Dreams and Political Will
Mar. 11th, 2012 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wyld_dandelyonOnce upon a time, there was a little girl who read the Sunday comics, and laughed at Dick Tracy's two-way video communicator watch. Heck, he got better reception than the TV, and never needed to whack the thing to clear up the picture. It was quite obviously fantasy.
On the other hand, she lived in the aftermath of a very robust civil rights movement. She knew that women weren't making as much money as men yet--but that was changing, and certainly by the time she was grown up, or at least by the time her daughters might be looking for jobs, we'd have had a female President and roughly half of the CEOs in the country would be women.
Fast-forward to the present.
Last year, I got a Skype-tour of my daughter's dorm room. I chat with people on the other side of the world almost daily and have collaborated on stories with people I've never met in person. The only thing that has kept us from video-conferencing on cell phones is that we (or at least I) have, when I've had it for technology, spent my money on a working computer rather than an up-to-date fancy cell phones.
But we have the technology!
On the other hand, equal pay for equal work is still a dream. Equal _recognition_ for equal work is also just a daydream--during #feministsf chat today on Twitter, we were given a link to yet another study showing that speculative fiction by women get fewer reviews than fiction by men.
Why do I still live in a world where women always, always face challenges that men don't?
I heard an interview on NPR, a man who looked into what we--the human race--is capable of doing. He came to the conclusion that most of the things that were just dreams when I was a little girl are possible today. Why aren't they real?
All we need to make these dreams reality, he said, is money and political will.
Of course, he was talking about scientific progress. But how much of our social progress is fostered--or hindered--by money and political will?
After all, geek-toys were, when I was young, guy-toys. It wasn't Brenda Starr who had the wrist-communicator, after all.
Is it really a coincidence that the techie dreams became real, and equality for women didn't?
On the other hand, she lived in the aftermath of a very robust civil rights movement. She knew that women weren't making as much money as men yet--but that was changing, and certainly by the time she was grown up, or at least by the time her daughters might be looking for jobs, we'd have had a female President and roughly half of the CEOs in the country would be women.
Fast-forward to the present.
Last year, I got a Skype-tour of my daughter's dorm room. I chat with people on the other side of the world almost daily and have collaborated on stories with people I've never met in person. The only thing that has kept us from video-conferencing on cell phones is that we (or at least I) have, when I've had it for technology, spent my money on a working computer rather than an up-to-date fancy cell phones.
But we have the technology!
On the other hand, equal pay for equal work is still a dream. Equal _recognition_ for equal work is also just a daydream--during #feministsf chat today on Twitter, we were given a link to yet another study showing that speculative fiction by women get fewer reviews than fiction by men.
Why do I still live in a world where women always, always face challenges that men don't?
I heard an interview on NPR, a man who looked into what we--the human race--is capable of doing. He came to the conclusion that most of the things that were just dreams when I was a little girl are possible today. Why aren't they real?
All we need to make these dreams reality, he said, is money and political will.
Of course, he was talking about scientific progress. But how much of our social progress is fostered--or hindered--by money and political will?
After all, geek-toys were, when I was young, guy-toys. It wasn't Brenda Starr who had the wrist-communicator, after all.
Is it really a coincidence that the techie dreams became real, and equality for women didn't?
