Once upon a time, there was a magical word that roamed the Earth. The word had a negative stigma, but it never understood why, and was sad that people did not like it. People told the word it was bad, that someone who was the word was wrong, and that someone who embraced the word was weird. One day, the word and the people who embraced it decided that they no longer wanted to be bad, wrong, or weird; the word and its people wanted to be respected, equal, and united. They decided that they could use their voices to express their ideas and embrace their values. From that moment on, the word and its people knew that they would never again allow others to stereotype, demean, belittle, or judge them. Because of this, they lived happily ever after in a world of equality, love, and respect.
Feminism: the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.
I am a human: I have blood pumping through my veins, a brain inside my skull, and boobs on my chest. GASP, she used the B word in an article! If you thought that to yourself, I want to ask you why? Why is it taboo for me to talk about the fact that I have feminine features, like boobs and periods and everything else that is biologically assigned to me at conception? If men are allowed to talk about their manly features and be proud of them, why am I not allowed to talk about my womanly features and be proud of them as well? Biology is constructed through nature; however, judgments are constructed through society.
As a little girl, I was a Barbie obsessed, Lego loving, makeup abusing, fall off my scooter and scrape myself on the concrete type of gal. My parents never made me feel as if I had to play with only girl toys or that I wasn’t allowed to do “boy things” like play in the mud, go fishing, or go on adventuring explorations in the woods with my friends (all of which I did, and still do to this day). This instilled in me from a young age that I can do anything that boys can do. I carry that ideal with me to this day, because as a woman about to graduate college and enter the work force, I am confident that I have the ability to run a company or organization just as well as my male counterparts. I am confident that if I decide to have children one day, my husband would be able to stay at home and raise them just as I could if it were I at home all day. I am confident that I have the right to be the bread-winner of the family just as much as he does. One thing I am not confident about is that I will be handed the opportunity to excel, be successful, and be respected whole-heartedly by my male counterparts as I rise in my career. To say that this upsets me would be an understatement.
Every day, whether you like it or not, women are faced with systematic inequalities simply because they are not men. This does not mean I don’t like men, because trust me, I do. What this means is that there is a sexism that exists in today’s society that places the male gender on a pedestal rather than both men and women being equal. I respect men who respect me back. I am proud of the fact that I am a woman. I am proud of the fact that I live in today’s day and age where I am provided the opportunity to fight for gender equality. I am proud of the fact that I can use my voice to state my opinion and one day make a significant change in the way women are viewed in society.
PS —
If you STILL think that the gender gap is a myth, please let me prove you wrong:
1. The United States refuses to support an International Bill of Rights for women signed by nearly every other nation on the planet.
2. Women earn 78 cents for every dollar a man makes.
3. Only 17% of the seats in Congress are held by women.
4. One out of every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.
5. One out of every six women will be sexually assaulted and/or raped in her lifetime.
6. Although 48% of law school graduates and 45% of law firm associates are female, women make up only 22% of federal-level and 26% of state-level judgeships.
7. Even in the 10 top paying jobs for women, females earn less than men; only one career (speech pathology) pays the same regardless of gender.
8. America’s top female CEOs earn, on average, 33 cents for every dollar earned by a male CEO.
9. There is nothing in the United States Constitution that guarantees women the same rights as a man.
10. The World Economic Forum’s 2009 report on the Global Gender Gap ranked 134 countries for gender parity. The U.S. didn’t even make the top 10 — it came in at number 31.