#HeForShe and the Struggle for Equality
By SOLEIL PAZ
Staff Writer
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I sincerely hope that none of you will roll your eyes or put down the paper simply because you read the word “feminism.” Ideally, I shouldn’t even have to be worried about that.
Too often has the word been equated with such things as annoyance, ostracism, isolation, or frustration. Contrary to popular belief, feminists don’t actually want to dismantle the patriarchal paradigm; feminists by definition want gender equality.
Sadly, our society—and any society for that matter—still has not reached the point in which all can truly be deemed “equal.” But before I go any further on my equality soapbox, let’s talk about Hermione Granger, lest the remainder of you roll your eyes and put down the paper as well.
Emma Watson, having just graduated from Brown University this past May, was recently introduced as the United Nations’ Global Goodwill Ambassador. Already a committed scholar and humanitarian, a representative for UN Women, and a leader of their solidarity movement, her casting as the beloved brainiac in Harry Potter is frighteningly accurate.
On September 20, Watson delivered a mind-blowing speech that introduced UN Women’s new HeForShe campaign, the solidarity movement for gender equality. HeForShe has gained a lot of traction in the past week alone, launching an official website that demonstrates its supporters from all over the globe. This is, as Watson has put it, a formal invitation for men to join the cause, so that the fight for gender equality is no longer for women, led by women. A video of the speech can be found online for those who are interested.
Yes, we’re going to be tackling the big issues now; let me just get my soapbox ready. Statistically, women make about eighty cents to a man’s dollar for the same work. Jobs held by women are most often held at a lower status than men, and even more so after childrearing comes into play.
Though women make up about half of the total workforce, only 5% of all senior managers are female. Business needs aside, as basic right women should be able to make decisions about their own bodies, yet that too is being threatened.
That issue alone is a dangerous subject. Even as I write this, I worry that there is an invisible line that I might overstep, and that crossing it would label me in the same way that ignorance labels feminism.
Perhaps the most prominent piece of Emma Watson’s speech was on the double standards to which we hold men and women. We teach our daughters to be cooperative, passive, and emotional. We teach our sons to be competitive, dominant, and rational. If anyone, including men, falls somewhere in between (or in a category that has not already been appropriated for their biological sex) people tend to see it as an abnormality. Society steers us towards different directions simply because we were born one way or the other.
As it was phrased in Watson’s speech, “It is time that we all perceived gender on a spectrum, instead of two sets of opposing ideals.” Gender is not divided into solid blocks of male and female. It is crucial that we start understanding gender and biological sex as two separate entities, for if our gender were based exclusively on biology, we would all conform to the archetype of our designated sex. We are not defined as one of two subtypes of the human population, we are defined as humans. Period.
That’s what feminism is. Doesn’t seem too bad anymore, now does it?
The movement is not as radical a notion as we have been led to believe. For whatever reason, our society has taken that word and mutated it, thinking it to mean an over-inflation of the female ego. Men are afraid of independent women because they have been taught that it is abnormal; god forbid people start being too individual.
For example, as a girl with a somewhat boyish haircut I’ve been told my hair is too short, too daring, too masculine, and too assertive. While I have actually received more compliments than complaints, it still bothers me when people start asking if I worry that I’ll be misinterpreted, asking when I will grow it back, even grieving the loss of my femininity. I would argue that taking control of how I style my hair does not rob me of my femininity, it proves it.
If you walk away from this with anything at all, let it be that identifying as a feminist does not mandate the hatred or the degradation of men.
Many who claim not to be feminists still share the same beliefs with them, whether they are aware of it or not. While we cannot seem to agree on a more receptive word for the cause, what is truly important is the idea that lies behind the word.
Regardless, I applaud you for reading all the way to the end, however many eye rolls it took.
