Feminism: What a Taboo Word!

I used to think “feminism” was craziness that I wanted nothing to do with. When I heard someone say the word feminism I was always thinking something like, “Oh great…now I have to listen to a rant that is a little one sided.” I refused to say I was a feminist…BUT I also wanted to express my opinions that women do deserve equal rights to men. I was so conflicted growing up though because many people made it seem as though if you were a feminist you had crazy ideals and really weren’t realistic about the world. Thanks to Emma Watson and her HeForShe movement I have followed since September 2014 I proudly say I am a feminist. Here is what she asked those who question whether they are a feminist or not, “Would you call yourself a feminist? No? You don’t agree that there should be equal rights and opportunities for both genders? Oh you do? Then technically, you are a feminist. Sorry.” So let’s talk more about what feminism is…The basic idea of Feminism revolves around the principle that just because human bodies are designed to perform certain procreative functions, biological elements need not dictate intellectual and social functions, capabilities, and rights. Okay I am just going to put this out there now because I know some of you out there might be thinking this… Just because someone is a feminist doesn’t mean you stop holding the door for women…you should still hold the door for a feminist; this is known as respect or politeness and has nothing to do with gender discrimination...women also can hold the doors open for men...again it is just a politeness thing. I do it for men and women all the time...okay sorry off that soap box. I choose to be a feminist because of the main major gender discriminating issues…below I will explain one of the major gender discrimination issues I hear about all the time that affects nearly every woman across the world…income! So why do we still talk about feminism? Because even now there is still a gender gap between men and women. For example, we have a wage gap that is huge! Women tend to make 78 cents to the man’s dollar. Okay sounds pretty close right? Wrong. Here is an example…Say a man makes $40K in a year…how much does his woman counterpart make? $31,200. Doesn’t look like some small change anymore does it? Now what do most people say back to this when you talk about this gender wage gap? "But women choose different jobs…they work lower paying jobs…etc." Okay...fine...let us go ahead and look there too. Even now across America the number one job for women is being a secretary which has been this way since the 1950’s. Next are jobs such as teaching or nursing. The number one job for men is sales workers followed by drivers and managers. So I understand that jobs account for differences but even if we choose one specific occupation, teaching for example, men still make on average $1,096 a week while women make $956 a week. This creates a gap where women make 87 cents to man’s dollar. Other jobs are even worse…Retail Sales -70 cents/man’s dollar and Lawyers- 83 cents/man’s dollar. As you can tell it is easy to come up with excuses but we need to come up with some change!

Obviously there are so many other facets to consider in the battle for gender equality such as: Health, Identity, Politics, Violence and Education. If you are interested in learning more about feminism or the HeForShe campaign go to www.heforshe.org