Feminism Today

I enrolled in this course because I needed humanities credits. I was dreading it because I assumed that women's studies and feminism focused on angry lesbians. However, I couldn't have been more wrong. After reading and comprehending the first two sets of articles assigned, I believe that I have a fairly good grasp on the concept of feminism. Feminism is the advancement and empowerment of women in all aspects on life. Feminism focuses on, but is not limited to the legal, social, cultural, and personal issues involving women of all races and classes.

My understanding of feminism continues to grow with each article that I read. The one article that spoke to me the most was, "A Day Without Feminism" by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards. In this article, I learned that feminism does not just involve women, it involves men too. For example, the article states, "...it may be against the law for a male to teach grades lower than the sixth, on the basis that it's unnatural, or that men can't be trusted with young children." This is shocking because without feminism, men wouldn't be trusted with young children. The single dads of today's society would not exist. Little League baseball coaches might not be trusted around the little boys on their team. It amazed me that without feminism, women would be required to wear makeup at work, women would be fired from their jobs if they got married, and if women exceeded the age or weight deemed "sexy," they would be fired as well. This opened my eyes to the extreme importance of feminism because without it, women today would not have even a fraction of the opportunities in society as they do.

Feminism is extremely useful in my life because as a woman, I know that I deserve to be able to take advantage of every opportunity out there. I would not want to be held back from anything simply based on my gender. I know that if I ever encounter an unequal situation, I can rely on the strong ideals and values of feminism to push through the barrier of inequality.

-Kristi Bardosi