By Cheryl Mattox Berry
Change came to America in waves during the 1960s while I was playing jacks, working on my Girl Scout badges and cheerleading. The civil rights movement, migrant farmworkers movement, birth control pill, declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness, women’s rights and many more milestones in American history are explored in the CNN series – The Sixties.
The show documents the political, social, cultural and technological changes that paved the way for how we live today. So many things that we take for granted were born out of the struggles of courageous and forward-thinking women who challenged the male-dominated view of the world.
Fifty years ago, flight attendants were forced into retirement at age 32 because the airlines didn’t think passengers – mostly men – would want to be greeted by a woman considered past her prime. In perhaps the most outrageous statement about birth control, a lawmaker stated that the birth control pill would lead to prostitution.
Birth control and equal rights were credited with the influx of women, particularly white women, in the workforce during the 1960s.
We’ve come a long way, ladies, but not far enough in some corners of the world.
I recently watched the heart-wrenching Oscar-nominated documentary, The Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness. An 18-year-old Pakistani woman was beaten, shot in the face and thrown in the river because she eloped with her finance.
She survived the attack, and her father and uncle were arrested for the attempted honor killing. Elders in her village pressured her to forgive them so they could go free and there would be peace between the two families. She told the court that she forgave them but vowed never to forgive them in her heart.
Each year, 1,000 girls and women in Pakistan are murdered in so-called honor killings. Unbelievable in the 21st Century. This documentary adds a bullet-scarred face to the crime and, hopefully, bring about change needed to stop this atrocity against women.
While women in the USA struggle to maintain reproductive rights and improve pay equity, we need to lend a hand to our sisters across the ocean in their fight for basic rights. We’re not free until all oppressed women have been liberated.