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Believing in the equality of all genders and actively working to remove structural barriers that support gender-based discrimination and oppression are arguments for identifying as a feminist. This includes identifying and challenging cultural practices and systems that support gender inequality while working to establish a society where all people have equal opportunities, rights and treatment. Feminists frequently participate in activism, education, and collaboration to promote gender equality and create a more welcoming and just society for everyone.
Even though feminism is becoming more and more popular, some individuals are still put off by the term. That should change.
Let’s start with 20 of the many strong arguments for identifying as a feminist:
Women are underrepresented in leadership roles
The underrepresentation of women in leadership positions is a global problem. According to Forbes, in 2016 nearly four out of 10 businesses in G7 countries had no women in senior management positions.
The Globe and Mail reported that in 2017, almost 60% of Canadian corporations had no women on their boards. And businesses are missing out—several worldwide studies show that having more women in boardrooms increases creativity and financial success, among other benefits.
According to Catalyst data, minority women held just 4.6 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 businesses in the United States in 2018, with women accounting for just 22.5 percent. While things are slowly improving in Australia, where the number of women is 31.2 There was a 26% increase in board directors in 2019 compared to 2016.Nevertheless, a thorough evaluation of the effects of the pandemic on women’s labor force participation is yet to be done.
Women still earn less than men
In the US, women, on average, earn 83 cents for every $1 men earn; This translates into a national average wage gap of 17%. Over a lifetime, a full-time working woman earns about $11,000 less than a man. This difference can build up to almost half a million dollars. The Joint Economic Committee Democratic staff of the US Congress published a study titled “Gender Wage Inequality: Implications for Women, Families and the Economy” in March 2022, which included 2020 data.
According to the survey, women have lower average wages than men at all education levels, and men with less education often earn more. However, the wage gap varies widely among states. In addition,Young women, white women, women of color, and older women have greater income disparities.
The report quantifies several factors that contribute to the widening wage gap, such as women being more likely than men to be primary caregivers for sick or elderly family members; Women frequently pay a “mommy penalty,” a pay cut after having children due to fewer responsibilities or work hours; And women are directed from an early age into low-paying fields of study and careers.
Even with all these complex considerations, the research states that “more than 40% difference in speed can be discriminated.”
Women are more likely to be victims of sexual violence
The World Health Organization states that men are more likely than women to abuse and sexually assault their intimate partners. According to the American group RAINN, one in six American women, compared to one in thirty-three American men, has attempted or completed sexual assault at some point in their lives. Additionally, 82 percent of juvenile victims and 90 percent of adult victims are female.
While sexual abuse occurs in all socioeconomic contexts, some groups are more susceptible than others. For example, women with disabilities and Aboriginal women in Canada have higher rates of sexual assault than non-Aboriginal women.
Millions of girls around the world are denied access to education
According to the Malala Fund, an additional 130 million girls worldwide do not have access to secondary education, and 32 million girls of primary school age are not enrolled in any educational program. This is due to the fact that girls are often married off, assigned to work at a young age, forced to care for younger siblings or experience abuse that prevents them from attending school.
Women are still told what to wear
Regardless of their age, size, wealth or poverty, women are always advised on what to wear. There are plenty of people who will advise you to wear miniskirts after forty if you just google the question. Things start to get really sticky when organizations start dress-policing. In recent years, numerous schools have faced criticism for enacting discriminatory dress codes with the rationale that certain types of girls’ clothing are “distracting” for boys.
Women are more likely to be victims of conjugal violence
Although men can also be victims of domestic abuse, women account for a greater proportion of these cases. According to statistics from the World Health Organization, about thirty percent of women worldwide who are in a relationship say that they have experienced some form of physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner in their lifetime.
When it comes to equality, the little details matter, too
When it comes to gender equality, the simplest things can sometimes make a big difference. More men’s restrooms should definitely provide changing tables so boys can change diapers more frequently—without having to crouch uncomfortably on the floor.
Women take on the bulk of the mental load
Although some progress has been made in recent years, there is still considerable inequality in the distribution of household responsibilities between male and female spouses. A 2015 Working Mother Research Institute survey of more than a thousand parents found that more women than men do most of the household chores, including cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and taking children to doctor’s appointments.
Add to that the idea of “psychic burden” popularized by a French cartoonist named Emma Comique. According to this concept, women are more likely to bear the unseen burden of all the planning, organizing and thinking of maintaining a family. The disparity has become more pronounced since the outbreak.
As soon as a field becomes prestigious, women tend to disappear
A well-known example of this is the restaurant business. Cooking has historically been associated with women, with the exception of fine dining, where it is seen as “women’s work”. The majority of well-known chefs are men, and there are very few female chefs in the most prestigious lists, such as the World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Michelin Stars.
Women are less celebrated for their artistic accomplishments
Numerous creative industries such as art, literature and film are affected by this problem. According to a 2019 study by the Public Library of Science, 87% of painters exhibited in major museums in America were men. In a similar vein, ARTNews highlighted gender bias in the American and European art worlds in 2015.
Some statistics show that between 2007 and 2014, only 29% of solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York featured female artists; Only 25% of women artists had a solo exhibition at London’s Tate Modern in a single year; And over the years, the Venice Biennale has chosen a significantly higher percentage of male artists than female artists, with women making up 33% of participants 2015.
While many publications are moving toward gender parity, there is still a long way to go, according to the 2019 edition of VIDA Count, which measures gender imbalance in literary media and book reviews. For example, women represented only 33.37% of The New York Review of Books in 2019. It includes reviewed authors, bylines and book critics.
Nothing is going well in the film industry. Among the top 100 grossing films of 2019, according to Women and Hollywood, 20% are directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors and cinematographers.
Women are frequent victims of online harassment
The Guardian studied comments on its website in 2016 and found that white men made up the majority of regular opinion writers, while eight women (of whom four were white and four were not) and two black men received the nastiest comments. All ten regular writers who received the least abuse were men.
Furthermore, journalists are not the only targets of cyberbullying. A United Nations survey claims that nearly three-quarters of women who use the Internet have been victims of cyber-violence.
Rape culture is endemic in our society
Rape culture is the normalization of sexual violence as a result of widespread societal beliefs about gender and sexuality. This creates an environment where victims are silenced and sexual abusers are given the benefit of the doubt.
Manifestations of rape culture can take many different forms, such as making cruel jokes, questioning the victim’s honesty or blaming them for the incident, or asserting that men lack self-control.
According to a 2014 survey of 86 undergraduate men, “Denying Rape But Supporting Forced Sex: Finding Differences Among Respondents,” 13.6 percent of them said they would “rape a woman” if no one was watching and there were no consequences. When interrogated, the men were again told to interrogate them
Rape culture is the normalizing of sexual assault as a result of social beliefs about gender and sexuality that are pervasive. This leads to an environment where victims are silenced and sexual assaulters are given the benefit of the doubt.
The manifestations of rape culture can take many different forms, such as making a crude joke, casting doubt on the victims’ sincerity or holding them responsible for the incident, or asserting that males lack self-control.
According to 86 undergraduate males surveyed in a 2014 study titled “Denying Rape but Endorsing Forceful Intercourse: Exploring Differences Among Responders,” 13.6 percent of them said that they would “rape a woman” if no one saw and there were no repercussions. When the inquiry was rephrased to inquire of the males if they would
Advertising continues to be sexist
From the modest housewife print ads of the 1950s to American Apparel’s “married-next-door” models, there are countless examples of sexism in advertising. Gender discrimination is also widespread behind the scenes. According to a 2019 article in The Guardian, sexism and sexism continue to harm women’s careers in advertising decades after Mad Menera. Many women cite examples of harassment at the hands of male co-workers, including being shunned or ignored, and even more obvious examples of harassment following the #MeToo movement.
Women should have the right to make decisions about their bodies
Human Rights Watch stated that most of the world’s nations still have laws or practices that hinder a woman’s ability to obtain a safe and legal abortion. The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have long had the strictest abortion laws in Europe, but after allowing the procedure in 2020, Northern Ireland is now facing new legal challenges.
Furthermore, despite the fact that “the majority of women in the region still do not have access to legal abortion,” restrictions are increasingly loosening in many Latin American nations. Meanwhile, several US states are implementing further restrictions challenging the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Access to abortion is strictly restricted in some provinces, even Canada, where the practice has been legal since 1988.
Being a feminist does not mean you can’t like “girly” things
Some women still believe that wearing a bra, shaving their legs, or indulging in cosmetics and high heels is a prerequisite to being identified as a feminist. This idea represents a very limited definition of what a feminist is!
Women’s autonomy, or their right to do as they choose with their bodies, is one of the core tenets of feminism. Feminists can also challenge social norms that make many women feel they must uphold certain standards of beauty, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be bothered with a new lipstick.
Gendered toys do a disservice to girls and boys
One’s potential is definitely influenced by gender stereotypes, which are ideas about what a person can or should do based on their gender. These preconceptions are introduced to children at an early age, especially through toys that are gender-specific.
A boy having fun with toy vehicles or a girl playing with dolls is perfectly acceptable. The point is that kids are still taught that these are their only options. As Megan Maas notes in The Conversation, many toys are still marketed to either girls or boys, not both. These marketing categories are based on gender stereotypes such as the action hero and the princess in the pink dress, effectively limiting children’s play options.
Even in family films, the story is all about the man
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media reports that since the end of World War II, top-grossing G-rated family films have outnumbered child characters three to one. Eighty-five percent of the acting characters in these films are male, and the female characters are frequently hypersexualized and stereotyped, leaving youth with unrealistic expectations and poor body image.
Women continue to be victims of sex trafficking
Equality Now reports that trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation is the fastest growing criminal activity in the world, with 98 percent of victims being women and girls. Sex trafficking victims face many challenges such as physical and psychological abuse, increased vulnerability to STDs, coercion into unsafe abortions, and significant psychological distress.
Women are still told to “smile”
It goes without saying that women hate being told to smile. I think most of us have faced this situation at least once in our lives: you’re just going about your day when suddenly some guy says to you, “Smile, honey!” And you forget that women aren’t just happy-go-lucky people who put on a happy face to please men. As many arguments collected in The Atlantic, the sad truth is that women need to laugh in order to succeed. The article includes testimonies from women who have faced the adverse effects of this, working in a variety of professions, including Wall Street and teaching.
Feminism is for men, too
Some believe that feminists want to subjugate men. As said it is not true. Feminism advocates equality by acknowledging that women in today’s society suffer discrimination based solely on their gender.
Feminism fights stereotypes and frees men from the inexorable demands of society, therefore promoting male freedom. Everyone should support equality, after all!
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