Now I like being a leader and I think I do quite well as a leader But the amount of times I’ve been called bossy, rude or something along those lines is astonishing. Not because perhaps I wasn't being a bit bossy or rude, but because I know this isn't happening to my male colleagues. So, you know, when you're doing a group project and you have to speak so much louder just to be heard or when you're leading the group project, but they still aren't listening to you or when you know something is true, but they just have to fact check you just in case. Well, these are all tiny consequences of our gender norms, which are negatively disproportionately impacting women because men are supposed to be the leaders, right? They're supposed to be the strong, stoic, smart ones. So naturally, women shouldn't be any of those things. And yet only 36% of the women of the women in the UK identifies feminist. Only 39% of the women in the US identify as feminists. And while of course it's difficult to find conclusive data for things such as identities, it is safe to say large percentage of the population don't identify with feminism. Now, there could be many reasons for this. All of these people might just hate women and not want them to have equal rights. Right? But I'd like to think hope even that that's not true. And instead it usually comes down to 1 or 2 things. People don't understand what feminism is, and people don’t understand why it’s needed And the first thing I can is explain. Feminism, by definition, is the social, economic and overall quality of all genders. The second thing is a bit more difficult to explain because, I mean, is feminism needed? Women can vote on property. Divorce Aren't all the issues of the last century fixed? Well, simply put. No. Women in 39 countries cannot inherit the same property as their sons, as sons, males, women in 45 countries in 45 countries. Domestic violence is still legal in 79 countries, marital rape is still legal. But, you know, as far as issues go, these are seen as easy to solve issues because these are laws that can be changed. There's many other issues that are impacting women every day on a smaller scale, which are much more difficult to solve, like most notably, sexual assault and rape. Not talking about this makes people uncomfortable, but something else that is uncomfortable is being assaulted. Having someone take away your ability to consent and violate your physical space. And it is something many women have gone through. And by many women, I mean 1 in 3 and 1 in 3 for perspective is 1.3 billion women. And it's not just that women go through this, but they have knowledge that they can that this can happen to them, which becomes fear that it will happen to them. And suddenly women are scared to go outside and don't feel safe in public. And for all of these reasons and more feminism is still needed in our society today. Just like it was still needed 100 years ago, just like it was still needed 500 years ago. And yes, we have made progress. We have made incredible progress. But that doesn't mean we can sit down, pat ourselves on the back and say we're done because we aren't. And if you think you aren't perpetuating sexist norms, so that's enough for you to like because you're not actively contributing to the problem, That is not enough. Because I hate to tell you, but as long as we live in a sexist society, we will all, to some extent, perpetuate sexist norms. And. Supposed to be a simple, concrete solution. I now tell you to wrap up this issue and finish my TEDTalk. Right. But the problem is there isn't a simple solution and it's definitely not a concrete one. Societal issues such as this impact every aspect of our society, and there are solutions for every aspect of society. But the problem is some of those are just not within our control. If you aren't in the government, you can't change any of the laws I mentioned earlier. If you aren't actively harassing women, me telling you to stop is going to do very little to prevent it from happening. But something you do have full control over is your own behavior. Now, there are some insidious, inherently misogynistic things people do every day which they may not even realize are horrible bad things. Most notably this idea that women are asking for it. Women have never and will never be asking for it and clothing will never equal consent. Yes , this idea. Yet this idea has been ingrained into our society to oppress and shame women. A much less serious thing that happens on a daily basis is we call women bitches a lot when they aren't actually doing anything wrong. Apart from perhaps not catering to your every need. Something else we do once again, almost every day is insult women based on their appearance when we don't like them because we have decided to equate women's likability with how we perceive them. You might listen to all of this and go, Wow, that's really interesting. And then completely move on with your life. But I implore you to take away at least this message. Women will continue to suffer in an oppressive society unless we as a society make a change. And we have come in incredibly far, but we still have incredibly far to go. Thank you.
