When we think about leaders, we automatically assume someone in charge of an organization. The person has to have a title to make them a leader because a title proves that is true. With senior government and politics, and women studies double major Rachel Greenberg, she disproves this preconceived notion by inspiring the people around her with just her passions and the way she speaks about it.
(Rachel Greenberg/Facebook.com)
Greenberg’s number one passion is empowering women and equal rights for women, specifically reproductive justice which she defines as “an intersectional movement that advocates for individuals’ right to choose if and when to parent and to have and raise families in safe and happy environments.”
She realized her passion for all of this in high school.
“When I was a junior in high school, I took a half-year sociology class, where we had three different sections of the course: race, class, and gender. In the last, we learned about differences in male and female patterns of speech and how they take up space,” Greenberg said. “I was absolutely mind-blown. Growing up, I had low self-esteem, and I said “sorry” every 5 minutes. Suddenly as a 16-year-old, I was learning in an academic context that these patterns of making yourself small were not my thing, they were a girl/ woman thing, and I was not alone.”
From there, the passion took off.
“I became obsessed with this newfound realization that I could be a feminist in school. Every chance I could, I wrote my papers with a gendered lens, discussing anything from the Bechdel Test to slut-shaming to female genital mutilation,” Greenberg said. “As an angsty Tumblr teen, I consumed everything I could about social justice, and I realized that I was approaching my feminism from a totally white middle-class single-axis approach, and I started reading more to expand that.”
For the past two summers now Greenberg has interned at different women advocacy groups, one was the Feminist Majority Foundation, and one was with NARAL: Pro-Choice Maryland. Both of these organizations have played a significant role for Greenberg today.