International Women’s Day is almost here, and many of us are looking forward to it. It’s a great day to celebrate women and to promote the cause of women and girls, all over the world. It’s important to recognize women on this one day but it’s not enough. I think that we need to recognize and support women’s value and women’s accomplishments every day of the year.
As International Women’s Day approaches, I’ve been thinking about why feminism is good for women, even when they’re oblivious to it. Whether we know it or not, feminists have been fighting on our behalf for many decades, giving women the right to vote, to own property, to be seen and heard, to have an education, to be paid a living wage and to have control over their bodies, among other things.
We’re all set to go and watch Captain Marvel, a movie which is coming out on March 8th and which celebrates a strong and empowered woman; in fact, she’s a super-hero. It’s fantastic to have such a depiction of a female protagonist in the movies but I’d also like to see everyone celebrating empowered women in real life.
A lot of women take for granted the idea of women being fully empowered and fully acknowledged, but these women don’t realize how much of their day-to-day life is powerfully and positively affected by all the feminist advances of the past.
We certainly still have a ways to go in terms of being treated with respect and dignity and afforded equal rights, freedoms and opportunities – especially women of color and women from marginalized communities – but we can also appreciate how much good that feminism has already done for us.
Feminism has led to women being listened to and taken more seriously.
I think that the majority of young North American and Western European women, and even many middle-aged woman have very little idea of how important feminism has been in the way that women live their lives today. One huge advancement is that we’re taken more seriously and our opinions and ideas are listened to and responded to, more than ever. This means that we get to make a meaningful contribution to the conversations about how we run our homes, our communities, our countries and our planet.
We’ve made great strides in the workplace and in politics; in gaining professional respect and personal autonomy, but there’s so much more to accomplish. We still make up a tiny proportion of corporate boards and we still aren’t paid equally to men. We’re still being harassed and assaulted at home, at school and in the workplace and we still do the vast majority of the domestic work. Feminism is the vehicle through which we’ll continue to work on these issues.
Feminism has empowered women to stop settling for less than they deserve.
When women are fully empowered they stop accepting second-class status. They demand to be represented on the boards that steer companies and in the political parties that make decisions about our society. They insist on being paid the same wage as equally-skilled men in equal positions and they refuse to tolerate being condescended to, controlled or harassed.
Too many of us live our lives unaware of how much work the people who came before us have put in on our behalf. We take so much of our freedom, safety, rights and opportunities for granted. On International Women’s Day, we need to be reminded of how feminists, past and present have been working so hard in order to give us better lives.
It’s a testament to the hard work feminists have been doing for us over all these years that we’re able to be so oblivious about what their work means to the average woman. We take it for granted that we don’t need a man’s signature if we want to get a mortgage or take out a loan; we take it for granted that we get to dress the way we want to, write the stories we want to and elect the officials that we choose. We take it for granted that we’re we’ll be accepted into medical school or hired for a high-status corporate job. It’s feminists who paved the way for all of these things.
We shouldn’t take it for granted that we have so many rights, freedoms and opportunities today. Feminists fought hard for each one of these.
Sadly, there are a lot of women who insist that they’re not a feminist. They make a point of insulting feminists and accusing us of all sorts of awfulness; including hating men and wanting to take all their power away from them.
I get so frustrated with the women who reject feminism. I think that they do so, in part because they misunderstand it (without examining what it actually is), and in part because they’re terrified that men will reject them if they own their power.
Feminists have made it so that we women can have our own power; we don’t need to take it away from men.
These anti-feminist women think that the only way to have what they want in life is to negate their own power and have a vicarious experience of it by associating with men who have the power, but they need to understand that because of feminism, we can have our own power without hating anyone else or oppressing anyone else.
Women who reject feminism are rejecting themselves.
Women who reject feminism are in essence, rejecting themselves, because feminism is an affirmation of every woman’s right to be seen, acknowledged, respected and treated as beings who are fully equal to men. We might be different, but different isn’t better or worse.
When we watch a movie written or directed by a woman or starring a strong female protagonist like Captain Marvel, we have feminists to thank for pushing equal representation in the film industry and for creating safer workplaces for women. Of course, we still have a long way to go in both these areas.
When we read about a female executive being promoted to a high position in her company or earning a substantial income, we need to recognize that it’s feminists who smashed through the glass ceiling. When we see women elected to public office, we need to remember that it was less than a century ago that women got the right to vote. And of course, feminists were responsible for this.
We’ve made so many strides and yet there are still so many advancements we need to make on behalf of women. Too many women from marginalized communities don’t have nearly the same rights, freedoms or privileges that women in more affluent Western countries enjoy. All women need to embrace feminism and work together to gain equality for themselves and for their sisters.
As we get ready to watch the Captain Marvel movie, we should all be asking ourselves why we don’t make the connection between the depiction of a powerful woman in the media with the achievements of the feminists whose work paved the way for such a depiction.
Feminism has never been about wanting to take anything away from men; it’s always been about loving, celebrating and advancing the cause of women. On this International Women’s Day let’s be clear about how important, necessary, and good it is to celebrate not only empowered women but the notion of feminism. Celebrating feminism enables us to continue the essential work of improving the lives of women and girls everywhere.
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