Let’s talk a bit about opinion building and finding a voice. After I conducted the interviews for a recent Speak Up about women’s rights (see our March 23, 2022 issue) I realized that most people actually don’t have any opinion about women’s rights. This really made me think, though: with all the steps forward in feminism, it doesn’t look so good if we don’t have an opinion on how things are going to look moving forward. I mean, if you don’t have a goal, where are you actually going?
I think we’ve become a little comfortable and no longer appreciate all the hard work that has been done generations before we were born so we can wear pants, go to work, drive a car, or simply decide that we don’t want children or that we do or don’t self-identify as a woman. All these things have been fought for.
So how come students don’t have an opinion when asked about going forward with women’s rights?
It’s not that we perceive everything as being okay. Also it isn’t about male pressure about what we can’t do anymore. Now it’s basically about the fact that we all need to realize what women can now do.
We have to work on perceiving information and integrating empowerment toward young women so they know that they can do everything they want and that they can pursue any career, even those that were considered “men’s careers” historically.
Women must realize that it’s their job now to actually take their chances and use them. This is not going to happen without an opinion, though.
If you don’t have a clear vision for yourself, how can you expect a future manager to have one for you? How can you expect anyone to help you in stepping out of the box if you’re not willing to realize there’s still a box and it’s up to you to erase it before others will?
How can we achieve this? Well, the first step is asking ourselves what we want for our lives and for the lives of the next generation. Maybe we could also talk to our parents and grandparents about what they had hoped would be normal by now. Because it’s not that our parents and grandparents didn’t want to be feminists, but the times they grew up in just didn’t always give them the possibility to become feminists.
It takes bravery and effort to fight for rights and to fight the system and the laziness of people living in that system. Change is always seen as threat, but, in fact, change is a pretty awesome thing.
I’ve been asked if I think that females can work on an oil plantation or in a heavy industry, and my answer was yes, they can. But a large part of normalizing this is that we need to shatter the vision of the society we grew up in. So, broaden your vision, for yourself and for the generations to come. This is how we make change.