Feminism: a fight without end…

Having to write this article makes me feel angry, outraged. But why would defending my rights as a woman get me mad? It should motivate me, give me strength to fight for gender equality, and make me proud for being involved in such an important cause. But the problem is that this combat still exists. In 2017, in France, in a globalized and developed world, as a well-educated seventeen-year-old French girl - soon to be a woman - I have to fight, stand for, and protest to be equal to my brother, to boys, to men, to the other gender, to the other half of humanity. How can 3.5 billion people be discriminated against, under-estimated?

We, the feminists, have been fighting for over a hundred years, and still haven’t won. However, so many pro-female activist movements have been created, so many battles have been fought, women have completely turned society upside-down and accomplished tremendous things through their struggles. In France, women’s right to vote was allowed in 1944 (which is quite astounding when you consider Russia gave women the vote 26 years earlier). In 1965, women were allowed to exercise a profession without their husband’s approval (yes, because the husband sort of “owned” the human he was married to). Contraception became legal in 1967, and Simone Veil succeeded in making abortion legal in 1975. For me, this represents the right to have control over my own body. Furthermore, women’s empowerment has grown continuously over the past 60 years. They have gained greater freedom, are more emancipated.

But in spite of all these major progresses, women are still considered inferior to men and have to fight constantly for gender equality: “[We] need to work through these issues because they are here, and they're not going to go away,” wrote Emily L. Hauser, from The Week magazine. Even if we won considerable rights (that are more than normal to me), history is an endless resumption. It means that our rights are never definitively acquired; we’ll have to stay vigilant forever as women’s rights are always being questioned. For instance, today in my country, one of the most developed in the world, girls who are teenagers like me are protesting against abortion or against feminism in general. They accept their inferior condition, they do not think we deserve better, we ARE better than what we’re told. It is absolutely a shame that even the people directly concerned about an issue this important are hostile to it, that they are protest against it! When we all know that women in France are paid 25% less than men, that gender stereotypes control the way we think and act, that in several countries (actually too many to count) women are being abused, raped, don’t have all the civil rights, can’t drive, can’t vote, are owned by their fathers or husbands, are not considered as citizens, are not considered as PEOPLE: how is it possible to just be careless about or even against feminism? I think it is sad enough that feminism has to exist, as it means equality has not been achieved yet and that the fight needs to continue; we don’t need proponents who don’t realize how lucky they are to live in a country as free as France to fight our cause.

I’m sick of being considered less, of having to live with irrelevant stereotypes and society’s rules, of having to fight an endless issue because of my gender. I’m tired of being treated like an object, of being seen as a body first rather than a mind, of struggling daily to prove that I am as capable as the male standing next to me.

Blandine LOCHU wants to work as a lawyer defending women's rights.