Thoughts on New Age Feminism
There have been recent movements, marches and protests claiming to be the New Wave of Feminism. The Women’s March a few months ago scattered throughout the nation in an effort to “equalize” gender identity and such. I watched the news coverage and while I am a female, I do not agree with them. I do still feel that women are over sexualized by the media, but I feel as though wage gaps and rights have been addressed already.
One of the key issues many of these feminists are outraged over is the mythical wage gap. Supposedly there is a minimum of 15% difference in wages between men and women for equal work. I do not understand what employers are behind these statistics because I have had four different jobs, typically two at once, and I was paid equal to my male coworkers for doing the same amount of work. The only differences I have seen are when one individual is more educated than the other. Then the more educated individual gets paid more.
The second issue they argue for is the equality in education. Now that stretches to the dress code as well as these feminists still insist that females do not get the same quality or educational opportunities. Now in grade schools, there are always strictly enforced dress codes. Girls cannot wear strappy tank tops and short shorts. There are other codes in place that make it difficult for girls to “express themselves”. The school’s reasoning behind the codes is that they do not want any distractions for the other students. Now, I do not agree with that. I feel that suppressing young girls and telling them what they can and cannot wear for the reason of being a distraction to the boys is cruelly unfair. But, running around with shorts up one’s behind and tank tops revealing one’s brassiere is a bit unacceptable by most standards. Even later on in the professional world.
Now, to address the second part of that. Many of these women argue it is difficult for girls to go on to college and make it. Whether this is because of the ridiculous cost of tuition or the difficulty of the classes is not important. What is important is the acknowledgement of all the scholarship opportunities such as the American Association for University Women scholarship services. In addition, there are full tuition scholarships for women in programs like engineering and mathematics. These help young women pay for college. That helps close more gaps that are supposedly in existence.
So, I feel that there are a few things that could be addressed with regards to females and their treatment in society. However, there have also been amazing strides made from where we were as a society a hundred, two hundred years ago. That is why I feel that movements such as the Women’s March and the Free the Nipple movement need to have more merit behind them before I support them.