I was invited by Clearly Contacts, to talk about feminism at their celebration of International Women's Day. Here is the script from the talk:
Let’s just get this out of the way . I am a Feminist. An All caps, unapologetic, enthusiastic and yes, sometimes angry feminist. My definition of a feminist is someone who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. In fact, I am an advocate for human rights. But I agree with Adiche when she says that using the term feminism as equivocal to “human rights” denies the fact that there are specific and particular problems that women face.
It turns out that I, as an unapologetic feminist, am in the minority in Canada, where only 20% of the people identify as feminists. Another 39% say they are agree somewhat that they are feminists. These are, perhaps the people who say they believe in equality, but they aren’t feminists because they aren’t angry man-haters..
Let’s talk about that.
This is one of the biggest criticisms about the word feminism. This story about what feminism represents. Feminism by its definition is about equal value of the sexes. And if we want to get more accurate, it is about equal value of people irrespective of their gender. Advocating for women is not saying women are better. It is saying that currently women have not got the same opportunities and freedoms as men. And that needs to change.
Which brings us to anger.
Uh ya we are mad. Can we expect anything less? We are talking about inequality and social injustice. Somebody didn't just steal our parking spot. We have been fighting this fight for a long time. Pardon me if i am a little cheesed off.
The other criticism I often hear about feminism is one of political correctness. I work at a local tech company and part of my mandate is diversity and inclusion. Recently I had a conversation with a senior leader who insisted that our diversity and inclusion efforts would not be allowed to turn into a race to political correctness and vanilla. Let me give you a little context. The majority of our organization is white and over 3/4 of senior leadership are men. The tech industry is a double scoop of vanilla right now and it has nothing to do with feminism and political correctness.
When i was thinking about what I wanted to talk about tonight, I was doing some reading and I came across an article on medium.com titled Political Correctness and Feminism is Making Us Weak.
This article was written by Lance Navarro who is in his twenties and has written other gems like Why Men Need to be Dangerous and Tinder is Not For Making Friends.
These are Lance’s thoughts on feminism and political correctness:
I believe, that feminism is a movement of overly sensitive individuals who still believe that women are being perpetually mistreated and abused by this mystical force called “the patriarchy.”
So there it is. If you want to level the most damning criticism at feminists, you can call us angry or overly sensitive.
Given these criticisms, it may be natural to want to distance ourselves from the word feminist. To try and sanitize it and make it more palatable.
But I don’t think it is helpful to sanitize it. Feminism Is a movement for change and trying to water it down or make it more mainstream, misses the point
In 2010 I co-founded a project called Uppity Girl Productions which uses media to highlight issues affecting women and girls, because I believe women should have control over their own lives. We have used these events to raise money and awareness about the experiences of women and girls. We called it uppity girl because when I was young, if I got sassy with my father, in other words, if I challenged his power, he would call me uppity.
Feminism is challenging power structures. Its asking us to rethink the way the world works. And that makes some people feel insecure.
Two years ago I was in Rwanda working with a group of women who were part of a year long program. During the 1994 genocide, 1.1 million people were killed in under 3 months. A significant portion of those killed were men and boys. Following the genocide, they estimate that 60-70% of the population was female. The President mandated that at least 30% of the government roles needed to be filled by women. Encouragingly, over time, this number grew and now about 60% of the govt is filled by women. More than Canada, where we elected only about 25% women in the 2015 election.
But even in Rwanda, women continue to face discrimination, because the existing system is difficult to shift. The women I worked with were angry that they were still responsible for the vast majority of unpaid work in households and were surprised to find this is still an issue in Canada.
It is tempting to believe that feminism is no longer necessary in Canada.
But There are still pay gaps, particularly if you are a woman of colour, indigenous or living with a disability.
60% of university grads are women and 82% are entering the workforce. But women put in twice as many hours as men in unpaid work.
Childcare is Canada is among the mostly costly in the world.
We still do not have representation on boards or senior leadership.
Safety continues to be an issue for women in Canada, particularly for indigenous women. There are still judges who suggest that a woman should keep her knees closed if she wants to avoid sexual assault.
Our work is not done here or anywhere else in the world.
Change will not come if we are reluctant about our commitment, if we try to qualify it.
We must all stand for feminism. Unapologetically.