A Room of One’s Own: A Contemporary Jump in Time DENIZ NALBANTOGLU

A Room of One’s Own: A Contemporary Jump in Time

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf dissects and critiques the rights of women and their role in society through extensive essays. In my own work, Virginia Woolf’s style of writing is mimicked and mainly, her ideas are translated into the XXI century world. The first line matches the same line as the original book.

“But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction -- what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own. I will try to explain…”

I previously answered this very question almost a century ago but yet -- still, in the XXI century, I find myself wondering, has anyone learned anything? I have observed that in this new era of technology, one still finds an overwhelming concoction of treachery and hypocrisy from men. For whenever men claim to be on the side of progress and social change, I have seen remarkable reluctance to move beyond empty promises and act when such action might cost them benefits and privileges over female kind. Society, perhaps, has made great advancements to the role of the woman, if those contributions are contrasted with last century’s works.

In these modern times, women have professions in which they make their own living and are theoretically able to receive the same education as their male counterparts. However, what good are these resources if inequality still exists, still roams around the plains of everyday life, infecting the opposite sex so often with dishonesty and inequality?

The woman born to the average couple, part of the middle class to-day, still does not have a fair chance at life. It seems that such ‘luxuries’, which should be basic genderless human needs for education, are only known to men and only reserved for men in our society. Even men who claim to be on the side of gender equality often inscribe inequality through unconscious bias, such as teachers who favor and prioritize boys in math class due to the longstanding stereotype that men are more logical than women. Women, still today, remain elusive to uninterrupted times of learning and enrichment, varying in importance depending on their living conditions around the globe. As such, it is impossible for her to invent, to write, to solve and live enhanced just as a man does, if she does not receive the same education.

Why is it that basic necessities of life are constantly constrained? Women have suffered enough through centuries of these institutionalized patriarchal foibles but yet, the human race has never reached a sufficient point of enlightenment: any changes to society are meager and inadequate. One hundred and twenty-nine million promising young women, who perhaps could become the next Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson, or in the light of these more modern times, Toni Morrison, Lauren Groff or S.E. Hinton, do not even have access to the mere simplest form of education and will therefore 29

never step foot in an academic institution. All of these women have achieved success at the highest most impactful quality early in their lives, and it seems that not every woman has the chance to do so, even if they wanted to devote their most precious time and hardwork.

Citizens, when have we become accustomed to such unjust treatment? When will we wake up from such a deep-rooted slumber and create cocoons for blossoming societal transformations? Unless women become accustomed to far more commensurate treatment, they can never escape the chains of the unfair values instilled in humankind for centuries.

These inequalities must be rectified for the lower-class women to become more than just a member of a household for the use of her male family members. Such little data is released to the public in first-world countries, it seems these issues can be forgotten, overlooked and neglected for eternity unless they directly affect us. For the luckier women who have those necessary educational opportunities, there is still inequality. A wealthy white woman obtains more of an equal playing field compared to women of other races and women of lower income. However, even so, the gap between men and women of any background is still significant, and only worsens as the intersection between race and gender is present. As such, women need access to education and sufficient resources to reach their full potential and therefore, contribute to the literary and scientific achievements of the world, while feeling their best. The amelioration of living conditions in times of poverty, in which girls attend school must be an important implication for there to be a hope for the future of a better, more advantageous and righteous society for the woman.

Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have

happened had a talented young caucasian man had a younger sister who wanted to start a multi-million dollar technology business from scratch. The gifted man may have gone to a wonderfully gifted school, where from a young age mathematics and science are preached to be most important to him, and all the elements of logic are installed. As the years go on, he works hard in school, receives help from the adults around him, and breezily reaches every possible educational milestone. When his family members ask him what he is studying, they beam delightedly at the words higher-level mathematics and computer science. He may suffer hardship, but none that concern discriminatory behavior. Eventually, he takes over his father’s relatively large software business, to continue the legacy that has been emphasized into his brain, like a code to a computer.

Meanwhile, his extraordinary, equally as gifted sister, has aspirations but it seems that her ambitious imagination can only get her so far, as she has been mocked, disregarded and discourteously treated. Her dreams are treated like a project of Neverland, because she was not encouraged to be like her brother and pick up a computer, learn the ways of mathematics or business. Perhaps she was given dolls as a child by default instead of cars, stuffed animals instead of legos, and a tea set instead of a deck of cards. She opened a computer every now and then, and only discovered her passion in high school through her own impulse. Her parents, meaning well, urged her to try the arts: painting, playing the piano, writing poetry, even if they were of no interest to her. At school, she excelled in coding, even created her own applications, when she was not yet seventeen through her own devotion and commitment to self-teaching. However, everyone always seemed to ask her brother for help, for all things logic and code and computer.

She made it through high school, and university, often in classrooms with a handful of women, no one to help her combat pre-existing prejudices. Upon graduation, she had a great pitch, years of experience, talent, money saved from work experience and more than a few brain cells to start the technological company of her dreams. A software engineer perhaps, or an application developer appealed to her the most, but no one took her seriously. She stood at the office door of managers, programmers, early app adopters, funders, but to no avail. She was young, she had a future ahead of her but to them she wasn’t raised to be a leader, perhaps she was just a pretty face. Her brother was the brains, the action, the confident leader that wasn’t as emotional, or naive. Maybe as the months went on, her dreams were clouded, with such an overwhelming darkness that made her take a smaller position, where climbing the hierarchical ladder was near-impossible. Yet she was just as qualified, just as enthusiastic and hardworking. Years would pass by, and opportunity after opportunity, extraordinary potential would be wasted. That more or less, is how the story would run. Do you see now the importance of education for the female kind?

However, none of this truly matters if a woman does not have bodily autonomy. Control over your own body is an essential, most basic right: a universal value that dictates how a woman simply functions as a person. It has come to my attention in recent times that the sexual and reproductive rights of women remain under question and in danger. In the twenty-first century, although major inequalities have still not been dismantled, in theory, women have the right to choose whether or not to reproduce, whether to carry or terminate an unwanted pregnancy and the right to select their preferred method of contraception. Nonetheless, these laws are not universal and often, they are not respected by all. In Indonesia, spousal authorization is required for almost all reproductively invasive procedures, and thus the woman does not have any control over her own future nor her body. Even pregnancies stemming from serious atrocities such as rape, do not constitute grounds for medical intervention or termination. As a result, a deep sense of fear is installed in women, as they are not protected, nor educated in their impartial rights.

Larger, wealthy first world countries such as the United States are not exceptions to unfair treatment. In states such as Texas, abortion has been prohibited after six weeks and any individual helping another gain access to abortional medical intervention will be sued. It seems that instead of moving forward with change in regards to the fundamental rights of women, other laws are being created to challenge older, more progressive and promising ones. Liberty, social justice and equality are all values and concepts written by men, who have promised such autonomy for all. However, it seems that the woman’s struggles in maintaining and practicing their rights have still not been addressed and the advancement of womens’ human rights in general are deemed not important enough.

The role of the woman is once more linked to the patriarchal values in our society, as in modern cultures they are still not trusted with fundamental decisions in respects to their physical selves. Limited power is given to women, as a way to disregard their basic human nature and thus far, in all societies there seems to be little change regarding these matters. Women often go to medical professionals for procedures such as tubal ligation, only to be rejected or need male permission. In certain states such as Indiana, there are no laws forcing a male signature on a permission slip, however this is disguised through hospital policies and doctor refusal.

This violation of the trust of women as autonomous beings who have control over their bodies is abhorrent and contributes towards the impairment of women in society. How can women contribute and achieve success if they are prohibited from making the most basic potentially life-changing decisions? If ever a mind was so unconcerned and disconnected from reality, I decided it would be the patriarchy’s mind in regards to the reproductive rights of women.

Once a woman is given the limited opportunity to pursue a profession, she is faced with countless arduous obstacles that hold her back from flourishing in her role. The challenges women face at their place of employment are far more complex and formidable than what is known to men. She may be paid less, confined to an inferior position, evaluated more severely and be subject to existing prejudices, circling through society. If the burden of their gender is already not enough, women of color succumb to even more injust treatment as a result of racial discrimination and ignorance. For instance, a qualified, accomplished young woman could apply for a position in the business work field. Through rigorous, conscious efforts, she might land herself the position, only to find a building full of white men around her. How will we install diversity, equality and innovation in our society if more than half of our population endures such heterogeneous and gender dominated conditions at their workplace? Different opinions will never truly be considered, women of all backgrounds will face challenges and we will continue to have discordant pyramids of hierarchy at our professions. And what if one day, that same woman who finally earned a high-level position may want a family? Maternal commitments and the strenuous effects of postpartum are never truly considered enough to stay away from work for longer periods of time. In the United States, maternity leave is only six weeks long, which is hardly enough time to recover from an invasive procedure and leave your newborn child at home. That woman may risk losing her important position because of ignorance, and lack of acknowledgement from men. It seems as though empathy, compassion and empowerment are foreign words in society’s dictionary. Advancements, progressions and diversity must be elevated if a woman is to become independently accomplished in her professions.

A room of one’s own, a place of understanding, mutual respect and independence must be reached for the status of a woman in society to be equated with that of a man’s. Through new technology such as social media, news articles on the vast internet and mainstream television, more information about the difficulties of women across the world can be shared and transmitted. Men should not be praised for participating in the bare minimum, rather they should publicly acknowledge long-standing issues and be judged in the same way as women. Resources, not gender, wealth or race based, should be offered to all as basic human necessities that value the greatest possible future. Regardless of previous knowledge and prejudices, women should be regarded with more respect and equality like their male counterparts to ensure a better society for all.

-Deniz Nalbantoglu

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MOONLIGHT

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