No glass ceilings were broken to write this

No glass ceilings were broken to write this

A friend recently shared a clip from the animated series Sonic Boom, which features a football game with a character Amy Rose, who, as she is about to kick the ball, says, “It all comes down to this one penalty kick. Can the young woman break the glass ceiling and prove once and for all that a female can be just as good as an athlete as a male?”

To this, another character, Knuckles, responds, “You know Amy, anytime someone calls attention to the breaking of gender roles, it ultimately undermines the concept of gender equality by implying that this is an exception and not the status quo. ”

Knuckles, a super-powered hedgehog, has given us something to think about the current discourse on a woman’s experience of the world. About the possibility of living as a woman without proving a point and secondly, about the interpretation of gender today as a competition between men and women.

Amy Rose thinks she will accomplish something in relation to men once she scores the penalty kick, but will her achievement mean any less if there wasn’t any declaration of breaking the glass ceiling? Isn’t a penalty kick also just a penalty kick?

Women tend to view themselves as existing on the spectrum of the two Ps — as victims of patriarchy or as ‘privileged’. The two Ps become the fundamental facts of her life, seeping through her existence. Of course, life is ridden with complexities and one can’t always fit into these modes, but we can start from here and question them, if they truly exist.

It is difficult to live with integrity if what you think are the fundamental truths of life make you believe that either the world is designed to set you up for failure, or, as in the latter scenario, where the so-called ‘privilege’ becomes a source of guilt.

Even so, there is a third mode of existence, albeit elusive.

This mode cannot be found on the internet, in opinion pieces or books. It is definitely not a prescription and needs to be built by the individual with deliberation.

In the current conversation, you are either a feminist or an anti-feminist. There is little space for someone in the middle. If non-allegiance to the movement is admitted, it will likely be at the risk of offending the custodians of women’s rights.

Acknowledging that contemporary wisdom has become stale and platitudinal is the first step in changing this. To take an example, one often reads about the under-representation of women in top positions in white-collar spaces. But why is so much importance given to getting promoted? Has ambition become so banal and generic, another hand-me-down idea? Is there no other meaning in working?

Proponents of representation politics want the world to be neatly split into a half occupied by either genders, leaving no room for the possibility that women could want different things from life. Perhaps not all want to be CEO.

Those who agree that the discourse needs renewal can start by re-examining their goals and ambitions. There are some questions that may be asked. For instance, should one presume their birth into a patriarchal setup? Is it possible that certain settings are genuinely non-patriarchal? Has life been fair and is that enough? What is an ideal scenario for women and is it ideal for you now?

If a girl watches Amy Rose kick the ball, there is little need to assert that a barrier was broken. Sometimes, seeing is enough to inspire action. In this sense, Amy Rose is not special and neither are the countless women who climb the ladders of their lives everyday. The idea is for women to find out what they are good at and not to aspire for something they think they should be good at. If it is indeed a man’s world, women can work towards creating their own, rather than trying to one up those who, in the first place, created the version that currently exists.