Today I'd like to express what my experiences with sexism have been like so far in my life. I am so sick of girls giving into gender roles. I think a lot of times a major contributing factor to sexism is women ourselves permitting the limitations put on us by society. I am from a pre-revolutionary town just south of New York City, an area growing in diversity and size slowly but surely. So in a lot of ways people are very set in their old fashioned practices. I remember one year for school I wrote a current event essay for my history class on the growing campaign for gender equality. Half way through reading my essay to the class, my teacher at the time cut me off and interjected "You know I don't believe in all that stuff, I'm pretty old fashioned." I was at first shocked at her discretion, you know interrupting my presentation in such a way. Next I felt confused and frustrated, how could she, another woman, want to submit herself to society's standards? How could she a working woman be okay with never being paid the same wage for the same amount of work as the male teacher down the hall? Or for any work she's ever done for that matter. She was a very kind woman and a great teacher, her behavior that day did make me very upset in ways I never had been before. From then on I began to research the issue, follow every online blog, and watch every speech made on the topic. As humans, I believe we are creatures of habit, we obtain our beliefs and values based on the ways we are raised. We learn our first language based on what our parents speak, same goes with our tastes in food and often interests. My history teacher, I later learned, was raised in a religious household in the same town, but years before it became as developed as it is now. She grew up knowing what to expect out of her life, she grew up a suburban girl, went to a local college, became a teacher, got married, and had 2 kids. Society's standards of success for a woman. I respect her ideals, and I am also from a suburban town, I just come from a different background with some conflicting ideas.
My parents grew up in a more urban neighborhood outside of the city. Both my parents worked very very hard to give me and my brother the life they didn't have. My first memory of the topic of feminism came when I was very young, probably about 5 or 6. I remember my girl friends from dance class were joining this pop warner cheerleading squad, for pop warner football. I wanted more than anything to join as well, but i remember sitting at the kitchen table across from my parents and my dad saying to me "You should want boys cheering for you, not you cheering for boys." And that was that. Those words have still followed me my entire life, it's really something I will never forget, and I hope to one day pass those same wise words down to other little girls. I owe a lot of gratitude to the way my parents raised me. I would ride bikes and rough house with my brother and his friends, while on the other hand I had birthday parties at Libby Lou's and played with my American Girl dolls. They provided me with the opportunity to explore everything and become the person I wished to be. Gender roles were not something that were heavily influenced. I believe that prejudices are something that is learned, no one is born being sexist towards another gender. It's truly in the way we were raised or the environment we were raised in, our opinions whether we wish to admit it or not are rooted in some aspect of our childhood, some memory that will forever stick with us and effect who we will become as people in the future.
Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world.
-Hillary Clinton
