The Struggle for Equality - Feminism

In ‘Blame it on Feminism’, Susan Faludi discusses how in their struggle for equality and freedom, women have actually found misery and unhapiness.

Our society is constantly reminding us that being a woman now, or over the past decades, is ‘good fortune’; we have opportunities women did not have 100 years ago.  We can study, we can work, join law firms, apply for credit at any bank. Any bank!. Nevertheless, there is the other side of the coin. Women have never been more miserable. Faludi says that “professional women are suffering an infertility epidemic, single women are grieving from a man shortage, and unwed women are hysterical and crumbling under a profound crisis of confidence”.  Women’s freedom and power, is the cause of their misery. “Women are enslaved by their own liberation”. So, why is only half of the truth portrayed? To some extent, that might be what men want to show, what they want our society and women to think. To believe women have made it, that we have won the ‘fight for equality’.

Susan Faludi’s ‘Blame it on Feminism’ conveys several ideas that can be closely linked to Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, dystopian novel that describes life in the fundamentalist Republic of Gilead, where women are valued only if their ovaries are viable. In Atwood’s novel, women are strictly monitored by men, and have no property of their own, since it was taken away from them.

My interpretation of the novel runs parallel with Faludi’s article, since she suggests that “women’s distress was an unfortunate consequence of feminism”.

Although in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ it is not quite explicit, one can understand that before the Republic of Gilead was created, women’s power and role in society was increasing. Take the main character, Offred, as an example. She had a job and a bank account that were both suddenly taken away from her. Women’s role in society was becoming so strong, that people began to feel the need of reducing it, or even going to the extreme and taking it all away. Thus the suffering of women.

Moreover, towards the end of article, Faludi describes a backlash on feminism during the 1980’s, period characterized for the government of American President Ronald Reagan. In her article, Faludi describes the existence of a younger ‘postfeminist generation’ that was against the women’s movement. By the 1980’s fundamentalist ideologies in American government led to a resistance to women’s rights, accepted politically and socially, finally passing on to ‘the popular culture. It is during this period of American history that the ‘backlash’ struck feminist ideals. This backlash is also portrayed in Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by the quick change in the mentality of the Aunts. These characters are supposed to train and monitor the Handmaid’s.

When comparing ‘Blame it on Feminism’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, one can see the background of the novel and how Margaret Atwood was criticizing American society when writing her novel. From my point of view, the ‘Postfeminist generation’ must have wanted to create a sort of dystopia for those women who were trying to achieve their equality of gender and freedom, since their ideals were inmediately argued and contradicted by the government.