WHAT'S A QUEEN WITHOUT HER KING? WELL, HISTORICALLY SPEAKING, MORE POWERFUL.
Women continue climbing the rungs of power—building their ranks as heads of state, corporate leaders and media influencers—but their minority status means they still face harsh, limiting assessments based on their gender.
Empowerment is the process that creates power in individuals over their own lives, society, and in their communities. People are empowered when they are able to access the opportunities available to them without limitations and restrictions such as in education, profession and lifestyle. Feeling entitled to make your own decisions creates a sense of empowerment.
Women's empowerment is the process in which women elaborate and recreate what it is that they can be, do, and accomplish in a circumstance that they previously were denied. Empowerment can be defined in many ways, however, when talking about women's empowerment, empowerment means accepting and allowing people (women) who are on the outside of the decision-making process into it. “This puts a strong emphasis on participation in political structures and formal decision-making and, in the economic sphere, on the ability to obtain an income that enables participation in economic decision-making."
In an attempt to move away from one kind of stereotype about women, we might be falling into another-where the woman's character resembles a man. She would do everything a man would do. Her femininity is not celebrated.
Violence against women (VAW), also known as
gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) are violent acts committed against women or girls. Such violence is often considered a form of hate crime, committed against women or girls specifically because they are female. VAW has a very long history, though the incidents and intensity of such violence has varied over time and even today varies between societies. Such violence is often seen as a mechanism for the subjugation of women, whether in society in general or in an interpersonal relationship. Such violence may arise from a sense of entitlement, superiority, misogyny or similar attitudes in the perpetrator, or because of his violent nature, especially against women.
Many of the barriers to women's empowerment and equity lie ingrained in cultural norms. Many women feel these pressures, while others have become accustomed to being treated inferior to men. Even if legislators, NGOs, etc. are aware of the benefits women's empowerment and participation can have, many are scared of disrupting the status of the women and continue to let societal norms get in the way of development.
The most striking finding of the latest Global Gender Gap report that was released in December 2018 by the World Economic Forum (WEF) was that it will still take 202 years for women around the world to witness full economic parity.
The women’s liberation movement was a loose agreement of women and feminist thinking that emerged in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, and other developed countries during the late 1960s and persisted throughout the 1970s.
In South Africa in the 70s young women on university campuses weren’t allowed to wear trousers – denim jeans, hipster bell bottoms or slacks.
Women who graduated alongside men, often with far higher marks, were appointed in subordinate positions. The same degree for instance, garnered a managerial position for a man and a secretarial one for a woman.
In 2010 in the US women overtook men in professional roles in the workplace for the first time. That’s a far cry from 1967, when women made up only one third of all US workers.
So what brought about the mass movement of women into the workplace?
A generation of college-educated women rejected the prospect of following in the footsteps of their mothers, spending their lives as housewives.
But it was also due to a tiny powerful enabler – the birth control pill. The pill gave women the opportunity to delay having children and pursue the careers of their dreams. Women were now able to plan when they wanted children. The advent of the birth control pill coincided with the second wave of feminism and the fight for equal rights. It gave women a tool to level the playing field with men. They no longer had to be mothers first and professionals in the workplace second.
Women's emancipation– we have come a long way, but the struggle continues.
DON'T TELL ME SKY IS THE LIMIT WHEN PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TO THE MOON.
