Woman Between Islam and Western Society
3. Western Woman
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“The demand for equality, not domination, is
immensely complicated. True equality between
autonomous partners is hard to achieve even if both
partners are of the same sex. The careful balancing
of roles and obligations and privileges, without the
traditional patterns to fall back on, sometimes
seems like an almost utopian vision.
While nearly everyone favors some of the basic
goals of the New Feminism — equal pay for equal
work, equal job opportunity, equal treatment by the
law — satisfying even those minimum demands
could require more wrenching change than many
casual sympathizers with the women’s cause have
seriously considered. Should women be drafted?
Ought protective legislation about women’s hours
and working conditions be repealed?
WOMEN INTO THE MARKETPLACE
Complex currents of social change converged to
produce the “new feminism” of the 1970s, but
British historian and writer Arnold Toynbee
identified an essential dilemma years earlier.
Middle-class woman acquired education and a
chance at a career, wrote Toynbee, at the very time
