A few weeks back my friend wrote a personal article of an encounter that emphasized the lack of respect towards women and the desperate need for feminism. (You can read it here.) After her ranting, and then going through my own somewhat similar experience this week, I feel like feminism is a misunderstood issue that people need to start to grasp.

In Beyonce's song"***Flawless," a feminist is defined as "the person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes." People brush off the idea of men and women not being on an even playing field, but it is 2015, and I have gone through being denied something due to the fact that I'm a girl. I'm sure that it was not meant to be based solely off the fact that I'm not as "strong" as boys are, but it needs to be understood that both sexes need to be allowed to have the same opportunities.

Yes, I am a girl. Yes, I love sports. In fact, I love sports so much that I'm majoring in sports marketing and pursuing that as a career. The sports industry is one of the hardest businesses to get involved in due to the lack of jobs and opportunities. I'm usually not taken seriously when I tell others about my future plans because it is a male-dominated career path. I want to be treated the same, but I never will. How is that fair to me when I put in the same, if not more, amount of work to reaching my goals? I was given the opportunity to help volunteer for a huge event on campus before a football game, and after being accepted, I was then denied because there was a misunderstanding that they were only looking for guys to help and not girls. Honestly, I was devastated—I deserved that opportunity. I wanted to help more than you can imagine because it was the perfect way for me to get my foot in the door and gain the experience I need to further my knowledge here to get the internship with the MSU athletic program that I've wanted for so long. I might not be the tallest. Or the strongest. Or the best at whatever quality they find the most important. But, I can guarantee that I would be the hardest worker and the most dedicated. Sadly, I don't get the chance to even try because I'm not the right gender.

It doesn't seem fair that I have to work even harder to gain the respect within my major. I'm writing sports based articles for two different websites. I've applied for internships. I've shadowed employees of an NHL team. I'm only a freshman in college, but I'm already facing so much adversity just from my peers in my classes. The real world is going to be much worse.

Girls can do anything they set their minds to and so can boys. But why are we punished for not being boys? To quote Beyonce again...

But, to end my rant on a more serious note, women have been fighting for equality since the 1920s. They wanted suffrage and finally got it with the 19th Amendment. The Women's Right Movement reappeared during the 1960s, when women wanted more personal and political equality. To this day, we are still earning less wages overall and not getting as many opportunities to move up and grow in our careers as our male coworkers. It needs to be addressed that this issue cannot be swept under the rug forever.