Women

Since I have started my blog with some female-oriented topics, I thought I really should make a post that pays tribute to International Women's Day. Somewhere, either on a blog or online newspaper I saw a comment box which was collecting people's nominations for women who inspire them, whether it be a family member or a famous figure. Once I saw this I realised how I'd never really thought about this question. I have no famous or non-famous great female idol who I credit as being my inspiration.

So I did a little search on the internet for "the most inspirational females in history" and some interesting lists popped up. One particular site categorised some relatively modern leading women into specialist groups such as "Activists and Campaigners" or "Science and Technology" (the link to the article is given at the end of this post). I selected a few categories and one woman under the "Writing and Academia" section caught my attention.

This lady was Margaret Atwood. The reason she caught my eye was because she was one of the few people on the list whose work I was actually familiar with. Below I've quoted the article's background to the writer, as well as the photograph on its page.

Margaret Atwood, Photograph: Murdo Macleod for The Guardian

Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale has been a relevation for millions of readers – offering a terrifying glimpse of a parallel future where biological determinism and misogyny are taken to their logical conclusions. It's a cautionary tale of a world without feminism, and after the excesses of the Taliban's regime in Afghanistan seems more prescient than ever. As Atwood, 61, said: "People would blithely say, 'It couldn't happen here,' but this kind of thing can happen anywhere given the right kind of turmoil."

I read the book A Handmaid's Tale towards the end of last year, and although it's not the most exciting read, it is definitely a very powerful and thought-provoking book. What would life really look like if women were treated as baby making incubators? What, really, is an ideal society for women and men, and is modern society really any superior to older generations with respect to its treatment and representations of women?

While I was reading the book last year, I took a snapshot of what I believed to be the most poignant part of the book. The protagonist, a "handmaid", is on duty at the home of an important gentleman who's wife is infertile. Her job is to engage in intercourse, devoid of any enjoyment or emotion, with her master under the supervision of his wife so that she may conceive a child through her handmaid. At all other times, the handmaid is veiled. The master, who in the book known as the Commander, begins to secretly invite the handmaid to his study at nights to exchange conversation and talk about the time they left behind where women were free:

"Love", she says. She says the right to love, and be loved, is what was overlooked in that world. It is important to love a woman, because once you truly love someone, there is really nothing else you can deprive her of. In the Handmaid's Tale, the women were fighting for acceptance with their wombs, in the modern West they compete with their beauty and social grace. 

It's not completely ideal anywhere, but wherever a woman is free to love and is loved, that will always be a better place :)

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY!

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/top-100-women