Lincoln, Women, Policy

Lincoln & Women

I finally got to watch the movie  ‘Lincoln’ the other day. The movie traced the final weeks of Abraham Lincoln’s life when he orchestrated support to push for the passing of 13^th Amendment to the United States Constitution which  abolished slavery in 1865.

There are many memorable scenes throughout the movie, but I find one particular scene somewhat unsettling. In this scene, the character , George Yeaman, a representative from one of the Southern states was arguing to the rest of the members of the House of Representatives why the amendment to abolish slavery should not go forward.

He said: “And...We will be forced to enfranchise the men of the colored race, it would be inhuman not to! (But) Who among us is prepared to give Negroes the vote?” And everyone on the floor starts talking loudly. Then Mr Yeaman continues by saying: “...What shall follow upon that? Universal enfranchisement? Votes for women?” And upon hearing the last sentence everyone on the floor stands in anger to make their disagreement heard.

I went OMG! I looked at at my husband and thought out aloud – ‘Wow! These white men are even more ‘afraid’ to give voting rights to women than to the black!’ To free the blacks from the shackles of slavery is one thing, but to give voting rights to women is totally unimaginable to them. Imagine then the ‘constraints’ of being black and a woman (as can be seen potrayed in another movie about the struggles of the black maids against their white bosses during the Civil Rights era in the US, The Help).

Women & Policy

Fast forward several hundred years later, whilst ‘formal’ slavery may no longer be present, and women are claimed to be free and given the right to vote (in most countries), such chauvinistic sentiments still exist among men. And I am not saying such sentiments caused it, but women in modern times continue to be underrepresented in the parliament including in Malaysia. Currently, there are only 24 women out of 222 MPs in our parliament. What ever happens to fulfilling the policy towards achieving a minimum of a 30% representation of women in decision making positions in the public sector (I’m not sure if the parliament is not considered a public sector since the MPs are supposed to represent the public)

Are these men afraid that women is only capable of making ‘main pondok-pondok’ policy? At the very least they should be having more women advisors working on their team. But what usually happen is political parties under their usual paternalistic leadership style would either sidelined brilliant and intelligent women from being in the top leadership role OR put up a select few women who have lived in their ivory towers for so long that they have forgotten how it feels like to be a commoner’s daughter, wife, mother, caretaker, sometimes provider, or a worker, at times juggling all those ‘positions’ at the same time and women that may have stayed at home as homemakers to their families but did not receive the rightful appreciation that they deserve, not even from their closest clans, what more the authorities. What sorts of policies do you make then? And let’s not talk about implementation of those policies...

All I’m saying is that we need more brilliant, intelligent and compassionate women to be part of our policymakers. We don’t need women who pretend to be men when they held top management/leadership post! We need women to be women, righteous women who can relate to us commoners and make policies that actually alleviate some of our livelihood burdens. Because at the end of the day, a happy woman, manage a happier household, a happier household contributes better and more to the society which then creates an affluent society, and therefore a greater country. I’m no mathematician, but that sounds mathematically correct at least, to me.

Life as I see it -NFN