States appear to be interpreting the ani-abortion laws very strictly. These changes will cause extreme hardship to women who have an unwanted pregnancy in some states while not even causing a minor hiccup in the sexual behavior of the men who contribute to the pregnancies and pass/enforce the new laws without any negative consequences to themselves.
Many states are also passing laws to suppress the vote at their polls. According to the ACLU these laws disproportionately affect people of color, students, the elderly and the disabled. This means that women that fall into those categories in those states promoting voter suppression may not have a chance to vote against the male-controlled legislatures that refuse to grant them equal pay/benefits and control over their own bodies.
The contrast between my hopes for the advancement of women in my youth and the reality of women’s rights now that I am a senior citizen is disheartening because of the lack of progress women have made during my lifetime and the fact that as a nation the U.S. seems to be going backwards rather than forwards in the area of women’s rights. After much thought and analysis I have concluded that the principal cause of this lack of progress is that women have never learned to defend themselves socially and economically. This is not because women are stupid or somehow inferior to men. It is because over the millennia that human beings have existed men have consistently and effectively groomed women to view their social and economic lives through a male lens. Women have never been allowed to see themselves as equal. From the moment they are born, females are placed in a subordinate position to men with no entitlement, if any, except that which is granted by men. Men have organized the universe so that the only way any female achieves anything is by going through a male. A female’s very survival is dependent upon a male.
Strong women in first world countries such as the U.S. have made the mistake of thinking that if they imitate men and beat them at their own game, women can eventually achieve equality. This belief was engendered by men as a distraction for women who presume to become equal. Most women have never understood or acknowledged that: Men invented the games. Men made the rules for the games. Men control the games. Men control the access to the games. Men control who wins and who loses every game. This does not mean that the gains in power made by women to date are insignificant or unimportant. It’s just that those gains can be negated or taken away at any time by men. There has been no permanent progress toward equality for women.
For example, in the U.S., male-controlled legal entities control all elections, all political parties, the rules for becoming a candidate, the rules for voting, and the access to the polls. All of these constituent elements are stacked in favor of men and against women. Even if a woman becomes a candidate, she must have the financial and administrative support of men which ultimately equals male control. Men will always keep control of the election games because they want to be the only ones who could ever vote themselves out of office by creating term limits or mandate that an equal number of men and women must constitute the legal entity. They will never take those actions because it would mean giving women equal power. If you haven’t already done so, look at the ratio of men to women in every single legal entity. Men rule the roost, and women are still chickens stuck in the henhouse.
I believe that the only way forward for women is to understand how we have been groomed by men from birth to feel and act less than equal. If we recognize the grooming for the false narrative that it is, then we have a chance to mentally and emotionally break out of the male-managed social and economic prisons where we have been living and become truly equal. Yes, I am speaking about a mental awakening. If we do not truly believe we are equal, we can never be equal. Until we believe in our equality, we can never organize our own games where we have a chance to win.
This blog is devoted to achieving equality for women through mental awakening. In this blog, I will discuss female grooming awareness as demonstrated by everyday happenings in the world. Although I will certainly include facts such as the statistics about the current status of women, the discussion will be my own interpretation of the facts in an effort to help women to better understand their status in the world. This blog will be my editorial opinion. I have always believed that discussion of ideas is the best way to determine my own truth. You, dear readers, may not always agree with me. But I hope that the things I present will help you to solidify and/or challenge your own beliefs about women. One thing is very clear to me, fellow sisters. The men in charge are not taking care of us by trying to create a social and economic universe that is friendly to women or that grants us equal status. It looks like we have to do that for ourselves.
A Piece of a Woman's Mind 