This Mother's Day, as you honor your mother or the mother-figure in your life, try to imagine what it is really like to be
a woman today. Forget the PC attitudes, reject the anti-PC backlash, and look at the cold hard facts. What sort of things do
women face everyday? What biases still prevail? What stereotypes do you actually believe? What battles have women in the past
won that women in the present take for granted? What battles have yet to be fought?
Do you know the answers? Do you want to know?
As you celebrate the special woman who has had an undeniable impact on your world, try to take a good clear look at her
world. Try to imagine the world of all the mothers and women who came before her. Do you really understand or appreciate the
fundamental part of your mother that is woman? If you think you do, take a deeper look, can you appreciate the differences
that just one generation can make to the life experience of a woman?
Women have not always enjoyed the freedoms that we all take for granted today. In fact, regardless of race or
socio-economic status, women are the largest and most consistently persecuted group in history. Almost every culture on this
planet has, at one time or another undervalued the importance of its women. This undervaluing has led to some horrific and
shocking treatment of the "motherly gender." Sadly, most modern cultures still undervalue women to some degree.
How does this affect you, an average teen in a modern world? What does all this "feminism" have to do with Mother's Day and Teen Advice?
Simple. For the most part, the attitudes that you form as a teen will follow you into adulthood. In forming life shaping
attitudes it is essential that you know the facts. Not the rhetoric -- the facts. If you are male and you accept anything less
than equality and respect for women, you are dooming all the women in your life and future to a struggle for basic
acceptance that they shouldn't have to endure. If you are a female and you don't educate yourself about herstory, you doom
yourself and other women to repeat the struggles and hardships of the past.
If you deny the real injustices that women have had to overcome in fighting for the world we all live in today, you do generations of
past and present mothers a diservice. This brings us to the final answer to the question posed above -- What does all this "feminism" have
to do with Mother's Day and Teen Advice? On this Mother's Day, Teen Advice asks that you take a vow to never
forget what women have lived through, what they still struggle to overcome, and what makes them special and unique. Don't
downplay the atrocities of the past, don't deny the issues of today, and don't let the bigoted attitudes of the previous
generations infect the future. On Mother's Day, all women deserve better!
This year, "honor thy mother" by educating yourself about the very real persecution women have overcome in just the past
150 years. You may be shocked to learn what the last 10 generations of women have been subjected to...
Women's Movement Timelines
USA - 1
USA - 2
Canada
Winning the Vote
International Woman Suffrage Timeline
Global Women's History by Region
Resources on women's history organized by location -- continent, region and/or country.
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