I often get statements from people like "why do we still need feminism, look around haven’t women achieved enough equality already' There are everywhere now, there are in schools, colleges, jobs, even running big companies and playing sports"?
And as I looked around, it wasn’t false. There were indeed women around me. Empowered women, Educated women, women who could speak their minds, women who weren’t scared to go after what they wanted.
So it indeed raised doubts in my mind, have we achieved equality already? Why we need feminism still? What is this fight for feminism about? Are we fighting for nothing? Are women really equal to men and we can stop with all this feminist bullshit?
But I didn’t stop believing in Feminism right there. My intuition and my womanhood was telling me that all of this is not for nothing because I didn’t feel equal to men in lot of ways. Even I was facing everyday sexism and inequality.
So, what is the right answer,
And once again it was found in books and texts.
When we talk about feminism, When we talk about equality amongst genders, it cannot be calculated by seeing few women around. That’s called privilege and that’s one reason why we need Feminism. When we have to calculate equality, we have to consider not just people around us, not just society around us, not just city around us, not just country around us, we have to look all beyond it and consider everything on global level.
So those people saying were students of Delhi University, or people living in a metropolitan cities who indeed have been empowered women, but they were just ignorant and insensitive enough not to consider statistics globally and make privileged statements.
Let's talk about why we need feminism, but don’t listen to me, let the statistics talk.
1. Female Foeticide and Infanticide
We need feminism because globally 117 million girls are selectively killed by abortion. The number of boys that are selectively killed due to abortion is.. oh wait, that does not exist. Because only girls are being selectively killed just because of their sex. India amounts of one of the highest countries involved in female foeticide and infanticide despite number of measures taken. China and Pakistan are no less, but it will be unfair to not say that it is a worldwide practise even in countries like Australia and US. Sometimes, women are killed inside the wombs and sometimes after they are born only because they belong to one sex and not another.
2. Sex Ratio
We need feminism because the sex ratio for total population of the world is 101 males for 100 females, but it varies from 74 to 219 among the countries.
As of 2021, there were 3,970,238,390 or 3.930 billion males in the world, representing 50.42% of the world population. The population of females in the world is estimated at 3,904,727,342 or 3.905 billion, representing 49.58% of the world population. The world has 65,511,048 or 65.51 million more males than females. The country with most misbalanced sex ratio is Liechtenstein with 126 males per 100 female, followed by China with 115 males per 100 female, Armenia with 113 males per 100 females and India with 112 males per 100 females.
Interestingly, we lack data on children born intersex.
3. Child marriages
Child marriages impacts the education and employment opportunities for women. Once a child is married, especially female children are out of the race of education, employment and hence financial independence. Nigeria has the highest child marriage rate in the world. According to recent data, in this West African country 75 percent of girls aged under 18 were married, with 36 percent of them being younger than 15 years old. Chad, Bangladesh, and Guinea had rates ranging from 63 percent to 68 percent.
India is estimated to have over 24 million child brides. Despite several laws and strict measures, there seems to be no relief. It is also interesting to mention here that even though child marriage is a punishable offence, still the marriage is valid and holds value in the eyes of law.
4. Literacy Rate
We need feminism because the global youth literacy rate in 2008 was 92% for males and 86% for females. The global adult literacy rate is 88.2% for males whereas it is 78.9% for females. Unequal much? Hence, Still wondering why we need for fight for gender equality.
And yet again, the statistics are silent on transgender education and literacy rate, who are abandoned and lives in ghettos throughout their life.
5. Employment Rate
We need feminism because the total number of males employed are 2.02 billion whereas total females employed are 1.27 billion. The current global labour force participation rate for women is just under 47%, for men it’s 72%. There is almost a difference of 25% between males and females, and then we want to talk about financial independence.
Having work is an essential of life. These numbers are not as simple as it seems because this includes males who are employed in fields that they don’t intend to just to support their family and it does not include women who could do wonders in their life and careers but they are not allowed to get education, or work, or get a job after marriage. So many great wonders not happening because we are forcing the gender roles.
6. Gender Pay Gap
Let’s get to the worst part. If the number of men and women employed did not surprise you, let’s talk about how women are paid less than men for the same job and they are forced to take less skilled jobs, sometimes way below their qualification because it is believed they can’t do as well as men. What a joke! But this joke becomes serious when the livelihood and survival of a person is affected because of our gender biases. The gap has narrowed merely by 1% in 2018 from 20% a year ago.
Why do we need feminism? Because worldwide women only makes 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. If a men is getting paid 100$ for a job, women would be paid 77$ for the same job just because she belongs to a particular gender. Let’s not even get into the discussion of physical strength because this gender gap has nothing to do with it. It includes all jobs whether or not physical strength is required for the same.
Have you heard of Notional GDP?
Notional GDP takes into consideration the household work done by the women in a country for which she is not getting paid it because she is doing it for the family as her gender role. It includes cleaning, washing, laundry, managing the house, raising children etc. Simply put, if you were to pay someone for doing all these ‘essential everyday task’ how much would that contribute to GDP.
7. Mental Health impact
Mental health is a determining factor in calculating equality, because it is the standard of living that should be on our goals when we talk about attaining equality. Without a good mental health status we will achieve nothing even after humans are educated, employed and earning well. A survey by a global mental health network conducted in India, showed that 66% of women being stressed, compared to 34% of men. While, marginalised women like sex workers or trans women endured extreme emotional and physical vulnerabilities in the absence of any financial relief or support system. A total of 12.6 percent of males and 13.3 percent of females suffered from mental health or substance use disorders globally.
8. Crime Rate
We need feminism because an estimated 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault are female and 9% male. Nearly 99% of perpetrators are male.
WHO indicate that globally about 1 in 3 (30%) of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
Globally as many as 38% of all murders of women are committed by intimate partners. In addition to intimate partner violence, globally 6% of women report having been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner, although data for non-partner sexual violence are more limited. 82% of all juvenile victims are female. 90% of adult rape victims are female 3% of American men—or 1 in 33—have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime 1 out of every 10 rape victims are male.
Do you have enough reasons why we need Feminism? Still wondering why we need feminism?
Still want to say ‘but, women have achieved equality, why are they crying for’. We are crying for people in Afganistan, South Africa and other middle eastern country are waiting for basic human rights.
Just do this world a favour, recognise your privileges and if after reading this blog, you ever dare to day women have achieved equality, an angry feminist will haunt you in your dreams.
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