On Friday of last week, Lena Dunham from the HBO series Girls appeared on the Today Show to discuss the series finale of her TV show. If any of you are familiar with her, then you are very aware that miss Dunham is a political spokesperson for millennials, thanks to social media. During the interview, she was asked what political issues concerned her most and she responded with "women's issues."
With the Women's March in Washington D.C. last month along with growing concern for the President's new administration, I have heard this term being thrown around a lot recently. It's a quick label to slap over topics such as abortions, affordable women's healthcare and birth control, just to name a few. Famous actresses, models, and singers are making their voices heard by telling women how important women's issues are and why it's vital that we do something about it.
As a twenty-year-old woman who has dreamed of being senator since elementary school, I am appalled. Women are CEOs, astronauts, doctors, homemakers, leaders in our country and we are still limiting ourselves to our bodies? Are we not better than labeling women's health care as "Women's issues" and advocating for what only effects us directly? I can think of a thousand things that I am afraid of when I think about the future of our country, and women's health care makes up about 1 percent of it.
As women, as individuals that are equal to any man, all issues should be women's issues. We should care just as much about our foreign policy, public school systems, domestic crime rates, strengthening jobs in the US, decreasing taxes for the middle class, and health care that concerns everyone.
As a United States citizen, those are the things that bother me. Those are the issues that made me get out of my house and go to the voting precinct on November 8th. Not gender, not because I was particularly fond of either candidate, but because our country needs us.
Young people today will be quick to hop on Twitter or Facebook and drop passive aggressive comments to their boyfriends on what they want for Valentine's Day, but how many of us actually turn on the news or open a scholarly article for the sole purpose of informing ourselves? We'll get in a heated debate in class or with a friend who has a differing opinion, but do we really know what we're talking about? It's only a matter of years before we are the future leaders in our country, so it's time to start acting like it.
Women are powerful, brilliant, and have already done amazing things, so we need to end our division from the rest of society and continue to work hard. We have the potential to do and be whomever we want, no one is stopping us. If we really are equal to men, and we are, then issues that effect men should be our concern, and vice versa. Working together and being united is how relationships and civilizations grow and develop.
I think Kellyanne Conaway said it best, "I consider myself one of those women who is a product of her choices, not a victim of her circumstance." I hope we can all have this mentality.
