...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Friday, May 23, 2003
      ( 12:33 PM )
 
You Go Girl

Vinman's got a great commentary today on Annika Sorenstam's attendance in the PGA Tournament this week. I enjoyed reading his perspective since he's obviously an avid and knowledgeable golfer, which I am not. I wanted to be. My parents are. But when? I actually do enjoy watching golf tournaments, mostly with Dad, who LOVES them. He comes from a line of golfers, both his mother and his father were competetive golfers. I even have a picture of my grandma at a women's golf tournament in the 40's or 50's. Anyway, along with most people (except mysoginistic male golfer poop-heads), I am hoping Sorenstam will make a great showing, just for herself. She's doing this, as Vinman says, to challenge herself, and from the interviews I've seen and heard of her, I think she is going to impress herself. She's worked really hard, and this is her next best challenge.

A woman in a man's workplace...it's always been the same. "Equality" has very little to do with it. Even women who are in leadership postions must live with a double standard in the corporate/working world. It's not just that Sorenstam is challenging the men she's playing with, she's daring to enter their men's only world. The fact that she feels she has the right to do so will always rub some men the wrong way. But it's more than just some men. It's an entire culture, a society, built on a patriarchal system that evolved out of centuries of work done by that patriarchy to eliminate the memory of matriarchal society in all of us. I don't mean to sound pedantic here, but there is something wrong...still.

Why is it that it is more acceptable for me to say that I'm late because I missed by bus than to say I'm late because my child needed tending? Why is that when a man announces that he's going to leave early to spend time with his kids, he's a prince among men for being so "balanced," but if a woman were to attempt that her commitment to the company would be questioned immediately? Why is it that even if the wife is the breadwinner of the family and the dad stays home with the kids, the woman is still expected by society and those around her to carry the primary burden of parenting and household care (even if the husband does all that), and on top of that, her commitment to her children is questioned regularly? Why is it that if a woman returns to her career after her child is born, she is considered a neglectful mother, but the man who continues working when the child is born never has his priorities toward his children questioned? Why is that a woman who simply wants to challenge herself at the next highest level in her career field is scorned and/or observed like a hawk for her inevitable failure when she attempts to succeed at that challenge - but if a man does it, he is lauded as a courageous and talented specimen? This pattern is repeated in every career field: golf, corporate business, service industry, academia...and even space travel! When a woman astronaut chose to go to the space station, her commitment to her children was questioned throughout the press...did that ever happen with male inhabitants of the space station who were fathers?

I never cease to hope that all this might change one day... that our culture will slowly shift back into an era where the patriarchal establishment will no longer make the rules. I guess for now, the most I can do is raise my son without those limited viewpoints and show him that there is a better way and his generation of men can always make it better than the generation before him.

Annika Sorenstam, you go girl. For all of us.

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