objects to a woman thinking virginia
woolf
i hate to hear you talk about all women
as if they were fine ladies instead of
rational creatures none of us wants to
be in calm waters all of our lives
Jane Austen as soon as a woman gets to
an age where she has opinions and she’s
vital and she’s strong she
systematically shamed into hiding under
a rock sarah silverman feminism isn’t
about making women stronger women are
already strong it’s about changing the
way that the world perceives that
strength Judy Anderson these quotes are
powerful and what underlies all of them
feminism but feminism is not a modern
movement the term was actually first
coined back in the 1890s just me
starting out this way has probably
caused you to attach a few labels to me
already let me help you name a couple
liberal millennial feminists but that’s
not why I’m here to talk to you today
I’m not here to convince you to become a
feminist or to abandon feminism or to
explain the different waves of feminism
I’m simply here to ask you how did we
get to this modern feminist movement do
you know because for a while I didn’t
know let’s be real feminism is not a
millennial movement even though that’s
what I hear college students and other
teenagers my age say and that’s what I
hear older people mutter under their
breath at the grocery store and that’s
definitely what I see on my Facebook
feed but I know that my aunt’s mother
and grandmothers have fought for the
same concepts that many modern feminists
claim to have invented here’s the thing
feminism might have been pushed to the
forefront of social discourse by
Millennials but it’s not a millennial
concept in any way and maybe we’re a lot
more similar to our grandmothers than we
think today I propose to you that the
age-old movement of feminism stems from
shifts and gender roles perpetuated
during industrialization
in the 1700s so now let’s give you some
context for this essentially
industrialization was that time in the
world where we moved from an
agriculturally based economy to an
industry based one and most of us has
probably learned about this in our
history classes and historian Sonya Rose
really explained this well whenever she
said in the 1990s in her work limited
livelihoods gender in class in 19th
century England that as we had the
transfer of production from a household
from the cottage industry to the
factories we had an important
distinction that changed with labour and
so as we have industries such as hosiery
in the production of cloth under the
cottage industry before
industrialization that labor is done as
a unit and then they’re paid as a unit
but then once we move to factories we
have labor now being paid individually
and thus whenever someone is being paid
individually for their labor value is
assigned individually additionally this
caused a lot of different social changes
as far as how men and women were viewed
within society so no rose again
explained it well whenever she said that
men were viewed as strong and dependent
and rational while women were often
viewed as weaker dependent emotional etc
and the reason for this is because
before like I said they weren’t defined
socially and so women were not as
legally independent as men were and so
they were often confined to the home and
doing more domestic things being mothers
and there’s nothing wrong with that
women and men have had different roles
for centuries but they weren’t socially
stigmatized roles because of how labour
was viewed and now I realize this is an
overly simplified view of how this
transition worked and there’s a lot more
history to go into here but they should
give us enough context for our
discussion today and I do encourage you
to go and do further research into this
topic because it’s fascinating and
there’s a lot of great work out there
but now let’s move on to the cultural
redefinition of gender roles does the
desire to write these wrongs and end
defined gender roles began with women’s
rights movements voting equality and
more but keep in mind as these movement
started to simmer in the 1800’s the
feelings and the changes were simmering
before that back in the 1700s
but now let’s talk about the current how
does this apply to us and how does this
apply to you well a recent poll done by
the New York Times in 2015 showed that
18 percent of Americans identify with
being feminists but eighty-five percent
of Americans identify with wanting
female equality so why is there this
discrepancy why is there some sort of
negative connotation around the term
feminism well perhaps because it’s been
labeled as a millennial movement and
while I’m an American I’m not just
talking about American statistics right
now I’m talking about the global
movement of feminism that is spiked in
the last few decades and there’s
justification for this the United
Nations women’s website published in
2015 that women so participate at an
unequal ratio to men in labor markets
globally women earned sixty to
seventy-five percent of a man’s wage
averaged out and within our own country
the Institute for Women’s policy
research has shown that women earn
eighty cents on the dollar compared to
men in America I’m not okay with this
and I personally see this as a problem
and I hope that you do too and maybe
that’s why my generation has picked up
this movement and carried it forward but
here’s the crux of the argument
Millennials there’s something special
about our generation in the u.s. the
Brookings Institution did a poll which
shows that by 2025 75 percent of the
workforce is going to be made up of
Millennials and additionally Millennials
have been proven to care intensely about
social issues and this informs the way
that they make decisions and career
choices our grandmothers and
great-grandmother’s started this fight
and wanted the same thing but maybe it’s
our job to carry the movement forward
and actually achieve equality
Millennials when was the last time in
history the you saw a March such as the
recent marches on Washington DC after
the inauguration and now I realized that
many people disagree with the sentiment
of the marches but whether or not you
agree with the sentiment is besides the
point the point is that we have this
ability within our society to rise up
and march on every city in America for
something we believe in regardless of
what that is and I think that that’s
pretty amazing criolla recently did an
initiative as far as racial equality
to make crayons that were colored for
different ethnicities but all titled
flesh and in the same way that we have
been able to strive for more racial
equality within our country and within
our world we should be striving for that
same sort of gender equality one of my
heroes Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said
history is but one long struggle upwards
to equality and personally I believe in
equality don’t call me a feminist and
don’t define me as a millennial my goal
here today has partially been to remind
you that men and women have struggled
with achieving equality ever since we’ve
inhabited the earth and we probably
never fully will but the key is
awareness and I’m a firm believer that
we can not label people and end gender
inequality because we have the passion
to but the world be run by Germany if
good people hadn’t stood up during World
War 2 and said no to any quality and
would Africa be making the humanitarian
and societal improvements that we’ve
seen in the last few decades if people
hadn’t globally aided and globally
supported them to end colonial abuses
you should feel fulfilled and inspired
to know that our generation my
generation your generation truly can
achieve equality for all but it’s not
our strict and specific burden it’s been
going on for a long time longer than
that it’s a choice and if you choose
with me to peacefully seek equality for
all
then welcome [Applause]