Recently I've become empowered by an issue I was not completely aware of or knew I would find so much passion behind. However, one of my college classes got my mind going and now I want to get a conversation going.
This conversation?
The lack of equality for women. How can I as a college woman change this for myself and my peers?
My first awareness for this came when I was leafing through the magazine, Cosmopolitan. Inserted into this particular issue was a mini-magazine entitled Cosmo Careers. On the cover was Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer. In it she discussed woman and careers with a snippet from her book, Lean In.
Soon I was purchasing her book right before I returned to school in the Fall. The statistics in the book shocked me. I suddenly became aware of the lack of equality women still have in society.
Do not get me wrong, women have made tremendous progress when it comes to rights and cracking down on sexism. Yet, we still have lengths to go when it comes to personal attitudes about woman in the career world and changing a woman's internal message she is sending herself.
I became empowered to join the conversation after finishing Sandberg's book and in the process of taking my Women and Gender's Studies class. Here I see first hand the facts and statistics that speak to the issue we still are facing in society when it comes to women's equality.
I may not be able to change the entire society's opinion, but I want to start a conversation. A conversation among my fellow college peers and young women in their 20s. As we enter the first years of college where we plan for our careers, or we are entering that profession in our early years, we need to do so boldly with a great inner confidence.
It seems that the biggest obstacle we face is our own inner voices telling us we "cannot do it" or are "not good enough". I decided that I am going to use my love of writing and my resources of a blog to jump in the conversation. However, this perspective will be from a college woman who is looking to pursue a profession that is dominated by men and where women are judged by our looks.
I want to look to raise awareness of this disgrace and change the societal "norm". Even if I simply join in the conversation as I share my personal experiences I face on my journey towards the newsroom.
Please join me in the conversation.
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2 comments:
Hi Rebecca.
One of the biggest areas of inequality of women that I see and work with on a daily basis is the way women are forgotten or diminished in the socioeconomic and political world. My "day job" is as an economic advocate working with female victims of domestic violence and the biggest hurdles I encounter are truly things that only women endure: can't find a job because of various limitations (appearance is often one of them) but when they DO find a job, they often lose that job because of the complications that childcare presents and then they lose other resources because they couldn't take a job. The whole thing turns into a vicious and nasty cycle that is so hard to stomach as an outsider. I can't even begin to imagine how it must feel to be caught in the snares.
But how do we change this cycle? How do we build something more even and equal when we are also dealing with women who sneer at other women for having children in the first place? This is the question I face every day and, sadly, I don't have an answers about where to even begin.
Hi Nicole,
First, thank you for commenting on my post! I love that you're engaging in conversation. Which is what I wanted to be the whole point of my blog.
The issue you bring up is a tricky one. One that I do not see having one definite answer. I think the first step would be to change the accessibility that parents, mothers and fathers included, have to affordable, quality child care. I think this also has to boil down to mothers having the option of paid maternity leave.
I believe a big gist of it is changing the "norm" with bills/legislation that will support working women; mothers included.
It's at least a first step that needs to be made for supporting working women and working mothers.
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