Women's Rights: Then and Now

      This month we read many books and short stories which were all based on the main idea of feminism.  We read "The Awakening" which was about a woman named Edna who over time began to feel what freedom really felt like.  She slowly began to realize that she wasn't living the best life that she could as a woman and that she was not happy with her life.  She finds freedom in swimming and decides one day to swim out in the ocean too far and lets herself drown.  This shows that she wasn't afraid to live with freedom, and that she chose the way that she wanted her life to end; doing something that she loved.
      Edna was able to find something that made her happy and made her have the sensation that she was in total control of her life; swimming.  Although this is not a major event, it still symbolizes women finding something that they enjoy doing without having to worry about how the world will judge them due to their gender.  It is small leaps like this that have gotten us to where women's rights are today.  For example, there are women's teams for every sport, which would have originally been meant for only men.  In the Olympics there are men's and women's sports and they are fairly equally represented.  There are even women in the military now.  This was a big step because this shows that we are not afraid to allow both men and women to work together to represent our country and defend our country.
      This has affected me directly within my lifetime because I am very involved in things that women would not have been allowed to be a part of during the time that "The Awakening" was written.  I play soccer every day of my life, I am finishing out my high school education, and I am even getting ready to join the United States Coast Guard within the next 6 months.  I feel so blessed to be a young woman living in this day and age in the United States because not only do I have more decisions to make for myself, but I also get to choose exactly what it is that I want to do.  Some guys think it a bit strange that I, a woman, would want to join the military and get yelled at all the time.  My response is that it's something I want to do and that women can do anything men can do (and even better than men can at times).