By Brenda Penaloza
We often as humans shy away from issues that don’t concern us, feeling as though we aren’t supplied with a significant amount of information to even form an opinion on them. This feeling is connected to a modern-day issue concerning the term “feminism”. It’s the thought process of many feeling that the Feminist movement is a “man-hating” group of women, when the reality is much more.
To begin truly understanding, start with the book definition. A feminist is one who advocates on women’s rights based on the equality of sexes. Nowhere in this definition are hidden rules that you must meet requirements of physically being a woman. Often miscommunicated, the truth is anyone has the power to be a feminist, as well as support the feminist movement. It’s a fight for equality within all aspects of our society; one that is still prominent in modern day.
Here’s an example: statistics show for every dollar earned by a man, a woman earns eighty-nine cents. This lifelong difference in earnings has many women today financially insecure, even while they are working full time. This experience is due to gender discrimination in the hiring processes and workplace policies, as well as insufficient worker protection policies. Also, gender bias and stereotypes affect the chances for women today to fulfill higher leadership positions.The excuse is women being seen as “overly emotional”, “unqualified”, and that most times we need to just “calm down”. These barriers of probability are still intimidating to society today, this should provide more of a reason to fight for women to serve in influential positions, one day being seen as a standard.
Many mindsets on feminism are shaped from one’s upbringing. The views of peers and information spread like wildfire on the internet has formed a misunderstanding of what a feminist is. At the end of the day, anyone can define themselves as a feminist: standing for equality regardless of who you are. There’s no room in the world for tearing others down! Instead we should replace the past with new possibilities of anyone being capable of thriving in an equal opportunity environment.
