Why Do We Need Feminism in 2019?

What is feminism? The dictionary definition says that it’s “the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes”. What does that mean for our society today? I think that most people you speak to now wouldn’t say that they think women are inferior or that their place is in the kitchen or home with the kids. Women are educated, we are professionals, and we are autonomous beings. So, why does feminism still exist?

No one can decently argue that we haven’t taken great strides towards gender equality over the past century. I’m allowed to vote. I’m pursuing a degree in Biochemistry at a wonderful university. I get to decide if and when I get married or have children. These are things that we maybe take for granted today. I know I personally don’t like to dwell on the thought that my life would be entirely different (and not for the better) if I had been born a few generations sooner. Fortunately, for my generation, thinking of these things as anything less than fundamental rights as human beings is a foreign concept. Although thankful to not be living in less favorable conditions, that doesn’t stop me from seeing how far we still need to go as a society before we have reached true equality. Only then will future generations be able to have an end to the need for the existence of feminism.

“True equality”. What does that even mean?

For someone who has a pretty good life, such as myself, it could potentially feel silly nit-picking at the “little” things that prevent women from truly being on the same playing field. I would say that right now, we have a perceived equality of the sexes, but once you look past the surface it becomes difficult to ignore all of the issues that continue to persist.

One major hiccup that the new feminist movement has brought focus to is the treatment of women in the workplace. Even though women are out getting jobs and becoming financially stable on their own, there is still gender discrimination. Whether it’s thinking that a woman can’t work in sports broadcasting, not wanting to advance women because they will want to take time off when they have kids, or just not wanting female energy in the “boys club”; there is a bigger mindset change that has to happen for men and women to be seen as equals in the workplace (generally speaking of course). The most obvious manifestation of this discrimination is in the paycheck. It has been found that in the United States, full-time working women make 78–82% of that of full-time working men. Removing extenuating circumstances (although some may be related to the major issue of a patriarchal society), there is 6% pay gap that remains due to gender discrimination.

Although this is only one aspect of the residual effects of hundreds of years of seeing the sexes in specific ways. We can change laws and make them more inclusive until the cows come home, but it takes a lot more time and effort to cause a permanent change in public mindset. The reason that feminists tend to get a bad rap is that we need to scream from the mountaintops in order to get people to open their eyes to the fact that a problem still remains. Then, once that message is finally heard and accepted, there’s no simple quick solution to altering a system that benefits those who are in charge of the system. I do believe that most gender discrimination these days are more subconscious as a result of the way we are taught to think about one another, so there will most likely be no significant change until we find a way to teach our children to be better than ourselves. Until then, feminism is an important movement to shine light to those changes that may not be so obvious upon first glance at the way our society works in 2019.

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