gender equality and human rights
As we already know, people come from all walks of life. We wake up in different beds, hustle through different crowds and then crawl back to different homes where we wash off the same day’s grime. The birth lottery caused that difference because it put us in places we didn’t choose to be in – Ii didn’t choose to be born to a middle class family in the same way another young woman like me didn’t choose to be born in worse circumstances either. If we look at it, the lottery of birth is responsible for many inequalities in the world. Mostly, the lottery of birth is responsible for the one thing that causes deep divides among people and breeds apathy -- privilege.
Lots of women, especially those whom the birth lottery has granted just enough luck to be in a circumstance where they’re safe enough to be reading this article right now, do not completely understand why feminism is important and why every woman should aspire to be a feminist. While this does not make them any less of a woman whom the movement also seeks to protect, it still means that there is an important skill that all women have to learn: how to establish solidarity, or how to find themselves in other women.
Everywhere, in every culture, there persists some form of sexism. But while every woman in the world experiences different forms of sexism, their perception of it varies depending on the context they belong in. For example, for a middle-class woman living in a developed state, sexism may come in the form of receiving only 79 cents for every dollar that a man makes. But for an underprivileged woman in the same state, sexism may come in the form of not being able to land a decent job because of gender-based stereotypes in labor. For a middle-class teenage girl in developing and relatively more conservative states like the Philippines, sexism may come in the form of rape culture -- victim-blaming, slut-shaming, objectification. But for an underprivileged teenage girl in the same state, sexism may come in the form of being economically bullied into prostitution just to survive. In conflict-ridden states, oppression may come in its most gruesome form: girls are deprived of education, turned into child brides or sex slaves, experience female genital mutilation, and trapped in a cycle of poverty and shame because of the political instability that erases all hope for legal reform that could allow them to lobby for their rights. This means that, while there is deep inequality between men and women, there is also deep inequality among women themselves across the globe. So, let’s go back to the question: how does a woman, especially those who are privileged enough to represent those that can’t represent themselves, find herself in other women?
The answer is simple. Even if inequality manifests in different ways, it all boils down to a mindset, a belief so deeply rooted and shared across the globe, even more so than oil or drugs, from which acts of oppression are rooted from. The belief that women are inferior. The belief that you were born into this world with an indelible original sin: your vagina. And so in order for a woman to be motivated to stand up against sexism, she has to first believe that any form of sexism, from its subtlest to its worst form, can happen to her, simply because she is no different from the women she can only ever hear of in the news. Simply because she is a woman, and ironically, sexism does not discriminate. Sexism is sexism. It affects every woman. Therefore, it is also every woman’s responsibility to combat it. To be the battering ram that shatters the glass ceiling.
This is the reason why the 5th Sustainable Development Goal of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls is important, but it will only ever be realized if women understand the principle behind it. SDG #5 will only be practiced to its fullest extent once the female community itself, before achieving gender equality, achieve its prerequisite first: destroying inequality among each other. Before we smash the patriarchy, we have to dismantle internalized misogyny and apathy first.
With an established global consensus that pushes for every woman to feel empowered, we are definitely taking a giant leap here. However, we shouldn’t think of empowerment as a race. We should think of it as a walk in the park. Slow and steady, but at least you and your sisters are walking together.