At the moment, I am unsure what my career will be. With a major in Political Science with at least a minor in Women's Studies, I've been told there are many things I can do. The ideas I've had have covered a wide range of things: women's outreach, UN Human Rights' Council, politician, and so many other things. Basically I want to help better the lives of others. I've realized OU offers a wide range of courses through the women's studies department that could be of some use: Gender, Power and Leadership in Politics and Administration, Women Creating Social Change, Women and World Politics, Contemporary Feminist Thought, Women and the Law (which I have already taken), Women in the Military (which I have also taken). The titles of these pretty much tell you how they would assist me. I really would like to take all of the courses available, however, because I find the the histortic and contemporary issues so enthralling.
I think some people would say I want to help others because I am a female and it is supposedly my nature. While I do believe it is partly a maternal instinct (I've always been very motherly, ask any of my close friends. They say its cute), I really just want to better the world. Not because I'm a woman, but because I am a human being. Gender comes into play in any profession, whether you realize it or not. I'm not sure how it will play a role in mine, all I know is that I will come into contact with many different people and each will have a different gender identity.
I have mostly worked in the food industry up to this point. I worked at Simple Simon's Pizza for several years, Red Lobster, and now I work at the cafe/coffeeshop at Hastings. The only job I've had that wasn't was as a Resident Assistant (RA) at NSU. I was first hired at Simple Simon's to work the front, looking back I think they only hired girls to work the front (they underwent an owner change later, and I worked wherever I wanted), but soon I was doing the manager's duties (without the same pay, of course). I was a hostess at Red Lobster, which sounds like a typical job for a female, but I was trained with a guy for the same job. We ended up working together a lot. He was the only male that was strictly a host/busser (we had one or two that would take a shift if needed, but weren't hired to do it), however, so I'm sure they had to do it for some sort of quota. At NSU, I lived on an all girls floor, in an all girls wing. They hired different numbers of each sex based on how many floors they had of each. There was a guy who was an RA on a girls floor, but he was gay so he posed no "threat" to the girls. They were very open to different life styles, the assistant housing direct was a lesbian and there may have been a few bisexual students working there but I can't be certain. Now, Hastings is probably the most laidback place I've worked in regard to gender. Again, my position is what you would think would be a typical female position, but the cafe manager and one other worker are males (we don't have many positions at all, which is why only one regular employee). I only know for sure of one homosexual employee, for sure, at Hastings, but this is mostly due to the fact that I really don't care about a person's orientation, just about the person themself.
Reading:
I agree that feminist education and discussion has moved from a public podium to one almost exclusively academic. We need to reeducate the masses about what feminism is really about, that is not just a bunch of lesbian, man-haters who want to force themselves above men in society. We are women who want true equality, not equality in a man's world, equality in the world of people both men and women. We shouldn't force ourselves to adapt to a world that was shaped for men to best adapt to, we should reshape the world so that it embraces every gender. This the message we need to be teaching to new generations and to old ones.
(Don't have F Word yet).
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