The f-word

Feminism- the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. The word is the basis of need for equality in all aspects of life. It is about fair representation in government, media, and global culture.

The word contains the prefix fem-, leading people to look only at the female side, but in actuality, it can be used for both sexes. The only problem is that women are most often at the short end of the stick. They are the ones that need the scales to be balanced. Feminism is driven by sexism: the discrimination based on gender. Sexism takes down one gender by building up the other, while feminism brings the hurt back to its rightful status. It can be either gender, but in our society females are the ones in the most need.

Examples of inequality are everywhere and not all of them will ever be equalized. The movement pushes to make as many wrongs right as it can by starting with the big ones. For example, the United States population is 50.8% female and 49.2% male, yet the government is a whopping 81.5% male. Out of the 535 congress members, only 99 are female. This means that the governing body that is creating and declaring laws about the lives and bodies of women is dominated by a sex that will never know the true impact of their decisions. The men are in control. It could be argued that this is a fault of world history and tradition, but that extremely long argument can be saved for another day.    

The word feminism is often met with uneasiness and a predisposition to hatred. It is presumed that the person describing themselves as a "feminist" must hate men or believe that women are the supreme gender. That may be true with the radicals, which is the same for almost anything, but normally this isn't the case. It is only seen as radical because of the way the media has portrayed it in the last few decades.

  
   *The reality of feminism                        *This picture came up on the first page of Google images when
                                                                feminism was searched

Feminism isn't what the media can portray it to be, and our culture and this movement are starting to reflect this. I hope to disprove the anti-feminist mindset throughout my project, while also showing, in an unbiased way, the disparities between the sexes, because feminism isn't a bad thing. it just has a bad reputation.

P.S. Here is a video that pretty much sums up why the world needs feminism.

Sources:
Images: google images
Video: YouTube- Channel: lacigreen
Congress facts/ numbers: http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/levels_of_office/documents/cong.pdf