Nov. 25--If only we could introduce the Turkish president to Kristin Pagano.
Pagano is the 27-year-old attorney from the northwest suburbs who is studying for the Illinois bar exam (she's already licensed in California). She's expecting a baby a few weeks before the February exam and has made an appeal to the Illinois Board of Admissions for permission to stop the clock during the exam so she can pump breast milk.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is the guy who told a group gathered to discuss gender equality that women are inferior.
I wonder what he'd make of Pagano.
"You cannot bring women and men into equal positions," he said. "That is against nature because their nature is different."
Motherhood, he said, is a woman's primary role. "Some people can understand this, while others can't," he said. "You cannot explain this to feminists because they don't accept the concept of motherhood."
I totally agree. I mean, I would tweak a few words here and there. Like I would change "feminists" to "misogynists."
"Some people can understand this, while others can't. You cannot explain this to misogynists because they don't accept the concept of motherhood."
See? Better already.
I would also change "primary role" to "one important role that women are free to choose." You know, to reflect the fact that millions of women around the globe never become mothers -- either because they don't want to or because they can't -- and they are no less female or important.
I'm with him all the way on the nature thing, though.
Men, for example, can't give birth. Nor can they breast-feed. No reason to hold that against them -- their nature is just different. Fortunately, women have been stepping up for the past million or so years, giving all the birth, producing all the breast milk.
It's a big responsibility, to be sure. But women are, by nature, awesome. So we rock the motherhood thing (those of us who choose it, that is), and we still find time for a few hundred other endeavors.
We've tended farms and nursed soldiers on battlefields and risked our lives in factories and otherwise done our fair share of paid and unpaid labor since the beginning of time. We've become doctors and lawyers and astronauts and Supreme Court justices and Cabinet members and CEOs and academics and, well, you get the idea.
And still, we feed our children. Because that, too, is our nature -- to keep alive the humans we birth.
We recognize that motherhood is not our primary role, but it sure is a beautiful, monumental, significant one that we're privileged beyond measure to experience. And so we treat it as such -- making plans and decisions every hour of every day that prioritize the health and well-being of our children. That's our nature.
Men and women can, and do, inhabit equal positions. Not because our biological makeup, or "nature," is exactly the same -- it's not. But our intellect is. (I can't even believe I'm writing this sentence in 2014.)
Kristin Pagano accepts the concept -- and responsibilities -- of motherhood. She also accepts the concept -- and responsibilities -- of practicing law. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I doubt Recep Tayyip Erdogan will ever grasp that reality. But I sure hope the Illinois Board of Admissions does.
hstevens@tribpub.com
Twitter @heidistevens13
