I wasn't always a feminist. In fact, I wasn't even a little bit of a feminist a few years ago. Part of what changed was my experiences with Skepchick and being forced to face the fact that the things I understood about men and women were not just-so. And it's frustrating to see how far we still have to fight.
Today is Equal Pay Day in the US, the day that women catch up to what their male counterparts made in 2011. (ie. Men earn $X over the course of 1/11-12/11 and women earn that same amount from 1/11-4/12.)
People have all kinds of reasons for why this is. Like that this isn't the fact at all. Or that women have vaginas and obviously being a mom or even the risk that you may, at some point, become a mom means that your contributions are worth less. Or that women simply don't care as much… we're agreeable and nice and naive and we think that money will be given to us when we deserve it, so we don't ask for more.
But the reality is that the wage gap exists and we do care and we do ask for more money and promotions, we just get them less. In fact, some transgender men have testified that after transitioning in the workplace, their work experience changed dramatically.
Unfortunately, pay discrimination isn' event the beginning or the end… there are still so many areas that women simply are not equal. Like the fact that right now, I'm sitting in a state where poor women can't get basic women's health screenings as punishment for other women having access to abortions. And we're having a national discussion over whether mothers should be required to have the "dignity of work" (to which I can only assume the other option is "the shame of staying home with your children".) And Pixar is finally releasing a movie about A GIRL after movies about boys, men, cars, toys, robots in space, and monsters… I guess they were running out of "things that exist that some people can relate to" and someone in the writing room decided to be edgy and suggested they might take a risk and write a movie about girls.
So… Skepchick readers, I ask you: what is your feminist gripe? What frustrates you? What thing do you want to see changed in the world? If you could take on one feminist pet cause and crotch slap it off the earth, what would it be?
The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3pm ET
Image by Clay Bennet
