Status of Women by 2020

MercatorNet is running a series on "12 Ways to Improve the Status of Women by 2020". 12 women, including yours truly, were invited to contribute ideas. Here is my submission in 200 words or less.

We need a new age of chivalry

“That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher

How is our culture treating women? Some like to go on about "equality" and "the wage gap", but are we forgetting one of the simplest, and yet most effective ways to improve the everyday lives of women?

Good manners.

Really? Manners? Isn't that a little, I don't know, simplistic? Trivial? Juvenile? Old-fashioned?

Maybe. But let's think about it.

Women are suffering because they decided that chivalry was oppressive and degrading, that they could be, wanted to be, "one of the guys". They made it clear that they want to pay their own way, carve their own path.

And men took them at their word.

So we have dirty language in public, pornography at the supermarket, a growing coarseness in entertainment and public discourse... and nobody holds doors open anymore...

Manners were put in place to protect women, to help them, to make them feel comfortable, to provide a road map for relationships, and to encourage men to treat women properly.

Remind me what was wrong with that again?

Rebekah is a homeschool graduate, 20 years old, blogger at missmarprelate.blogspot.com, and does event blogs for conservative events. She lives in Ontario, Canada.

Parts One and Two including articles from Carolyn Moynihan, Jennifer Roback Morse, Caterina F. Lorenzo-Molo, Melinda Tankard Reist and others.