You Don’t Hate Feminism. You Just Don’t Understand It.

Feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is often confused with sexism but, in its true sense, feminism is about equality between the sexes, not advancing one over the other.

Feminism is a movement that does not intend to degrade, but to empower. The mission of feminism is not to mistreat others, but to bring hope to the misrepresented and enact meaningful change. It's about taking gender out of the equation, and putting a greater value on what each individual has to bring to the world.

Whether it is a young girl denied the right to school or a male tired of hearing the stereotypical phrase "man up," injustice is being done and it is essential to stand up against it. Instead of opposing each other, more change would occur if we'd use our energies to change something about the injustice both sides feel.

 Let's stop quibbling about which gender is "better" than the other, and let's join hands to provide education, dignity and a better standard of living for all.

THE OTHER SEX

I 

The Bane of Gender Identity Since the beginning of history, almost all conflicts and issues that the humankind has had the misfortune of witnessing have their roots in identity politics. There have been great wars to establish the dominance of one national identity over another. There have been riots, bloody and ruthless, between different, conflicting religious identities. There have been fights for equal opportunities between unequal class and caste identities.
The women, on similar lines, have faced an entire set of concerns specific to their gender identity. Identities overlap and need to be prioritised over one another. Which issue bothers one the most depends on whether one identifies oneself as an Indian first or as a Hindu, as a male or as a Hindu upper cast male? Women, then, face the same issues with different magnitudes depending upon their supplementary sources of identity.
For example, an upper caste woman will find herself placed higher in the social hierarchy, defined by power relations, than a lower caste man. However, that said, one cannot neglect the problems surrounding the “weaker sex” as a whole. Everything, from emotions to occupation, is gender labelled by the society. A man in the nursing profession is a shocker and a strong headed woman with a sharp tongue an exception. Everything feminine is very matter-of-factly placed inferior to everything masculine.
This gender compartmentalization is not just challenging for women but for men as well who are under constant societal pressure to prove their “manliness”.

 II 

The Public, the Private Moving ahead with the “burden of femininity” is challenging for women on more than one level. Gender discrimination begins within the household with families condemning the birth of a girl child, leading to the increasing levels of sex selective abortions and female infanticide.
Discrimination continues to result in dismally low levels of female literacy with parents either confining the role of woman to within the household and hence perceiving education to be fruitless, or being sceptical of letting their girl venture outside due to safety concerns.
 Hence, before entering the public sphere, historically thought to be rightly suited only for the men community, women struggle with social constructions which work towards confining them to the realm of the private and not allow access to education, gained via both schooling and lived experiences. The reality today is such that the distinction between the public and private is disappearing into a blur.
 Women in every sphere need to fight to preserve their autonomy and establish their individuality. A women’s identity is always described in relation to a man’s. This is the primary reason why feminists had to struggle over issues such as women’s property and inheritance rights. Issues surrounding the bodily autonomy of women are vast not only in number but also in complexity.
Dwelling into the rural parts of India will reveal how women are absolutely bereft of any reproductive rights. Coupled with poverty, hunger and homelessness is the absence of minimal accommodations for pregnant women.
The scenario in the urban India is similarly crippled with matters such as lack of paid maternity leave benefits and affordable and competent child care for single or working mothers. A hot debate in this light is over the legality of abortions aiming to arm women with decision making autonomy over the issue. Apart from the above, there are also several less mainstream women’s issues ranging from treatment of women in prison, sex trafficking to affirmative action for women (quota within quota). Gender discrimination, then, which begins from within the home stretches out from the doorstep to the world all around.
Various structural and cultural forces contribute to the dismally low presence of women in places ranging from sports grounds to boardrooms, protest gatherings to parliaments. The women who do manage to overcome such above mentioned roadblocks and set out to find their places under the sun face a fresh set of challenges at their workplaces. The workplace is never a level playing field. The existing laws fail to protect women from workplace harassment. The gender wage gap can put all soaring economic figures to shame if half the workforce needs to work an extra of three months to be paid the same as the other half.

 III

 Moving Towards Change The challenge for us, then, is to bring out half the strength of our civil society to participate more freely and actively in the public spaces. The challenge is to achieve gender equality with the support of both the women as well as the men community.
 The solution is to establish an inclusive society by breaking barriers of caste, gender, class, religion and region. Development and growth will remain a mere rhetoric until we include women as stake holders. The most important concern for policy makers is to work towards removing the gender inequalities present in the public sphere.
Women need to be protected against the violations of their health and reproductive rights. From education to employment opportunities, there is a need for change on every front. The environment for increased political participation for women as well as a strong impactful presence in the academia to the entertainment industry needs to be worked towards.
 Increased cases of sexual violence need to be dealt with increased sensitivity and precision so as to address the very root cause of attacks on women. Until the violence rate is brought down, we cannot expect the gender development index to be on a rise. Cultural subordination of and discrimination against women needs to be addressed by attempting to reform the regressive mind set prevalent among the larger part of the population which sees women and men as unequal.
This requires greater discourse around women’s issues supported by insightful research. It has been said in words for far too long now that a nation cannot move ahead while the women are left behind. Now is the time to change the reality, one wrong at a time.

-Diksha Pandey

Emma Watson's HeForShe Speech

On Saturday, September 20, British actor and Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women, Emma Watson, gave a smart, important, and moving speech about gender inequality and how to fight it. In doing so, she launched the HeForShe initiative, which aims to get men and boys to pledge to join the feminist fight for gender equality. In the speech Ms. Watson makes the very important point that in order for gender equality to be achieved, harmful and destructive stereotypes of and expectations for masculinity have got to change.

 Below is the full transcript of her thirteen-minute speech.

 Today we are launching a campaign called for HeForShe. I am reaching out to you because we need your help. We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved. This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN. We want to try to mobilize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for change. And, we don’t just want to talk about it.
We want to try and make sure that it’s tangible. I was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women six months ago. And, the more I spoke about feminism, the more I realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.
 For the record, feminism by definition is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of political, economic and social equality of the sexes. I started questioning gender-based assumptions a long time ago. When I was 8, I was confused for being called bossy because I wanted to direct the plays that we would put on for our parents, but the boys were not. When at 14, I started to be sexualized by certain elements of the media. When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of sports teams because they didn’t want to appear muscly. When at 18, my male friends were unable to express their feelings.
 I decided that I was a feminist, and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to identify as feminists. Apparently, I’m among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, and anti-men. Unattractive, even. Why has the word become such an uncomfortable one? I am from Britain, and I think it is right I am paid the same as my male counterparts.
I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decisions that will affect my life. I think it is right that socially, I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly, I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to see these rights. No country in the world can yet say that they achieved gender equality. These rights, I consider to be human rights, but I am one of the lucky ones.
 My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn't assume that I would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day. These influences were the gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today. They may not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists that are changing the world today. We need more of those. And if you still hate the word, it is not the word that is important. It’s the idea and the ambition behind it, because not all women have received the same rights I have. In fact, statistically, very few have. In 1997, Hillary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly, many of the things that she wanted to change are still true today.
But what stood out for me the most was that less than thirty percent of the audience were male. How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation? Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue, too. Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society, despite my need of his presence as a child, as much as my mother’s. I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help for fear it would make them less of a man. In fact, in the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20 to 49, eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease.
I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality, either. We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes, but I can see that they are, and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.

Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong. It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum, instead of two sets of opposing ideals. If we stop defining each other by what we are not, and start defining ourselves by who we are, we can all be freer, and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.
 I want men to take up this mantle so that their daughters, sisters, and mothers can be free from prejudice, but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too, reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned, and in doing so, be a more true and complete version of themselves. You might be thinking, “Who is this Harry Potter girl, and what is she doing speaking at the UN?” And, it’s a really good question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing. All I know is that I care about this problem, and I want to make it better.
And, having seen what I’ve seen, and given the chance, I feel it is my responsibility to say something. Statesman Edmund Burke said, “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.” In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt, I told myself firmly, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” If you have similar doubts when opportunities are presented to you, I hope those words will be helpful. Because the reality is that if we do nothing, it will take seventy-five years, or for me to be nearly 100, before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work. 15.5 million girls will be married in the next 16 years as children. And at current rates, it won't be until 2086 before all rural African girls can have a secondary education. If you believe in equality, you might be one of those inadvertent feminists that I spoke of earlier, and for this, I applaud you. We are struggling for a uniting word, but the good news is, we have a uniting movement. It is called HeForShe. I invite you to step forward, to be seen and to ask yourself, “If not me, who? If not now, when?”