This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first woman elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin.
Progress has certainly been made since her time, as there are now 104 women in Congress, but this progress might seem slow moving when you consider that these women still make up less than 20 percent of congressional seats available. Given that the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission formed in 1965 protects women from workplace discrimination and Title IX has been protecting women’s rights to education since 1972, it may seem that not much more needs to be done to further the rights of women and that women are now in an equal playing field with respect to their male counterparts.
Given these legal remedies, it may seem that we’re in a post-feminist era, thereby prompting the question, “What’s the point of feminism in the 21st century?”
To think that feminism is only about procuring legal rights is to miss both the point of the movement, as well as that which it reflects back to us about our current society.
Historically, a vocal minority made the term feminism synonymous with misandry, causing many women and men to become apprehensive about associating themselves with the movement. Yet, this has been changing as strong women like Maya Angelou, Malala Yousafzai, Emma Watson, Jennifer Lawrence, Audre Lorde and Beyonce continue to step forward to demonstrate the importance of modern day feminism. At its heart, feminism is about social and economic equality for women, as well as their rights as individuals to self-determine.
Feminism is concerned with everything from fair pay, to being taken seriously as leaders and experts, to having control over their medical choices. Despite the aforementioned legal victories, women still earn roughly 79 cents for every one dollar earned by men, only 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, we have yet to see a woman lead our proud country, and women still are fighting against social stigmas attached to their appearance and sexuality. Women are considered less competent if they don’t wear mascara, if they dress too sexy or if they don’t dress sexy enough. Yet men are rarely ever denied opportunities based on their physical appearances, because looks have nothing to do with measures of competency.
At the same time, members of Congress continually fight to repress the sexual freedoms of women by limiting their reproductive choices regarding birth control, emergency contraceptives and abortions while simultaneously attempting to dismantle the social services that help these women take care of the resulting children. What’s more, we’re the only industrialized nation without paid maternity leave.
Problems unique to the 21st century have also arisen.
It is disproportionately women who lose their jobs and social standing when ex-partners or hackers release unauthorized nude images of them, demonstrated by the recent cases of Erin Andrews and Leigh Anne Arthur. Once made public, these images continue to victimize women, with few legal protections offering recourse.
And outdated stereotypes still persist today: a nurse is a woman while a doctor is a man, a law clerk is a woman while a lawyer is a man, a school teacher is a woman while a professor is a man, a cook is a woman while a chef is a man, etc.
It’s time that women are held to the same standards as men, are provided the same opportunities as men, and are given as much respect as men. Until this happens, feminism will have a place.
Women and men alike should be proud to be feminists. Fixing these issues will require changing social attitudes, especially on the part of men. Women already know they’re strong and fierce, it’s a matter of showing others that women are capable in every realm, that they are more than their sexuality, that they’re deserving of equal respect.
Social justice requires the participation of everyone in society, not just the oppressed. In the words of the Notorious RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), “I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough (women on the supreme court)? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”
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