One day in class I was talking to a friend about these poems we had to do for English. She told me she was going to write about the sexism in the dress codes at school. A boy in my class then turned to us and said that dress codes weren’t sexist. That launched us into a whole ethical debate where we talked about dress codes, catcalling, and wage gaps. When we started talking about wage gaps, a different boy turned and said in full seriousness, “I thought the wage gap only existed in professional athletics”. This opened my eyes and showed me that many people don’t know the problems most women face in society today. Later on, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed when I saw a post from a celebrity and she was wearing a shirt that said “feminist” on it. I was shocked when I started reading the comments which were variations of “go make me a sandwich w****” and “man hater”. This proved to me that a lot of people only know the twisted version of feminism in today’s culture, and how they just need to be educated on what it means to be a feminist. To really understand, people need to know what feminism is in today’s culture, how past feminists have shaped modern feminism, and why we need it.

Merriam-Webster defines feminism as “the theory of political, economic, and social equality of the sexes”. Not so hard to understand, right? Apparently, it is. Dozens of misconceptions and stereotypes about feminism have wormed it’s way into society through memes, text posts, and various “trolls” on social media. Even before social media and the internet was widely present in culture, books and movies were making feminists seem like whiny, selfish, man haters. Another very prominent misconception in today’s culture is that men cannot be feminists. Many assume that all male feminists are gay or transgender because they are apparently more “feminine” than straight men. I don’t think that a lot people realise that feminism affects men too. I mean, it says it right there in the definition, “equality of the sexes” not “equality of the women”. One prime example of how men are affected by feminism is male rape and sexual assault victims. Male victims tend to be seen as “weak” because they couldn’t “fend off a woman”; newsflash, men have raped/sexually assaulted men. In fact, they still do. The Bureau of Justice went to nine different schools in 2015 and conducted a survey on how many men and women had been sexually assaulted in the 2014-2015 academic year. They found that out of the 90 or so men interviewed, the average amount of boys assaulted was 13.2%. That doesn’t even account for the rape cases. Male victims tend to get little recognition in the media, but equal rights for both sexes could give these people the help and representation they need.

Feminism isn’t always bashed and hated on by the public though. On multiple occasions, women from all over the country and world have come together against or for a cause. One recent example of this would be the Women’s Marches that were happening all over the world on January 21st. Millions of men and women came together to protest the newly inaugurated Donald Trump and the misogyny, racism, and xenophobia his campaign had promoted. This was only one of the more recent examples of the unity women--and men--have shown throughout history.

Historians and people in women’s studies tend to refer to feminism in 3 “waves”. Most of the events that took place during these waves happened in the U.S, so the majority of this information is going to be about the American feminist movement/s, not all of the world’s movements. According to the article “History and Theory of Feminism”, the “first wave” of feminism occurred in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Early on in this wave, feminists mainly focused on “the promotion of equal contract and property rights for women and the opposition to chattel marriage and ownership of married women (and their children) by their husbands”, but later on moved to wanting political power and political rights. The biggest political right they were fighting for was the right to vote. These suffragettes fought hard for what most people now see as a basic right. The mere fact that less than a century ago women didn’t have the right to help choose their leader, shocks me to my core. 

Now the “second wave” of feminism took place during the early 1960s through the late 1980s. This wave mainly focused on “dismantling workplace inequality”, which included salary and overall career inequality. Many women were struggling to be taken seriously in fields such as medicine, engineering, and law because they were told they would be either their husband or children’s caretakers. If a woman did get a job outside of housework, they were told they could only be schoolteachers, nurses, or secretaries. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which prohibited workplace discrimination, was established but it did little to help women in the workplace. In 1966, a group of feminists, one being Betty Friedan, founded an organization that aimed to fight gender discrimination called the National Organization for Women, or NOW. There were other groups of feminists at this time too. Some were radical feminists (those who wanted to abolish the patriarchy socially as opposed to politically), and some were socialist feminists. In the article “Socialist Feminism: What Difference Did It Make to the History of Women’s Studies?”, author Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy writes, “At the same time they [socialist feminists] did not agree that women’s liberation could be achieved separately from other struggles for social and economic justice” meaning that, in order for women to be fully liberated, everyone needed to be liberated. The second wave is often linked to the third wave in terms of what they were fighting for.

The “third wave” began in the early 1990s and is still going on today. This came as a response to the “failure” of the second wave. The main ideology of this wave is to form a “post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality” and most third wave feminists challenge the second wave’s ideas as to what is or isn’t good for women. This wave also focuses more on women of color and the discrimination they face in the workplace as well as on the street. A lot of past feminist movements have not been very considerate of race-related subjects so many feminists in this wave are trying to get others to be more considerate of the issues. It was also stated in the “History of Theory of Feminism” article that there are internal debates between different feminists about whether there are important differences between the sexes (e.g., “are men stronger physically?”), or no differences except those that have been established due to social construct. One obvious “third wave” movement was the Women’s March in January, which, in my opinion, really shows what feminists have been about all this time. Although women have come so far in the past century alone, the fight for equality is not over.

According to the Gale Encyclopedia of U.S Economic History’s article “Gender Wage Gap”,  The wage gap varies based on location, race and age across the country. A 2010 census showed that the smallest wage gap was in D.C where women earned an average of “90 percent of what their male counterparts earned”. The census also showed that the largest gap was in Wyoming where the female workers only earned about 64 percent of what male workers were earning. This gap has proven to be wider for women of color. My one question is, why do women earn less for the same jobs? Why do women of color earn even less than white women? It just doesn’t make sense to me. If both the males and females are equal in education and experience then why don’t they earn the same?

The wage gap isn’t the only problems women face today. Have you ever been told you have “violated the dress code” at school or work for wearing a shirt that shows just the tiniest bit of cleavage or midriff? How about when you wear leggings with a shirt that doesn’t cover your butt? Schools especially have been cracking down on the “distractions” women or young girls pose to the boys/male teachers. So, you’re telling me that just letting my butt be there (not hanging out of my leggings) is too distracting to young boys? Maybe instead of telling girls to cover up their already covered bodies, we should be teaching young boys not to sexualize women’s bodies even more than they already are and that our bodies are not there for them to gawk at. The sexualization and objectification of the female body is definitely more prominent on the streets though. Catcalling and sexual assault/rape have been a pretty big issue for a while, especially catcalling. Catcalling is, “whistling, shouting, or making a comment of a sexual nature to a woman passing by”; something that makes women very uncomfortable and is really degrading. People could try starting a polite conversation and throwing in a compliment if they want to, instead of yelling down at them how much they “love their legs/butt/breasts/etc”. Treating women as an equal and respecting them could solve all of these problems and, honestly, make this a better society to live in.

So next time there is a woman getting harassed or degraded, remember, that woman is your equal and she deserves to be treated with respect. Remember how hard women had to fight to get as far as we are. Know that it’s okay for people to call themselves feminists and that just because society has their own twisted version of what feminism is, doesn’t mean they are a “man hater”. I hope that those boys I talked to in class now understand what I was getting at in our debate and that they understand the problems women face a little bit more.