It Matters: Equal Rights

At the beginning of our unit on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, we had a discussion about feminism and the current state of women’s right. A lot of points were raised, and a lot of them were unsettling. From women themselves thinking that feminists negatively affect them, and treat them with a negative connotation, to that fact that even though women are supposed to have equal rights in industrialized, first world countries like the United States, they still don’t exist. What hope does that leaves for women in third world countries and developing countries, like women in Africa or those oppressed under terrorist groups like the Taliban? How long will it take for them to find their voices, and have a say in what will happen to them?

The day after our discussion was International Women’s Day, and it got me thinking about what I want to do to make a difference. I do what I can to cross boundaries, I’m normally the lone female when I travel for debate, but I wish there was something more I could do. I did some research about the current state of women’s rights. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that difficult – the ‘women’s rights’ in google news gave me 11,000 results in the last month alone, with the majority of them about the decaying state of women’s rights. I discovered that an activist in Afghanistan had been arrested, and then there has also been women in the United States arrested. Scrolling through the titles left me disheartened.

However, one left me with a little hope. The Huffington Post had an article about an Occupy Women’s Rights celebration on in Seattle. There was a quote that sparked me attention. A student attending the rally said, “According to the most recent United Nations statistics, the majority of the earth's human population consists of non-white females who are under the age of 25. They are the future!” Before, in the time of Jane Eyre, no one would ever say women were the future. Even if the world was populated with a majority of females, they weren’t considered of worth of influence.

Brontë’s work was truly ground breaking for the time period. She paints a vivacious, unafraid character in Jane which was rare. Women took the brunt of a family, took criticism and were never expected to speak their mind. Nowadays, speaking your mind is a norm and not something uncommon even if in some corners of the world it’s punishable, and that’s a good distinction. It’s good because free speech is a known idea, whereas before it wasn’t.

The article also made sure to include the men in the celebration too, breaking another common feminist stereotype –that it’s all about the women. The reverse is true; it’s about the common, equal ground between both genders.

Our discussion about equal rights reminded me of what I, as a proud feminist, stand for and finding out what other people are doing to raise awareness. Things like the fight over female reproductive rights and comments made by Rush Limbaugh have sparked a new round of female activism for equal pay, the right to choose, and the fight against stereotypes. I can remember that while we’ve come a long way, we still have a ways to go. I want to make that way just a little bit shorter.

'an article' in the 3rd paragraph is hyperlinked to the article