By now, the basic idea of feminism is quite widespread, but sometimes misunderstood. Feminism is by definition, as any credible website or dictionary will tell you, the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. Basically everyone, both men and women, should identify as feminists, because being a feminist simply means that you believe in equal rights for all groups. It shocks me how many people don’t identify as feminists today, for fear of being labeled as extreme or radical (because believing in gender equality is so crazy).
Although it's not the same issue, when discussing racial equality, no one has to define and label themselves as a supporter of racial equality, unlike in the gender equality movement. I’ve never understood why the term feminist was even necessary to create. Why do I need to define myself as someone who believes in gender equality, as a feminist? It makes more sense to define those who don’t believe in gender equality, such as we do with the issue of race, when those who don’t believe in racial equality are called racists. There’s no widespread term for someone who believes in racial equality, because it seems silly that you would need to identify yourself as a believer in fundamental rights. Shouldn’t it also be assumed that one believes in gender equality unless otherwise stated?
Recently, a select few celebrities including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Katy Perry, according to the Huffington Post, have been doing exactly this and publicly stating they don’t identify as feminists. In some cases, their ignorant responses are due to misunderstanding what feminism means, so to them I say, buy a book with the pile of money you sit on and learn a thing or two. Two major incongruities stand out when they publicly deny feminism. First, they do not take into account that without feminists, they wouldn’t have the rights that they benefit from today. Secondly, even if they are content with women’s rights in the U.S., they clearly aren’t looking beyond the borders of our developed country, and they can't see just how many women in developing countries need feminism.
Before I get there, let’s talk about pay gap in the U.S., and the relation between gender and racial equality. Many have heard that women earn 77 cents or so of the dollar a man earns, but this is inaccurate. White women do earn 77 cents compared to a man’s dollar, but black and Hispanic women earn 64, and 55 cents respectively compared to every dollar a white man earns. Women once did not have the right to vote, and couldn’t enter certain professions. Female writers, for instance, used male pen names just to be successful in their careers. Similarly, today, job applicants with white-sounding names are selected to interview or be hired more than those with non-white-sounding names, causing some people to use different names on job applications, which proves that the U.S. still has a long way to go in achieving gender equality for all races, sexes, and sexual orientations.
In developing countries, gender inequality is much more extreme. In India, women are married off as teenagers, receive little schooling, and have a much lower literacy rate than men do, issues that are not abnormal in patriarchal societies. Through the work of feminists and humanists, some of these problems are being alleviated, such as the recent banning of female genital mutilation (which over 130 million women have experienced) in May in Nigeria, the country that has historically had the highest rates of this practice. This proves that these issues of inequality can indeed be overcome.
Ending gender inequality is everyone’s issue. I don’t believe that celebrities like Clarkson, Underwood, and Perry support gender inequality. Maybe they just misunderstand feminism and don’t fully realize the current issues at hand. Feminism is not an isolated issue. As discussed, it is very much interrelated with racial inequality and it knows no geographical borders. If celebrities aren’t educated on feminism, they shouldn’t speak on it and confuse the population about what feminism truly is. It undermines the work feminists have accomplished, and the work that still needs to be done.