This year's Democratic primary race brought feminism to the fore for the first time in what seems like ages - not just in America, but around the world. The coverage of Senator Clinton's race for candidacy revealed both the strides women have made and how much we have left to accomplish, forty years after the feminist movement skyrocketed into the public consciousness. Essentially, it seems, the more things change, the less united we stand as women.

The recent Girls' High School Reunion in Basseterre also conjured thoughts of "Sisterhood," providing proof, in stark contrast to the Democratic primary, that the bonds between women can be unbreakable. In St Kitts, hundreds of women recently returned to celebrate their girlhood memories and the unbreakable bonds of their friendships. In a world where conventional wisdom dictates that woman-on-woman (social) crimes run rampant, this homecoming was significant.

Though the differences between the two events are colossal, both provide insight into the complexity of feminism, and its role in women's lives at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Whether she lives in Newmarket, Canada, or Nevis, West Indies, a woman today is likely to have both an upwardly mobile career and a full family life. In fact, not only is she likely to have both career and family, but more often than not, her long term goals involve both.

Finding balance between the two has become fodder for many debates over the decades, related to the feasibility of a woman being able to "have it all." Most media reports divide women into two camps: those who believe that it is a woman's obligation to pay homage to the feminist movement by putting as much importance on her career as men are expected to, and those who believe that career comes second to family. What is not often discussed is the grey area between the two; after all, families are like fingerprints, with no two ever the same. What is not celebrated is the fact that for women today, the possibilities are truly endless (though admittedly they remain more difficult to achieve than for men).

The women who recently converged on St Kitts for the Girls' School Reunion are emblematic of these possibilities, and this grey area. Many of them may not even realize that they were part of the first-wave of the feminist revolution, but they were - and integral parts of it, at that. These women who bravely ventured out into the workforce, redefined what it is to be a woman, what it is to be a mother - with great success, despite obvious struggles.

I would like to pay tribute to these brave women (for the record, my mother, aunt, godmother and honorary godmothers are included in this bunch), for their strengths and their sensitivities, for taking the steps that laid out the footpath to modern womanhood for the generations that follow them. I would like to pay tribute to them for maintaining the bonds of friendship - no matter the distances between them, or the amount of time that has passed.

Now that, I posit, is true Sisterhood.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 8:08 pm and is filed under lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.