Emerging Women

By Kimberly B. George

I recently made a trip to the east coast to look at divinity programs. When I got on the plane flying from Seattle to Boston, my carry-on bag was loaded with feminist theology for the long flight. I had also brought along my favorite tea (which is a plane ritual), and as I was ready to plunge into the world of words and theory, for a moment I checked myself, closed my books, and reveled in my experience.

I slowed down, and I saw something important: I realized that my entire experience in the making was because women of previous generations had paved my way. I looked all around me and saw how feminists (and pioneering women who did not use the word “feminist”) had profoundly shaped this day of my life. Consider that:

Harvard Divinity School (one of the schools to which I was applying) has only allowed women in its doors since 1955. (And I would actually get to stay at the house of the late feminist theologian Letty Russell, one of the first female graduates of that program. Exciting!)

The books on my lap—and, well, this entire study of feminist theology— simply did not exist before the 60s and 70s. We had no formal critique of a theological discourse that did not allow one entire gender into its conversation.

And then other “little” and yet significant details suddenly started popping into my vision:

I had been able to apply for my own credit card, which I had used to book this flight. Up until a few decades past, women needed to have bank accounts and credit cards opened with the signatures of husbands.

I was wearing pants. Yep, without women like Amelia Bloomer, I might not be doing crazy things like wearing pants or voting in my own democracy.

I noticed that the flight attendants who were serving me did not have to be single, female, and under 32 years of age, as they once did.

I could dream of a higher education in the first place because of woman like Mary Wollstonecraft, who first advocated for the education of women in her 1792 book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

As I was drinking my tea and pondering these gifts bequeathed to me by women of the past, I had to wonder how my generation would gift future generations of women and girls?

Will my daughters live in a world where domestic violence is no longer a leading cause of death and disability for many of the world’s women? Will my daughters live in a world where Christian churches are finally ready to stop being silent about the realities of domestic violence?

Will late night TV shows in twenty years still revolve so often around the plot of a woman being raped and/or killed? Will our culture finally have addressed why we have become so desensitized when it comes to male violence toward women?

When my daughters are grown, will 83% of the U.S. Congress still be men (a stat that currently puts the U.S. ranking 71st in the world for representation of women in parliamentary bodies)? Will a woman have been president yet?

Will the “look” of ideal feminine beauty in the media still be inhumane, contributing toward a culture of eating disorders and self-contempt among women?

What will change? How will justice advance? How will women and men of this generation use the gifts they have received to bless a future generation?

Kimberly B. George is active in her home city of Seattle in organizing and speaking at large- and small-group gatherings that promote awareness of women’s rights and social justice issues. She writes primarily on topics related to gender and Christian faith, and is currently at work on her first book, Bites From the Apple: A Memoir of Faith, Voice, and Womanhood. She will begin studies at Yale Divinity School this fall. This post originally appeared on her blog Faith and Gender

Tags: feminst, Kimberly B. George, women's rights