Page 31 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 27 November 2012
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that successful people are those who work the hardest and problem solve the best and I applied myself to improving in these areas. Thank you, Anthony; I learnt a great deal from you.
Madam Speaker, as a member of the Liberal Party I learnt from the women of our movement that there was no need to give up on the conservative vision of home and family to be a success. As a confident, aspirational woman with strong traditional family values, I see myself as part of a growing group of modern conservative women—modern because we embrace the opportunities of today and conservative because we do not consider ourselves better than all the generations who have come before us. Though thoroughly pro-woman, I do not feel enslaved to the feminist movement and I certainly fight against the idea that I am in any way a victim.
I am glad to have had the chance to have my children and to be committed to a loving man for life. I know my life is far better than my grandmother’s and I reject the constant nagging of an older-style feminist public debate which tries to make women feel bad for not achieving something that they want for our lives. I believe that to shape the future for our daughters is important, that modern society has its problems, but that it is not the fault of the men we love and associate with every day. Humanity has its flaws. Some of the systems that have naturally developed over time need to be changed, but we can work on that.
There are all sorts of natural desires for family and home that should somehow be able to coexist with desires for financial strength and career progression. I feel free to want a white picket fence, and not just a fence but a climbing rose over the fence, a nice house, partly bought by my earning power, and an equal say in all aspects of life. However, even today, I have had my moments of realisation that life is not all quite as simple as it first seemed.
But that is where modern conservative women are a little different. We respond to adversity with creativity. Rather than rejecting femininity, we embrace it. One of the great insights of conservatism is that neither the individual nor society is perfectible but that we must work with the crooked timber of humanity. Far from a glum realism, however, conservatism is an optimistic creed. It is all about the possible. It can be tough to blend work and family aspirations and it can be daunting, but I have learnt that it can also be a formative process of great development for those who have the courage to go through it. After all, it is under immense pressure that diamonds are formed.
Conservatism has never been revolutionary, it is more evolutionary, and I am here to claim we are creating more of a white picket evolution, so to speak. This evolution embraces women’s desires to have children and have a love of home life while mixing it with work and study. We do not have to have it all immediately. Over a decade or two we hope to achieve much. Modern women know it can be too late to have children but that it can also be too late to start a career and acquire a substantial work history.
We face adversity boldly. There are serious structural difficulties coming in and out of a workforce little adapted to the tasks associated with women’s multifaceted feminine
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