When you look back upon how our modern society, evolved through the years, you would realise that there had been MANY fights for equality or fair treatment. There was slavery, the Equal Rights movement of the African Americans under the guidance of the late and great Martin Luther King, Apartheid, ethnic ‘cleansings’ or genocides of Cambodia and the Jews of Europe during World War Two, the Genocide of Rwanda, etc.. In fact and very sadly, we humans have been killing each other over race, colour, creed and breed over centuries.
After all the years of torment, war, tribunals and international concern, we have come to a better, although not perfect world, where tolerance dwells, even if in small measures. Hating, maiming or killing someone over a difference in their physical aspect or even in their philosophy is no longer accepted. I am not saying that we have eradicated all our racial or prejudicial problems, but we have certainly made it a non-desirable aspect of being human.
So we have come to this: Equality, or some semblance of it, in certain parts of the world. I must admit that I have never been part of the Feminist movement as I was not quite old enough then, nor born, for that matter, during the period. But from what I understand, it was a moment when women, mostly in the Western, cried out, no, shouted out: “Enough!” – where they realised that being homo-sapiens, albeit with bigger breasts and abilities to reproduce other homo-sapiens, that they too deserve equal treatment, equal salaries, equal respect and equal opportunities. It is a movement, no doubt, that made many men shake their heads in wonder or even in disgust.
In the Eastern world, women were and are, for the most part, still born to fulfil the role of reproduction and service to their families and husbands. The equal opportunity movement did not quite reach Asia and the Middle-East as it did Europe and other ‘Western’ civilisations. My mother, for example, grew up illiterate because it was a ‘waste of money and time’ to educate a woman who eventually will end up cleaning house and bearing children for a man outside of her own family, for the rest of her natural life. I remembered as a child, teaching my mother the basic letters of the alphabet, which of course she has now forgotten because she was busy being the perfect housewife.
My mother is not alone in her plight. Today, there are still a lot of women who lack opportunities and condition themselves not to want more out of life because they are born women. It is not easy to live a life where, as a woman, you are constantly put down and where your needs and preferences are not taken into consideration because you are not born a male. Women born into that ‘old’ tradition in today’s world, stick it out, for better or for worse and most of the time, it was for worse.
Equal measures is a concept for the idealist. Pure and perfect equality just does not exist. It cannot. Genetically, men and woman are born unequal. Men have bigger muscles and woman can give birth. This difference alone allows men the ability to protect women especially when we are most vulnerable like when our bodies are carrying another life within them.
The universe gave us all different physical aspects and abilities because we are supposed to fulfil different roles and take care of each other in different ways. Men are supposed to take care of women as women are supposed to take care of children. Equality is all good in the workplace and when it concerns intelligence and the ability to perform mental tasks. But women often lose in a battle involving pure muscular strength, unless she is on hormones to become or look like a man.
In relationships, the notion of equality is often confused with that of respect. All of us crave respect. It is what makes all of us happy. When our partners respect us, we get kindness, consideration, love and most of all, we are SEEN. Divorces happen when respect goes out the window or simply when love ends. When great couples suddenly file for divorce, it is often a case of one partner not being happy while the other is oblivious of the situation – when one feels disrespected because the other person does what he or she likes with her time and life without thinking of the other.
In some older generation, the notion of divorce does not exist. Women are supposed to ‘hunker down’ and take it. Love is often believed to be a concept made up by the foolhardy.
Divorce often happens when one spouse does not ‘tick’ all the boxes in the other spouse’s perception of a perfect partner. Very often, we forget that people evolve and change as they get older. We forget that the person we marry may become someone else many years later and it is hard to predict and even to see where the transformation will take you. Men and women naturally become more settled as we get older, which is often the reason why young marriages fail later in life.
Divorces happen often to couples who were married young or when one of the couple is a much younger woman or man than the other. This is primarily because young people grow up to be other people. No one stays the same as we constantly evolve through life. Equality in relationships is far more useful when it is about working equally towards building a solid partnership.
True equality is about treating each other with kindness and consideration. Each person will still not be able to be absolutely equal in everything. Sometimes, we fight for the wrong reasons and focus on the wrong things. It is important to be aware of each other’s presence and to always be loving, honest and most of all respectful, kind and gracious.
MyMohio 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Male_Power
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