When I was doing my dissertation on “Towards Developing Feminist Leadership in Philippine Setting” way back in the mid-1990s, one of the sources that helped me in working on my review of literature was a book on “Megatrends for Women” by Patricia Aburdene. The book featured successful women in the world who transformed various areas in the country, women who have pushed themselves beyond the evolutionary limits that once defined them and willingly taken over roles that were once the exclusive domain of the male sex. These are women who now possess skills in the outer-directed, worldly part of as well as the inner, more personal and spiritual side. It is with this combination skills — logic, intuition, emotion and intelligence — that she is equipped to change the world. Women today are powerful and whole — more balanced, more complete.
Pursuing new routes to power via elective office, women made up 10 to 15 governors in the US in the 1990s, and there was speculation of ascendancy to the US presidency by 2008 then. But with the coming US election next month, it looks like this speculation will come true with the surge of Hillary Clinton.
The women headed toward business and political leadership would be the first generation to openly confront and widely discuss menopause — and the added health risks it brings. With the help of health activists, this new group would safeguard its health and well-being and enjoy in their pinnacle career years the added energy of “postmenopausal zest.”
Women will no longer “follow” fashion; fashion — and retailing — will have to start following women. Larger sizes and more convenient ways to shop by television and computer will make it easier to connect good-looking fashions and busy lifestyles.
Women are changing the world, and now women and men as equal parents are seeking to change the family to resecure it as the basis of society, the strong core of all social institutions. But they cannot succeed without the help of family-friendly companies and government policies.
When humanity reaches out to people in need, the feminine principle of caring and compassion is at work. Today, women have graduated from yesterday’s underappreciated volunteer roles to assume leadership as social activists dealing with issues from world population to affordable housing.
The ugliest, most painful remnant of male domination is violence and abuse of women the world over, carried out with the power of what Eisler call “the Blade” — power enforced by violence or its threat and abhorrent to all civilized human beings.
Women’s growing political and economic power — as well as their prominence within the legal and medical establishment — shall be marshaled against the rapist and the abusers. With the help of supportive men, those who harm will become the ultimate social pariahs.
But to what end are women’s successes if the generation that follows is not nurtured to assume leadership and carry forward a new social order where women and men are beginning to be truly equal? It is time that successful professional women shift gears and begin the second part of their lives — mentoring, teaching and supporting young women, teens and girls. They are the future, and they desperately need positive role models.
Professional women should be replacing rock music and TV actors, actresses and models as the role models for young women — especially teens. Sex education should be taught in conjunction with career education and with successful women are serving as guest speakers. Teenage girls are vulnerable to pregnancy, drugs and alcohol, violence, eating disorders, smoking and AIDS. The reason is that teenage girls are running low on self-esteem, the critical foundation of healthy behavior. This where secure adult women can help.
Having seen the ways women are transforming almost every walk of life, what comes next? They offer their vision: first, the full participation of women in society at the highest levels of creativity and leadership in each area from politics to religion to the arts to business; second, the integration of female values and thought into institutions from family to sports to spirituality; and third, the shaping of a genuine New Order where positive traits of women and men fuse into a new partnership and are reflected in the remaking of social structures and their subsequent governance.