Women need to keep dream alive

The July 11 edition of Newsweek featured Sandra Day
O’Connor on the cover and read “From Cowgirl to Supreme
Court Justice.” Now that she is leaving the Supreme Court, I
ask, “Where have all the cowgirls gone?”

Where are the women of today that we can look up to? Where are
the women of our generation who take “girl power” to a
whole new level?

Without question, women have come far compared to where we were
a hundred years ago. Today, women can be more than nurses, teachers
and secretaries.

O’Connor was the first woman to serve as a justice on the
Supreme Court. In the beginning she took a stand against abortion,
but over the years she started to side with liberals on this
issue.

We as women should think about this.

While O’Connor contributed to the progress of the women of
her generation, the women of our generation seem to be moving
backward.

Women are so preoccupied with appealing to the opposite sex that
they seem to spend all their time striking a perfect pose or
pulling at their hair in the bathroom.

Here at UCLA, I frequently hear conversations about what boy is
cute and which sorority girl is annoying.

But the women who really make my hair stand up straight are
those who seem to feel proud to be anti-feminist and cater to male
dominance.

I once met a young married woman, and she showed me the holes in
her forehead she got from Botox injections.

When I asked why she was doing it, she responded, “There
is just so much competition out there.”

She was paranoid that someone would steal her financial safety
net ““ her husband.

Another woman was in her mid-20s when I met her and had no
problem admitting that she could not wait to be married and have
kids so she would never have to work again.

Girls, we need to move forward and not backward to the
’50s.

An episode of “60 Minutes” last October featured
women who gave up high positions in their careers to stay at home
to care for their families.

Author Linda Hirshman said out of all the power-couples she
interviewed, 85 percent of the women stayed home either full- or
part-time to raise children after they got married.

Why is this happening? Why aren’t the men staying home?
Will Linda Hirshman be correct in her prognosis that it will be the
1950s all over again?

I personally think that this is a slap in the face to those who
have fought for the advancement of women for centuries.

Where is the “60 Minutes” segment on women who have
decided to stay in the work place and not raise a family?

We as women don’t need to be man-hating, non-shaving
feminists or stay-at-home, soccer-mom traditionalists.

We need women who don’t take the achievements of our
foremothers for granted. We need women who will cause men to
rethink their attitudes.

According to the Newsweek article, O’Connor was such a
woman because she led a male judge to remark, “I thought
women were too sweet and gentle to be great lawyers. Now I know
better.”

Bruning is a third-year communications student.