Actively deciding on what you stand for can change the future. Feminists have to make that decision with every move they make.
Maybe you like the idea of creating gender equality change but don’t know how. Change will never come easy, so we need to take baby steps toward it. I choose to pick female leaders and had been actively doing it for the past two decades.
It means I chose a female doctor over a male one—not because there is anything wrong with a male doctor, at all. But if they are equally good in their profession, I’ll choose female. That is my way of supporting female leadership. While this might sound odd at first, it means that I am actively making a choice to support female leaders in whatever life situation I find myself.
It’s the little support I can give to make sure that female workforce and leadership is sustainable and won’t fade over time once it’s created.
You might ask why it would make any difference, and that’s fair enough. I recently read a study about adolescent female leadership from the University of South Florida, which states that “educational systems largely continue to exhibit sexist patterns” and that “gender inequity is prevalent beyond the educational process within the career life cycle.”
It all stands and falls with education, with the possibility to nourish young minds to all possible outcomes of their lives and not just those outdated and insulting ones. (Because, never forget, we should be insulted when someone says that a person can’t do something, or can’t do it “as good as,” just because they identify as a woman).
It’s hard to change a mindset, so we should be forgiving to those who grew up in a different time to different social rules, as it might be hard for them to put themselves in this generation’s shoes. But realizing this, we must be truthful to ourselves and start walking forward by being role models to ourselves, to our surroundings, and even to our teachers. A good teacher is willing to learn from its junior, as learning is a lifelong process, and so is to accept that females want as much from their lives as males do.
So why not decide to support the little things that can make a change in the long run? Buy products and get services from female-led companies, and know that your choices do make a difference, no matter how big or small. It’s not a race, it’s a sustainable path that, hopefully, creates more opportunities for all of us.