privlige

I am privileged because I am white.
I am privileged because I am Christian.
I am privileged because I am slim.
I am privileged because I live in a developed country.
I am privileged because I finished my education up to Year 12.
I am privileged with access to free healthcare and further education is within my reach if I want it.
I am privileged to live in a developed country where fresh water and food can be taken for granted.

I am also privileged that when I found myself in an abusive relationship I had the support of the community to leave and keep myself and my children safe.

There are many ways in which I experience the other end of privilege - where I am not the one experiencing it.  I am a woman, a single mother, I don't have a university education and have been out of the work force for 2.5 years.  I can't afford to "keep up with the Jones'" (and don't want to).  There are things I chose which affect the way that I am seen and treated - I chose to leave the work force to look after my children full time.  I chose to embrace my womanhood in all its natural glory.  I chose to remove myself and my children from the mainstream consumer driven norm (something which I am still working on!).  I chose not to continue my education.  All these choices have freed me however.  I have been the one to make these choices.  Making these choices has empowered me to live a life that is closer to my ideals and ethical choices.  And this is perhaps my biggest privilege.  The ability to choose.

So without lessening my pain at being a woman in a patriarchy, without lessening the struggles that we still face 100 years after women won the right to vote, I like to ensure that I remember the ways in which I AM privileged, and the struggles that are so much harder for many women all over the world.  Women who can't get an education, access to vital healthcare when it is needed, and for whom access to food and clean water means a hike that takes most of the day for not enough to feed their family.  Women who are forced to stay in marriages a lot more abusive than the one I left so easily in comparison.  Women who if they manage to leave an abusive relationship find there chance of getting murdered actually increases, who have to work around the clock just to pay the rent, who find their chances of physical assault and murder increases just because they have a life within their womb.    Not all these apply only to developing countries, many of these apply to women living in developed countries such as Australia, the USA and the UK.


We're clearly soldiers in petticoats
And dauntless crusaders for woman's votes
Though we adore men individually
We agree that as a group they're rather stupid!

Cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done, Sister Suffragette!"

From Kensington to Billingsgate
One hears the restless cries!
From ev'ry corner of the land:
"Womankind, arise!"
Political equality and equal rights with men!
Take heart! For Missus Pankhurst has been clapped in irons again!

No more the meek and mild subservients we!
We're fighting for our rights, militantly!
Never you fear!

So, cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done! Well done!
Well done Sister Suffragette!"


Music: Richard M. + Robert B. Sherman
Lyrics: Richard M. + Robert B. Sherman
Premiere: 1964
from the Mary Poppins soundtrack