Women of the world raise your right hand.”

At least, that’s the slogan the DeBeers Corporation uses to sell their so-called “Right Hand Ring” to the independent women of the world.

Attracting diamond buyers is one thing, but applying this ideology to a feminist movement cripples its chances for success. Blaming men for gender inequalities and attempting to dissolve any dependence on their gender may have been popular several decades ago, but it’s time for women to realize inequalities are less problematic than the constant tug between family and work.

While recently deceased feminist and author of “The Feminine Mystique” Betty Friedan opened the eyes of American males to the dissatisfaction of women homemakers during the 1960s, women of her time and decades before faced a radically different set of problems than those today.

No longer would the Equal Rights Amendment of 1923, which stated, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” solve gender dilemmas. It was more an expression of female discontent than an actual vehicle for change.

Furthermore, had America seen its ratification, the nation would have had to acknowledge the chance of a female draft. While women might like to think they’re as brave and combative as most men, they’re not likely willing to go to war over it.

Its failure to pass, however, did not result in the idling of women’s rights. In fact, women have made leaps and bounds since then without it. For example, of the UCSD undergraduate freshmen, 57 percent are women; nationwide at four-year universities, 56 percent of undergraduates are females. Also important is the percentage of women who are college graduates, which was 13 percent in 1970 but rose to 24 percent by 1993 — actually one percent higher than the relative number of male college graduates during the same year.

But there are nevertheless places where we can seek improvements in equal opportunity for women. For example, the wage gap still exists generations after the Women’s Rights Movement. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, full-time working women only received 77 cents to each dollar earned by a man in 2004. Remedies for these differences are a necessary step toward the fair treatment of the fairer sex, but time will likely resolve these discrepancies as it has with education differences.

Thus the real problem challenging women isn’t a struggle for equal rights, but a struggle with the choices they create. College females, for example, attend universities with the knowledge that the skills they acquire may only be used for a short time. Women considering law school, medical school or various other post-graduate studies especially face a difficult decision knowing they may only work for roughly five years before settling down to have children.

According to sociology professor Steven Martin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Demography and Ecology, women during the 1930s and the 1940s tended to have children at a young age while in the years following this period women have significantly delayed childbirth. While this allows women to establish a career before bearing children, pregnancy after the age of 35 significantly increases the possibility for fetal health problems and the mother’s mortality, according to studies by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

And so the question remains, are the women of the world to be mothers or business executives? In an attempt to rid our gender of the homemaker stereotype of the 1950s, we traveled to the opposite end of the spectrum. Children in daycare with working mothers are likely to suffer most from this seesaw effect. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, women comprised 47 percent of American’s workforce in 2004, compared to only 29 percent in 1950, which means fewer women are staying home to raise their children.

Thus, there must be a compromise. Although it is impossible for a woman to be a mother of five and a CEO of a company, working from home to fulfill a desire to define ourselves with something aside from our children is possible. Yes, there will be sacrifices required and we may have to select careers that lend themselves to such an environment. No one promised motherhood was easy; childbirth alone can attest to that fact.

Important, however, is the realization that men are not to blame for everything. It may be hard at times to depend on a gender that has such notable members as Michael Jackson and President George W. Bush, but moving toward women’s ability to work and raise children will require their husband’s assistance. Men too have made sacrifices and still face expectations to provide for their families to such an extent that it often takes them away from the home — all the more reason for us to work together in solving gender inequalities.

I say, women raise both hands.