Let’s start off with the basics, What is feminism?
While a common misconception, feminism is not the belief that one gender should be raised in power above another. It is simply the advocacy for women’s rights and equality for all genders.
If all we want as women is equality of the sexes, why is it that so many people are offended by this? While sitting class one day, I started thinking about why feminism should be taught in schools. It was the last period of the day and I was in my “Theory of Knowledge “class at school and my teacher asked if anyone had gone to the Women’s March demonstration in Central London and only one girl in my class had gone to the march. While the girl who had gone to the march was speaking about how it was and why she went, I heard two guys in my class mock her and say, “Uh, these feminists have started again, they always have something to complain about.” When I heard this I was very shocked, simply because I didn’t expect these two guys that I knew personally to say such a thing. The first questions that came to my mind were, “Why are they so bothered about people who advocate for women’s right?” and “Don’t they understand why we are advocating for our rights?”
I then came to the conclusion that they likely said such a thing because they don’t understand the entirety of feminism, what it’s all about and the importance of it in the society we are living in today. These 16-year-old boys see feminism as women just protesting and complaining for no reason when everything is “good” in this world. But shockingly, it’s NOT, and this is where the problem lays. The problem is that we have young boys and girls growing up to be ignorant towards the idea of feminism because they don’t fully understand the concept of what this advocacy is all about. So many people are completely oblivious to feminism and view it as women wanting to dominate everything. Young boys and girls do not realize the importance of gender equality which when you think about it, is quite sad.
Feminism needs to be taught in schools so girls don’t grow up believing they aren’t able to do what boys do and so that boys don’t believe that they are above and beyond the girls and women in their lives. While there have been great strides towards equality of the sexes, there is still much to do in order to make it so that we are all truly equal. Educating about feminism, specifically intersectional feminism, in schools in a correct way that clears up misconceptions is a good step forward towards having socially educated leaders of the future.
Let the young boys and girls of this generation and future generations to come know that there is nothing wrong with advocating for the issues you believe in.
