As Women’s History Month comes to an end, Wildcats find themselves reflecting on what that title holds. We celebrate the role hundreds of women have had in history, bringing us to where we stand today.
Too often we are shocked at how things were in the past: lifestyles of covering ankles, being expected to cook meals and maintaining a level of polished beauty.
It is empowering to see how far we’ve come since then. The lines between gender roles and expectations are becoming more blurred every year. Powerful female speakers are no strangers to NMU and great female professors and leaders make each department even stronger. Even in our own North Wind office we have the privilege of working under a female advisor and editor-in-chief, when journalism is typically a male-dominated field.
Globally social media stories of body positivity are shared frequently, bashing the pressures of accustomed beauty ideals. Higher percentages of women are attending and graduating from college, pursuing more dominant roles in medicine, politics and the military.
Thousands of pink-clad people have been showing huge support to causes they care about.
All of these things are incredibly important for young girls to see and understand growing up. Kids of all genders will grow up in a better world than their parents did.
At the same time, we are still incredibly far away from where we need to be as a society and as people. Acknowledgement of women’s rights should not be limited to one month. The gender wage gap is still present and affecting families, despite it being repeatedly dismissed as a sham and a myth.
We live in a world that makes pens specifically labelled for women, and taxes are placed on “luxury” female sanitation items like tampons and pads. A man who’s been clearly recorded saying that he can grab women by the genitals can become the U.S. president.
As Women’s History Month comes to an end it is important to see how far we’ve come in the world of women’s rights, but it is even more imperative to know how much farther we have yet to go.
