We hear a lot about choice amidst the numerous debates about women and their position in society. Women choose to go to work or stay at home, women choose to work part time, women choose to work in the sex trade, women choose to wear a veil…. If we start to add in the less obvious choices.. some women choose the have the daughters’ genitalia mutilated, Chinese women chose to bind their daughters feet, women choose to turn a blind eye to their partners abuse of their daughters, women chose marriage over careers until a few years ago….. the use of the word choice becomes less and less appropriate. Of course women did not choose to hand over all their property to their husbands upon marriage. Of course women in Saudi Arabia do not choose not to drive…
We choose available options… but the question is who makes them available and who and what determines the cultural and social discourse of the time – this can be material and, more powerfully ideological. Please can we recognise the discourse of freedom of choice for what it is – limiting.