UNNATURAL EQUALITY

Notes 1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984), vol. 19, p. 909. 2. Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1976), p. 17. 3. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984), vol. 19, p. 909. 4. Bible, I Corinthians, 11:8. 5. J.M. Roberts, The Pelican History of the World (New York, 1984), p. 334. 6. Statesman (New Delhi), April 26, 1986. 7. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984), vol. VIII, p. 127. 8. The Times of India (New Delhi), July 11, 1986. 9. Ibid., May 23, 1986. 10. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984), vol. III, p. 586. 11. Plain Truth. May 1987. 12. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984), vol. II, p. 913 13. Ibid., vol. 5, p. 273. 14. Time, October 19, 1987, p. 60. 57-89 Woman Between Islam And Western Society CHAPTER 3 Western Woman The “New Woman” has been proclaimed with a certain regularity for a century or more, Time magazine reminded its readers in a 1972 special edition devoted to an exploration of the status of women in America.1 In 1989 the Scots traveller James F. Muirhead observed that it was man who was subservient in American life because he was “the hewer of wood, the drawer of water and beast of burden for the superior sex” (i.e. females). The feminists disagreed, insisting it was they who were dominated. In 1920 American women won the right to vote, and in the 1920s and 1930s began to go to college in considerable numbers, with the expectation of entering the professions. Women believed that “the battle had been won.” But, after the vicissitudes of the Great Depression of post-World War II economic boom, the feminist movement was reborn. It was a time of turmoil in American society: President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in 1963, and the U.S. engagement in the Vietnam War prompted radical protests and widespread questioning of traditional values and institutions, espe­cially among the youth. The “new feminism” movement was a phenomenon of the restlessness found in the American woman of the 1960s and 1970s. “By all rights, the American woman today should be the happiest in history,” Bonnie Angelo observed in Time’s 1972 cover story. “She is healthier that U.S. women have ever been, better educated, more affluent, better dressed,