#womansadvocate

Kelsey Harper

Professor Dr. Richards

(ENG-3298-01, WGS-3298-01, GBS-3298-01)

July 30th 2021

Individual CommonPlace Book & Reflection Paper

Feminism & Gender Equality

Did you know that eight out of the top ten countries have a larger female gender population compared to the male gender yet the percentage of women within the workforce was at 28% since 1959 up until 2020? That means for every 1 male, there are 7 females to that one male, making the population higher for women. It is sad to report considering I have been a part of that percentage since 2000.  To think that an entire race of extraordinary females for more than just one reason are not on the same working tier as man, even though woman represent a great deal larger within the population compared to men is astonishing. I know what you are thinking, it is due to our past ancestors that made the corporate world, “a man’s world” however, so much has changed in today's society to encourage women that they are just as equal to man in more than one way!

I, for one, grew up in a “both my parents work” home situation, which ultimately left my brother and I with a lot of babysitters. For many other people like me, that can be normal right? Well, what I didn’t know for the longest, was that my mom was working as a Merrill Lynch Financial Advisor managing over 500 million dollars in assets which ranks her in the top one half percent of all females and more importantly males in her industry. Ironically she has been doing this for over 34 years and the percentage of women who are at her level in the investment business has never moved past 15%. Making her one of only 200 other women in the entire industry at her level(which made her job an everyday event to consistently prove herself to the men around her.) She picked a career that was based on meritocracy, so there was very little subjectivity to her advancement. Basically, she was responsible for her own success, the harder she worked, the better she did. This inspired me at an early age because my mom never seemed to think that whatever she was searching for, shooting for or hoping for was unreachable. If anything it never even crossed her mind to not work as hard as she could to be within her industry and have the reputation she has built up to today. She has made it her mission to bring up other women to follow in her path. Okay, so you may ask well how does this even relate to our class? Well, part of the reason I was so interested in taking the class in the first place was the title, which is, “Woman’s Writing Worldwide”, which stood out to me because of the first word. It stood out because of that five letter & two syllable word that can make or break a human coming into the world. For others, within third world countries, like the ones we have been reading about, that word defined one from the jump and almost pre-decided that female's destiny. As much as I would like to say it is different in the United States, it is similar in the way that being a woman in today’s culture is a huge ever-growing adjustment because men are only making it harder for us to speak our truths and claim our spots within the working class. Trust me, I may sound like a hater on the male race, but I am eternally grateful to a lot of them for making me the person I am today, however if men truly understood woman, like we do them, the world would be a much fairer place because it is not a competition all the time like men tend to make it to be.

One person that spoke volumes to this exact subject was Meghan Markle, in her speech that specifically dealt with her first encounter with being a woman’s right advocate at the early age of 11. In that speech, she essentially told the audience that she was watching a TV show in grade school, when a commercial came on for a dish liquid with the tagline, “woman all around America are fighting greasy pots and pans,” when two boys in her class quickly said after that commercial, “yeah that is where women belong, in the kitchen.” She was so bothered with this that she wrote to the first lady, then Hilary Clinton, Linder Elerby, Gloria Albred and the soap manufacturer, Proctor and Gamble to change the tagline to, “people all over America are fighting pots and pans.” When in fact, a month later they in fact did change the tagline and opened the doorways for Markle to really understand the magnitude of her actions within this topic. She then goes on to even say that, “women need a seat at the table, they need an invitation to be seated there, and in some cases when a seat is unavailable then they have to make their own. It is said that girls with dreams become women with vision. May we empower each other to carry out such a vision because it is not enough to simply talk about equality and it is not enough to simply believe in it, one must work at it. Let us work at it together, starting now.” I absolutely loved her entire story because it really hit home for me who was mesmerized by her willingness to stand up and say something. Without that willingness from women such as her, women as an entire race will never have a seat at the table. I am thankful to her and for the blessed opportunity to come across that story which inspired me to start a club chapter of CHAARG(changing health, attitude, actions to recreate girls) to encourage women to speak their truths, focus on themselves and be inspired by the powerful woman around them to step up and not only prioritize their mental health & wellness but their eating, their exercise, their self care, their mental health and overall happiness.

Another important factor to add, is that it has been observed in women's fight for equality in the workforce,  that there are a lot of women that fall into the category of being a part of the “sandwich generation.” This generation of professional working women have been tasked with both caregiving for their children and their aging parents. This has caused breaks within their career paths and deferred promotions. This is particularly felt within the wealth gap of income disparity between men and women. Recently, I have noticed a corporate trend towards improving this disparity. Corporations are offering more flexible work hours to accommodate these “sandwich generation” working mothers.

One speaker that really spoke volumes to this exact subject was the Msimang TED talk, where she described a time in her life where she had something taken from her by the opposite gender and felt for the first time the extreme difference between a boy’s perspective and a girl’s perspective. A great quote from our actual syllabus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was, “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story be the only story.” I enjoyed this quote because both the story by Msimang and the quote by Adichie, touch upon a common goal, equality in every form. Another element that really moved me within Msimang’s TED Talk was her inner passion for storytelling and really trying to capture what makes a good story. I also was really inspired by the TED Talk by Dalia Mogahed, a religious muslim that spoke heavily on the idea of Muslims within America. Although her topic wasn’t exactly about gender equality but more so about racism in general, she spoke about a time in her life when she felt embarrassed to not only be a muslim but also a female muslim. Her story about being scared for her life after the 9/11 attacks, was the first time in her life, she said, that she was afraid to be her true self. I felt for her in this way that I too, felt similar when walking down a city street by myself as a young adult female. Although the two are still very different, in the moment while watching her speak about her story, this was the first image that popped into my mind.

Most importantly, I enjoyed the TED Talk by Kavita Ramdas, with her extraordinary opener, which was: “ Given my TED profile, you might be expecting that I'm going to speak to you about the latest philanthropic trends -- the one that's currently got Wall Street and the World Bank buzzing -- how to invest in women, how to empower them, how to save them. Not me. I am interested in how women are saving us. They're saving us by redefining and re-imagining a future that defies and blurs accepted polarities, polarities we've taken for granted for a long time, like the ones between modernity and tradition, First World and Third World, oppression and opportunity.” This got me thinking more and more about gender equality as a whole and just how important and influential women are in society. Countries such as China, took a very long time to find this out, as many of new born baby girls were sold to the States for money because in their culture, “boys were the only ones that could work to bring the family up, girls are an embarrassment and are only here for one thing, reproduction.” However, after several years, they grew to know that they ended up needing more women because they were running out of women to bear children, hence the population drop in 2019 into 2020.

To combat that however, it has been proven through the last century that intellectually women are naturally more nurturing & emotionally smarter than men, just like the saying that “women develop maturity faster than men do”. So women tend to outshine men in industries such nursing.  However, men tend to rely more heavily on their physical strength in order to obtain certain jobs that are not typically where women fit into the picture such as construction and engineering. I, for one, have never viewed it like that because I have always believed that no matter the race or ethnicity, age, gender, religion, sexuality or financial standing, everyone deserves to work a job they love in any industry and that all judgement should be shoved out the window without reason.