If Women Just Knew Their Place

Grumpy old men the world over insist that women get back into their proper place. Whether the Taliban, the mullahs, or MAGA, these misogynistic medieaval leftovers pine for a world where women know their place as providers of pleasure, domestic care, and offspring, and stop worrying their pretty little heads about more complicated stuff that should be left to the better people born with Y chromosomes. Important stuff like war, and football, and beer, and golf.

So, are these grotty, sweaty cavemen correct? Would the world be better if women got out of the way and let the boys take care of everything? Everything, that is, except domestic duties.

Well, let’s see.

Boudica, warrior queen, knew her place when she led her army into rebellion against the hated Roman overlords, razing London, and becoming the first ever to annihilate an entire Roman legion. A no-nonsense kind of lady, she rode a war chariot with scythe blades mounted on on the wheels.

Beverley McLachlin knew her place when she served as Chief Justice of Canada for seventeen remarkable years in which she wrote one transformative ruling after another. Mathematician Ada Lovelace knew her place as the world’s first computer programmer.

King Philip of Spain probably wished the first Queen Elizabeth knew a different place after she defied him and sank his Armada. Marie Curie, Maria Montessori, Indira Gandhi, and Golda Meir certainly knew their place, and it wasn’t much like J.D. Vance’s fantasy. And I’m guessing that the late Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady”, would not have taken kindly to any uppity male bossing her about. “The lady,” she would say, “is not for turning.”

Rosa Parks knew that her place was not at the back of the bus, and Viola Desmond knew that her place was not in the Coloured Section of a theatre in New Glasgow. Joni Mitchell and k. d. lang know their places, as do Rachel Madow, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Munro. Roberta Bondar, the first neurologist in space, apparently knew her place, too. Marilyn Bell’s place was to be the first to swim Lake Ontario, lampreys and all. Not the first woman, just the first.

And then of course there are my daughters, my granddaughters, and my courageous wife. They all know their places, and being told what to do by a man is not in the picture. They’re all too busy changing the world for the better, one feat at a time.

One could go on, of course, but I leave the last word to Charlotte Whitton, mayor of Ottawa for nearly ten years, “Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”

Whether Mayor Whitton’s math is correct or not, imagine a world where all women everywhere were free to be who they could be, exercising their intellect and talents without the constraints of grumpy old men. And grumpy young men, too (here’s looking at you, J.D.) If women were truly in their best place, the world would be better for it.