I don’t know how old I was when I first heard of the name Mrs. Hillary Clinton, but I could remember thinking for a long time that she was Bill Clinton’s sister; and I became surprised to find out that she was wife of Bill Clinton.
Surprised and wondering why an educated and independent woman, and more importantly, a high-profile politician, should be called by her husband’s last name. Perhaps the main reason was dissatisfaction, just as some people said that after marriage, a woman is willing to change her religion, as easy as she changes her surname.
Of course, the high level of women’s resilience, rooted in their emotional spirit, is neither hidden nor deniable, but this level of instability and dependency that was ascribed for women made my memories in my adolescence stage.
Then I consoled myself that this is probably a matter of other countries, because in our country, women’s surnames do not change after marriage, nor necessarily their beliefs and lifestyles. According to the news, there have been many women throughout history who have made a serious decision to change or not to change, and they have not been heard from anyone.
Now that important changes have been happening in my life for some time, thinking and writing about change has become more serious than ever before, and as usual, the question of gender and its impact on the rate of change has not been left out of my mind.
Questions such as:
When should we change?
How do we change?
Or how much can we change?
These question are always in part of my daily writings.
Finally, what I found from comparing the available evidence is that, like most human work, it is the “why” that determines the “how” and influences the answers to all questions.
Authored BY: Fatima Imani
