Last week, UN Goodwill Ambassador (what are you doing after
graduation?), Emma Watson launched the UN’s “He for She” campaign. This feminist campaign to strive for gender equality is set to target bringing men into the conversation, without whom women cannot achieve parity. If you haven’t seen her speech, you can see it here .
Watson addresses some of the major misconceptions about the modern feminist movement. She states that “so often feminism is equated with man-hating”, going on to debunk this as the goal of the movement. Today’s feminists seek not to bring down men, but to achieve equality. Rather ironically, the modern anti-feminist movement also seeks the same goals. Women are taking pictures of themselves with signs reading messages such as “I love my boyfriend and I respect him!”
However, there are other messages that are a bit more disturbing such as “I am not oppressed” and “equality of opportunity already exists”. To the women holding these signs: why are only 4.8% of Fortune 500 CEO’s women? Why are only 20% of US Senators women? When women make up roughly half of the population, and in many fields half of the entry-level workforce, it is impossible to justify the idea that women have equal opportunity to rise in a company’s ranks.
Looking at the statistical evidence, women simply have less social mobility. This is obviously not true for every woman however, on average, women are less able to achieve positions of power than men. Emma Watson describes her life as a “sheer privilege”, which I believe many of us forget. The women at Cornell are not limited in their education because of their gender. Our mentors, just like hers, do not assume that we will go less far due to our gender. This is not something that all women around the world, or even within our own country, can say.
The true problem with the modern women’s equality movement, Watson points out, is that only half of the world (those who are women) feel welcome to participate. The movement has been painted as a war against men because men do not feel as if they are part of it. Enter the He for She campaign: a push to educate men on gender equality and get them on board with gender equality as a human rights issue, not just a women’s issue.
Let’s go back to the anti-feminists, the women who believe that they already have equal opportunity and that respecting men means they are not feminists. This movement is not about raising women up and bringing men down, it is about an effort by all humans to stop violence and discrimination against women. The point is not to demonize men, in fact that would be counterproductive to the goal. Neither is it to give women an unfair advantage to “get ahead”. The point is to create a global environment in which all people have the same shot at being the CEO of a Fortune 500 or a Senator or any other path they desire.
