I am a 50 year old woman who has rediscovered feminism both through her (now adult) children and a difficult divorce. I am a strong, kick-ass, almost fearless woman who once thought of herself as a clear and present, dangerous feminist. However a lifetime of patriarchal conditioning, and a half-lifetime of traditional marriage and motherhood, has led me to realise I have a LOT to learn.
The new joy of my life is relearning what feminism really is, and doing so in conversation with GenZ. Forget snowflakes and stereotypes of a declining youth generation, what I see strongly in GenZ (my children, their friends and their peers) are kind, wise, and enduring intersectional feminists with the strongest foundations yet to take on and dismantle patriarchal confines.
Throughout my life, I have ‘careered’; literally careered from one plot twist to another. I prided myself on taking on hard things, on forging paths into areas mostly common to boys or men. A childhood spent overseas, educated within a single sex school. led me to become one of a small number of female Physics students at Oxford. A rebellion (or was it a dare?) which led to a commission in the British Army, serving as one of the first female officers to be appointed to a front-line engineering role. A series of jobs in finance and retail management led to a retraining as a homeopath, a profession in which I still practice, and my first toe-dip into a softer, less masculine world. I now find myself a Senior Leader in education, overseeing pastoral care, operations and safeguarding as a Deputy Head in a London primary school. I have seen and experienced a lot; the good, bad and ugly. I am also a mother of 3, rebuilding her life after the car-crash ending of a 20 year marriage.
I have a lot to say about being a GenX woman in a man’s world, about being a GenX woman in a less than modern marriage, about being a GenX mother to three very modern children, about being a GenX woman in a brave new GenZ world. But even more than what I have to say, I have a lot to learn.
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