It is a fair statement that almost everyone in the USA is aware today of the issues of Women's Rights, and of the reasons why women had to fight for those rights. Historically, women as a class of humans were not equal to men in power or rights, in any country of size, in any period of history. It is also clear that from a woman's perspective in the USA that the realization of those rights has only been partial and is always subject to regressive evolution. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in Middle and Far Eastern cultures, women are in the very early stages of what they rightly perceive as a war for their rights as humans.

The rights I am referring to are those that any man would expect by virtue of birth. They include, but are not limited to, right to vote, elimination of job and pay discrimination, freedom from sexual aggression, shared responsibility for homemaking and child rearing, and, the cessation of gender based insults that demean women. In short, they want equality and respect.

Destiny completely supports Women's Rights in the same manner that it supports all human rights. Destiny does not respect any gender-related advantages that result from societal practices for either gender. We are equal in our rights. Destiny supports all global efforts to assure equal rights for both genders. At this time in history, the primary focus is on Women's Rights, because they have been ignored far too long.

Having established the Destiny ideological position above, it is now useful to explore the evolution of USA society in the pursuit of Women's Rights. People of both genders, on reflection, will honestly admit that our efforts to realize equality for women have been and are subject to every imaginable application of Murphy's Law. Without belaboring the point, we have produced a very high number of societal casualties in our rights war tactics, and that includes women and men, and children of both genders. Rights for some have been trampled in the attempts to gain rights for others. The same statement could be made equally accurately about our efforts since 1964 to eliminate racism.

We also experience confusion, for like any human activity of consequence, there are instances of counterproductive effort. For example, militancy that demeans the essentiality of either gender hurts our overall gains as humans. We do need each other. Yet extremists capture our attention, with such issues as who needs a man, or, it is my right to have a child and not have its father influencing my life. The frequency in some communities in which women are linked to the word bitch is another example of extreme, reactive behavior. These instances of selfish stupidity hurt the overall cause of equality for all of us. They also hurt the individuals who proceed in that direction and, especially, the children who result and live in a single parent environment.

We must try to understand that the underpinning of militancy is extreme frustration combined with the belief that to get one ounce of fairness you have to deliver a ten-pound punch. Unfortunately, that belief is sometimes true and backed up by undeniable facts. Yet, we do understand that continued militancy after gaining an objective is inappropriate behavior. The overall objective of the war is to achieve the primary objectives and then end the war, not to have chronic war.

Is it possible that we are creating a chronic war, not by intent, but by fundamental lack of understanding about methods and consequences? Is it not also true that we must experiment and experience some casualties in order to learn our limits and optimal methods to assure equality? I believe both statements to be true. And I also believe that all of us want a quality life, not an ongoing war, and that the learning process will aid us in realizing that we need to work for fairness for each other. Chronic gender war, like any true war, exhausts us and does far more damage than good to all parties. No group wins.

What do all those words above mean at the action level? What are the specific positive actions needed to achieve equality and a quality life? What can we do as individuals in the name of our own enlightened self-interest? We will explore some aspects of our Women's Rights history to find the answers to those questions. First, we will reexamine our fundamental values to give us direction for evaluating our Women's Rights experiences.

Our biological purpose for existence is reproduction and all the activities that accompany that process on behalf of producing healthy and capable young adults. This issue supercedes all others in importance. If you choose not to reproduce, you die out. If you choose to reproduce, you acquire responsibility for your role as a parent, whether you are female or male.

Both genders have specific roles and responsibilities to assure the optimal development of their children, e.g., nurturing and training by area of expertise. Both genders also have mixed or negotiable roles and responsibilities as well, like changing diapers and play. One or the other takes the responsibility to meet the need of a child at a particular moment in time, hopefully in an environment of fairness for both adults, and in consideration of all other things they do as individuals on behalf of the nuclear family. This is, perhaps, the most troublesome part of the women's issue regarding male participation in child rearing, for our historical roles, which were not necessarily addressed effectively in the past, are now in confusion with the advent of the two income family. Some men have been reluctant to assume responsibility that they do not believe they acquired fairly.

I will simply reiterate the communist ideal of Karl Marx provided in the chapter on Responsibilities of Business. "From each, according to their abilities, and to each, according to their needs," is the model for successful family life. Either you work out the agreement about shared responsibilities, to the mutual satisfaction of each other, or the entire family suffers. This point is not negotiable. Areas of mixed responsibilities are negotiable, for there is no single right approach or the right to a particular expectation, and it is a personal and joint responsibility to meet the needs of the child and each other by mutual and full agreement.

Part One - The World of Work

Historically, the need for Women's Rights was obvious. They were second class citizens. The process of achieving equality has been difficult indeed, for equal opportunity in employment inherently meant upheaval in traditional family life. A woman could not magically turn a 24-hour day into a 32-hour day to both work outside the home and retain all of her historical or traditional roles as a mother and homemaker. Nor was a man likely to accept or appreciate additional responsibilities at home, even if the tasks were shared equally. Therefore, the cultural change that put both people in the workplace in the name of equality brought with it a most undesirable side effect, that of eliminating what little free or personal time we had for enjoyment. That loss of free time strongly and negatively affected both genders and the children.

I knew the future consequences of what we were embarking on in the area of job opportunity for women 25 years ago, in the early 1970's, a time when the majority of families lived on one income. Indeed, I strongly stimulated my wife in the late 1960's to work outside the home so we could more quickly get money to buy a home. I saw, firsthand, the negative consequences of the two-income family approach to life in the late 1960's. At least we did enjoy a significant increase in disposable income, and we did buy our home, rather quickly. Of course, we also divorced by the mid-1970s. I cannot tell you how badly I felt for our children, my wife and myself, for she knew not what happened to eliminate her earlier love of me, and I was of little help to aid her understanding or my own. I knew only that I gradually lost a friend and partner, and so did she. Our children lost an essential feeling of confidence in life.

The early gains in net family income for working couples in the 1970's were accompanied by vast increases in divorce rates that have not seriously diminished since that time, and, the income gains of the 1970's were quickly diminished to being inconsequential once the economy adjusted to having both genders work. That was a very high price to pay to realize that part of Women's Rights. Nobody won. Everyone, except singles living as couples or childless married couples, lost. Indeed everyone lost regardless of marital or parental status, for all of us lost our free time, at no net gain in standard of living. Welcome to the reality of unintended slavery.

In the 1970's it was believed that the extreme increase in divorce rates, compared to the 1960's and earlier, was primarily a result of working women in bad marriages having the financial power to better their life circumstances. It should be obvious today that our still high divorce rate is not coming from that segment of society. Instead, we divorce because we are tired and we cannot tolerate differences that we could and would willfully accommodate before. Our sense of life justice is violated and our mates are perceived as the guilty party when they simply attempt to find relief from the grind. What appears as irresponsible or inconsiderate behaviors is nothing more or less than our individual struggles to survive our slavery. We cannot find lasting comfort or satisfaction in each other, for when we tire we are unable to give. We now divorce instead of recognizing and dealing successfully with the real problem, which is the absence of time to enjoy life, due to the reality of the two-income family effect on our personal time.

What a mess, and women are not at fault. They do in fact have the right to equal opportunity for work and equal pay for that work. Nor are men at fault. The pursuit of happiness has been effectively lost, even if we enjoy our specific choice of employment. Global business considerations are exacerbating an already bad situation, for we are called upon to work ever-longer hours to retain our job security.

Now it is appropriate to move forward with our realizations and attempt to find viable solutions that avoid throwing out the baby with the bath water. What have couples done to attempt to achieve balance? Have these attempts been effective? Are there other proposed or new ideas that can direct us to a good life?

Various schemes have been tried. For instance, part time work, working part of the time from home, leaving the workforce during the early formative years of a child's life, formal reduction in the number of hours or days worked per week by each person in the couple (like a four day work week), job sharing, and formal creation of scheduled quality time with spouses and children to avoid losing contact with each other as a nuclear family unit. It is obvious that we are trying our best to deal with the two-income family problem. It is also obvious that some of these methods are very hard to implement due to conditions of employment and limited incomes for many people.

The hard reality is that, once again, we need federal legislation to provide limits to our work weeks and work hours per day on behalf of all of us, like we did earlier in our history with regard to child labor laws. Our employers do not respond effectively to our needs because they are also trying to survive in a business sense. They are not monsters intentionally, but they cannot be looked upon as our friends or benefactors either. They and we need to be controlled on behalf of nuclear family life.

I strongly recommend a forced four-day workweek maximum for both adults when they have pre-school age children living at home. This is an honest price to be paid for having children, and a right of the parents to have a sane life. Single parenting is a desirable casualty of that process. Our businesses cannot be permitted to override the process for any parent(s).

I further strongly recommend a legislated 40 hour maximum workweek for all adults. This is to be accompanied by a variant of European laws, such that all people in the USA with fulltime jobs or multiple jobs with a net 40 hour work week will be forced to take four weeks of paid vacation per year. Employers will be denied the ability to define any jobs as part time unless at least 90% of their employees are paid as fulltime employees.

You are probably aware of the historical discrimination that faced women seeking employment regarding their plans to have children. That practice, which is now illegal, can have a new legal counterpart across all businesses regarding both spouses having a maximum 32 hour, four day work week, with zero overtime, when there is a pre-school age child. It will take federal legislation to make that happen.

Part Two - Victims and the Finest Whines

Murphy assures that our best intentions will go awry. The feminist movement, which was predicated on sound principles of fairness and equal rights for women, evolved from the 1960's to the 1980's and beyond into something embarrassing, frightening and disgusting. That was the creation of a new and legally powerful class of troublemakers that we know as "victims." I do not find it personally necessary to go into the gory details, for I am certain you have experienced some examples of the victim problem personally, and in what you see in the media, e.g., Paula Jones vs. Bill Clinton, or Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas. All I will say is that the Destiny promotion of the use of drug enhanced lie detector tests is the right answer to that problem. It is also the right answer to continuing examples of actual discrimination against women. Lets move ahead to what is a "relevant fact based society."

Note that our actual, inherited differences, including gender differences, limit all of us in one or more ways. Our most serious problem with "victims" is in the psychological process known as "projection," in which an individual blames others for their own life problems. It is no surprise that a subset of women have adopted that behavior for personal gain and increased power, for the time is right in USA history for such behaviors to succeed. We have unwittingly allowed a mass form of projection to negatively influence our beliefs and behaviors regarding gender. Thus, a type of individual adjustment disorder has become a gender class problem, nationally. Overgeneralization of the unfair behaviors of some males in every woman's life has been transmuted to assigned guilt for men in general. That is irrational and unfair. So is the continuance of historical stereotypes of weak females.

The standards for acceptable social behavior have been forcibly changed, and some of those changes are good. The problem we experience today is that the pendulum regarding acceptable expression of beliefs and wants has swung too far in the direction of repression. We need balance and we need to "lighten up." The responsibility to make that happen belongs to both genders. We need each other.