Article November 23, 1998 Issue

Spirituality: lifting the ideals of feminism

Living Christian ideals

By Heidi J. Snow

The june 29, 1998, issue of TIME carried a cover story entitled "Feminism: it's all about me!" Today's feminists, it claimed, focus more on sexual liberties and media glitz than on substantive issues of income parity and social change. A few weeks after that issue of TIME hit the newsstands, I stood in Seneca Falls, New York, watching a candlelit procession of this year's inductees into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Dr. Shirley Jackson, first woman to head the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Eunice Shriver, founder of Special Olympics; and Florence Wald, founder of America's Hospice movement, along with other inductees or their representatives, walked toward the Hall of Fame, surrounded by admirers. As these women filed past, I couldn't help wondering if TIME had looked deep enough for models for today's feminists. Here were women not only making a difference in their fields but inspiring others to do the same.

The highest ideals of womanwood, I believe, have a spiritual foundation; they are in line with the laws of God. These ideals include a rejection of gender stereotyping and tyrannical systems of power, as well as a dedication to equality.

Deposite some headlines, many people around the world do reject rigid gender stereotypes. They expect to see tenderness expressed by men, and strength by women. And so it should be, since the qualities typically associated with masculinity and femininity really have nothing to do with gender.

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