blog 3

The two articles that hit closest to home for me were Ehrenreich & Hochschild’s “Global Woman” and Read & Bartowski’s “To Veil or Not to Veil”. I found the cultural connections in the two interesting, especially because of the comparisons of how we as ‘Westerners’ view immigrants or Muslim women in the respective articles. “Global Woman” reminded me of our discussion about how all the people whom we see working as janitors, cooks, and other workers at USC are of Mexican or African American descent. Though the article was specifically in the point of view of the women who move across the world in order to provide for their children back home, I personally felt that while we notice the troubles of people who immigrate across seas, we cannot see issues that are much closer to home. Living in the Bay Area, I was very unaware of the position of such immigrants, especially because all of my friends, and in fact most of my classmates, were kids whose parents were first generation immigrants and had come to Silicon Valley for pretty decent paying jobs and a more than acceptable education for their children. Only after visiting family in other parts of America have I come to see that immigrants really aren’t as lucky to have family in the country with them, and a visible goal to work towards. Growing up as a ‘Westerner’, I have to say that I honestly did see the efforts of women of other races working hard in public-sector jobs as a strength to be admired, but never realized that our constant outsourcing of such jobs really demeaned and demoralized their efforts at the same time. “To Veil or Not to Veil” also made me realize how ‘Western’ my ideas are, especially after reading the thoughts of women on both sides of the argument. Most impressive to me was how they expressed no ill will towards each other, nor towards the symbolic hijab that separated them, but only towards the ideals behind them that still tried to label them despite their equal but different attempts to use their position as a type of liberation. The idea that wearing a hijab could possibly make people respect them and take them more seriously was an idea I had never considered, especially when the youngest school girl to the respected businesswoman puts in an efforts to dress their best on their first day of school girl. In our culture, being taken seriously involves a great deal of work being put into dressing nicely and proving that we are civilized. For Muslim women, wearing a hijab symbolizes modesty not only for them, but for men, and thus allows all attention to be focused on their thoughts and ideas, not their looks. This opinion makes me rethink how hard we work to dress up in order to be taken seriously, when our clothes and makeup may honestly just push more attention towards our bodies and not our brains. I truly respect how much thought these women have put into the symbolism of their hijab and the conflicting ideas it can represent. The fact that they can see both sides of the argument and still respect each other while keeping faith in their religion whether or not they wear a hijab is a strength that I feel a lot of women can learn from, especially when we fight our feminist battles to be taken seriously and stand equally to men.
Like some of my other classmates, I believe that ‘situated knowledge’ is only an impediment if we don’t realize its existence. Our situations – age cohorts, culture, race and ethnicity, and location in the world – all give us different experiences and ideas to grow up with and agree with or rebel against. Thus, we will each have unique ideas about what stereotypes are, what divisions in gender or class are, and whether or not people are being treated fairly. However, if we know that all of these differences exist, then we can open ourselves up to the opinions and experiences of others and try to lose any bias that exists from our own experiences. We will be able to see the world as clearly as anyone else if we are willing to be open to others situations. According to the theory, no one will really ever be able to see the world clearly because of our situations, but the easiest way to understand each other would be to try to learn from others situations and work at a more global level to solve problems that are found in all situations but dealt with very differently in each.