You're right LeBOF, my post was somewhat presumptuous, coming from the privileged perspective of someone brought up by her father to believe she can do better than any man, and to not brook any nonsense from any of them - and, in the main, not having received any. That is extremely fortunate, even within the developed world. Issues outside the developed world are beyond the remit of my posts, I am simply (literally?) not qualified to comment.
Sticking to what I do know about, within the developed world where basic societal structures exist to allow women to progress in ways that our predecessors couldn't, and whilst not overstating the power of such an effect, I do believe that 'trickle down' has a part to play. It's about attitudes, and education. We all want better for our children than we had. My upbringing was avant garde for its time but is now far more prevalent. The policies and practices that women of power spear-headed for me and my parents to follow were hugely inspiring. And the debate around the issues that you raise (equal pay for equal work, access to positions of power, 'outing' and punishment of violence against women etc) has also flourished in my lifetime - not proportionately, or enough, but there is far more awareness of and willingness to deal with these issues than there was in the mid-70s, and that work will go on until it's done. This is all great, I think. Now I want more for our daughters: I want what I had to be taken for granted. I want the things that made us exclaim in wonderment to be par for the course for them, and if that happens I think that attitude will colour and hopefully re-direct the course of public debate on the above issues. I want my daughter to exclaim in astonishment that in her mother's lifetime it was ever possible that a woman should be paid less than a man for doing the same job. I want her to ask me why that should ever have been so, and how we could ever have stood for it. I want her to dismiss out of hand men who inflict violence in the home as bullies - and for this to be the attitude amongst all her friends (male and female) at school, and university and in the workplace. These children will go on to write books and newspaper articles, debate in parliament, become judges, become TV pundits and mainstream commentators. Changing public perception takes time and effort, but it can and does and will, I believe, happen. The chief benefit of the privileged upbringing I had is that I can pass it on and it will benefit so many more people than just me, long after my father is gone.
Beyond that, and in even more niche terms, I want my daughter's personal fulfilment to come from what is right for her as a woman, not from what is the prevailing - and therefore man's - definition of fulfilment. I don't want her to have to succeed by a man's definition of success - a long and succesful career, single-minded pursuit of one's personal goals, a fat salary, material success - oh, and some shiny kids somewhere along the way that someone (who me?) will be looking after. I want her to make it on her own terms - I want it to be okay to be a woman with a woman's tendencies and inclinations, with all the positives and negatives that means. And I firmly believe that once it's okay for women to be emotional creatures with different priorities to men, to accept and, heck, rejoice in and make something of their differences from men, this effect will trickle down. I don't want domestic violence to be considered by women themselves to be too shameful to report, or back from reporting domestic violence for fear of the consequences. I don't want a woman raped by her husband to wonder whether she brought it upon herself by not doing this or that for him. I don't want women to not even know that they are being underpaid compared to their male subordinates. Why should any of this ever be so?
This, in its small way, is how I bring feminism into my home in 2011. Sorry for the long post!