Feminism and the World as it Should Be

When I was 8 years old, I was a really good baseball player. I worked hard to become a hitter and I could catch and field better than most boys in my class. For hours, I threw a rubber ball up against our house and batted it back. I wanted to play Little League like my male classmates. My mom and dad, in their wisdom, did not tell me no but took me to the ballfield to talk to the Little League coach. I marched up to him and declared my intention to play on his team.

The coach smiled and tried to be kind, “Little League is only for boys but someday you can play softball on the high school girls’ team.” That day was my first encounter with a budding feminism and the injustice of gender roles.

I mostly accepted the roles of being female growing up, but I never liked it. Although I enjoyed science, my high school math teacher said girls usually were not good enough in math to do science. Going to college was fine and I had three choices for a career—teacher, secretary, or nurse. I chose teaching, and I do not regret my career. I am proud that later I aced five statistics courses in graduate school and became a social scientist.

I don’t recall knowing how feminism might be helpful to me until I went to college and eventually was exposed to the early popular feminist literature such as The Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 1963). I was committed to the Equal Rights Amendment and wore an ERA bracelet every day until it broke in half (an omen to what would happen in the future).

I was engaged in the Second Feminist Movement of the 1980s (the first era was in the early 1900s focused primarily on women’s suffrage). The second wave was about equality for women in all realms of society. With my colleagues, I wrote one of the first books about women’s leisure: A Leisure of One’s Own: A Feminist Perspective on Women’s Leisure. Our second book connected more with the third wave of feminism emphasizing the different experiences of women and the need for varied approaches: Both Gains and Gaps: Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Leisure. Feminism has nuances that continue to evolve.

Back when I was 8 years old and still today, I believe as Gloria Steinem suggests, a feminist is “anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.” Mary Shelley summed it well when she stated, “I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.” Feminism has been a dynamic tool that has allowed me to look at the world not as it is, but for its potential for all people and especially little girls who want to play baseball.