In the fight for women’s rights, our bodies have been a missing part of the conversation. Women marched their way into the workforce and demanded equal pay and equal opportunity but as we pushed our way into the top positions in the workforce —as we fought for equality, we left our bodies behind. How did we do this? Instead of fighting to be accepted as women, we fought to be accepted as women who were equal to men. The problem with this is that in fighting to be “equal” to men we had to leave behind our bodies, we had to pretend it didn’t exist. As Megan K. Stack writes in her book Women’s Work, “We can join the men at work so long as we leave our bodies behind, or pretend our bodies are just like their bodies”.
This is, in part, why major attention is paid to continue the fight for equal pay —even though discriminatory pay has been illegal for decades, over fighting more fervently for maternity leave, flex-time, onsite childcare, or nursing stations, we are still pretending the discrimination we face isn’t rooted in our bodies and the unwillingness of the workforce to conform to it. Women have largely won the fight for equality in the workplace, that is, a certain type of woman, women who are bodies don’t prove problematic in a male-dominated workspace, i.e., single women without children.
In her phenomenal essay, How to fix Feminism, Judith Shulevitz reminds us that, “Over the past half-century, unmarried childless women have overcome every barrier to opportunity you can think of, and now earn 96 percent of what men do. Mothers, on the other hand, aren’t doing nearly as well: Married mothers (earn) 76 cents on the dollar.” Women whose bodies are the only bodies to produce life, women who use their bodies to produce life, are the ones who suffer in most. Yet we’ve left our bodies out of the conversation, even discussions of maternity leave disintegrate into bills like the Family Medical Leave Act. The problem with lumping together mothers, caregivers, and those with illnesses is that it continues to erase our bodies. Giving birth is not uncommon, situational, or unfortunate, giving birth is a part of life. Birth is life and women are life-givers, if you are reading this it is because of a woman’s body carrying you successfully for nine months, and delivering you despite the painful torment of the ordeal. Beyond many women’s desires to care for their children we cannot forget that we also have to consider our bodies. This is why mere parental leave also isn’t good enough. Women need time to physically heal from the ordeal of childbirth, maternal leave needs to be a crucial conversation nationwide
Our bodies have to play a crucial role in our fight for justice and fairness. Without its consideration, we trade one form of oppression for another. Many of us as women don’t agree or identify with the women’s movement precisely because When we sit down as women no matter what walk of life we come from our commonality is our bodies, bodies that we did not choose but that we must fully own and be present in. And isn’t it ironic that it is often these bodies that are the last to be discussed? That we’re often even embarrassed to talk about periods, menopause, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and childbirth? No, we are not our bodies, and biology is not destiny, but simply because the totality of our being is not our bodies does not mean it does not play a significant role in our lives. The real pay gap is not the gender pay gap, but the mommy pay gap —again, when our bodies become inconvenient in male-dominated spaces, that is when we suffer the most.
And this conversation about our bodies demand attention in every aspect of the women’s movement. As someone who is a black Muslim, and some of you who are white Christian, or Asian atheist, or any other combination of identities we may disagree on many things but we all have a shared connection through our bodies. This is why a women’s movement that continues to leave our bodies out of the conversations leaves most of us behind. Which is how the mainstream feminist movement can be infiltrated with men who claim to feel like women. Transwomen being centered in the women’s movement only further aids in the disappearance of our bodies. Men have no idea what it’s like to be women. Some of us love to wear pretty clothes and make-up, some of us hate dresses, some of our appearances alone could be mistaken for men, but we are all women because of our bodies. Not because of our proximity to femininity but because of our breasts, our wombs, our uteruses. What it feels like to be a woman varies for all of us, but what does not vary is dealing with our bodies. Having the ability to bear children and deciding whether or not that is what one wants to do, having one’s period and deciding whether to use pads or tampons, whether to medicate or bare with the pain of cramps, or not having one’s period and worrying if something is wrong —or if your pregnant, becoming pregnant and deciding whether to keep working or take time off, what foods to eat, whether to have the baby in the hospital or a birthing center, whether to medicate or go natural, what to do when plans fail, whether to breastfeed or bottle-feed, when to return to work or not and later we cope with menopause, what it means for us that we can no longer have babies —is it freeing or heartbreaking? These are issues all women have to deal with in one way or another, this is not a feeling, this is not about dressing up, this is reality.
The longer we keep our bodies out of the conversation, the longer we will suffer. The longer we keep our bodies out of the conversation the more irrelevant the women’s movement will become. The longer we keep our bodies out of the conversation the more our needs, rights, desires, and even private conversations will be intruded upon and overtaken by trans activists. Let’s invite our bodies back to the conversation, let’s invite our whole selves back to the fight, and let us make the world a better place for all women.
This essay was originally delivered as a lecture for ‘Women in Media.’
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Photo by Ba Tik from Pexels
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