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Women have been historically oppressed throughout the world, from the restrictions on voting and education, to discrimination in the workplace and regulation on female reproduction. 

Feminism is associated with the equality of women on cultural, social, economic, and human rights levels. In some parts of the world, women still cannot leave their homes without the company of their husbands or another adult male family member. In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t granted the right to drive. The Women in the World Summit reports that 95% of girls in Somalia experience female circumcision, or genital mutilation that many times renders them unable to experience sexual pleasure. The same study also reported that on average ten Brazilian women lose their lives each day to domestic violence. 

While the United States may be miles ahead of many other countries in the simple yet monumental advances in the way society treats women as equals to men, there is still a long history in this country in regards to equal rights for females. 

Feminism didn’t exist 200 years ago. According to the New World Encyclopedia, the term “feminism” originated from the French word “feminisme,” coined by Charles Fourier, and was first used in English in the 1890s, in association with the movement for equal political and legal rights for women. Throughout the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, what is known as the women’s suffrage movement spread throughout the United States and United Kingdom. The movement originally focused on property and contractual rights of women and eventually moved towards equal voting rights. American pioneers of feminism such as Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to name a few, helped to achieve the nineteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. Granting women the right to vote was a great achievement, and the first major triumph of the feminist movement within the United States.

During the 1960s, issues of feminism focused mainly on equality and ending ongoing discrimination of women in society. The women’s suffrage movement had passed, but the everyday societal struggles for women continued to keep them from reaching equality with men. Women were still very limited in what was considered acceptable at that time. Women were expected to be homemakers, and were widely unwelcome in many professional settings, including classrooms.  Women who were in professional fields were often restricted to jobs with a nurturing aspect such as teaching or secretarial work.

In 1966 the National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded by Betty Friedan. The organization brought together many different types of people throughout the country to recognize injustices and create social and economic change. NOW’s first National Conference in Washington, D.C.  was held on October 29, 1966. This Statement of Purpose was written by Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique” in which she highlights the importance of the organization, as well as the strides made in the past:

“We believe the time has come to move beyond the abstract argument, discussion and symposia over the status and special nature of women which has raged in America in recent years; the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings.”

Today, feminism is integrated into everyday conversations from politics and social norms, to marriage and reproduction. On the political spectrum, the ideas of feminism surround the abortion debate as well as the income inequality gap. The AAUW news organization reports that in 2014, women working full time in the United States typically were paid just 79 percent of what men were paid. That is a 21 percent gap separated by gender. Although some people may argue that the gap has to do with the types of jobs women usually have or family obligations rather than just being female, one still must ask the question why gender still creates such a divide in the workplace. We as a society have to ask the question as to why in 2015 there still are not as many women scientist and engineers as there are males, and how to fix it. Feminism is finding where the inequalities exist, striving to create the change, and executing the change needed. The goal behind feminism is not to have special treatment for women simply because of their gender, but to eradicate the ideal across all genders, races, religions, countries, and homes that women are lesser to men in any way because of their gender.

Feminism is more than just the buzzword for millennial women that pride themselves on individuality, independence, and femininity.  While all those things are great, the rich history of turning oppression into triumph, and opportunity into action is what defines the movement and what perpetuates it to this day. Until women are paid equally to men for equal work, feminism will matter. Until women all across the world are not victim shamed after being raped, feminism will still have a place in society. Until the United States congress, which is 87 percent male, no longer has any say on a women’s reproductive health rights, feminism will continue to be the force the drives equality for women. 

The same ideals of equality that our “founding mothers” fought for are just as important as the double standards that we rebel against today. From being virtually on home confinement to flirting on the cusps of what could possibly be the first female President of the United States, feminism is being redefined for the Millennials, by the Millennials.