British actress and humanitarian Emma Watson delivered a speech at the United Nations Headquarters that launched a worldwide feminist campaign entitled “HeForShe” on Sept. 20 of this year.
With this new platform, Watson, who was appointed as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador in July, hopes to promote the empowerment of young women and achieve gender equality by inviting men to join the women's rights movement all around the world.
The campaign has received high praise from both genders since its debut, specifically because of Watson's emphasis on what the real definition of feminism is, despite stigma the word has accrued over recent years.
“For the record, feminism by definition is: The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes,” Watson said, according to the speech she gave at the UN.
Furthermore, she raised the issue of feminism being labeled synonymous with man hating, which she said, “has to stop.”
Watson called her male peers to propel the movement beyond mere conversation by signing the official HeForShe Commitment, which states the following on heforshe.org: “Gender equality is not only a woman's issue, it is a human rights issue that requires my participation. I commit to take action against all forms of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls.”
Since the date this article was written, over 188,720 men from around the world have signed the HeForShe petition, with thousands more taking to social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram to announce their support of Watson's campaign by posting photos of themselves under the hashtag #HeForShe.
Carolyn Dirksen, director of faculty development, said that Watson's campaign addresses an issue that Dirksen believes has held feminism and young women back from achieving all that they can.
“I think that women in the early days of the feminist movement really believed that you had to get there by yourself and that you couldn't rely on men � and if you did then that was a step backward for [feminism], rather than moving forward,” Dirksen said.
Dirksen said that this perspective is detrimental to the forward trajectory of women in the workplace, and the acceleration of feminism overall.
“If you won't accept a handout from someone who's above you, you probably aren't going to get very far because there aren't a lot of women up there,” Dirksen said. “Men can help us and we need to be willing to accept help from men or else we [can't] make the kind of progress that is possible.”
Senior and self-proclaimed feminist Marshall Pickard was encouraged by the HeForShe campaign's inclusion of men in feminist conversation.
“I really appreciate [Watson] for inviting men to a place where men haven't really been allowed to voice their opinion in the past,” Pickard said. “It's really a powerful [move], because in order for things to change you need to get the oppressor on board to help - until men and women come together to change, the conversation is just going to be one-sided.”
Pickard said that he hopes that this invitation will prompt young men to understand that feminism can be for them, too, and hopes that this will de-stigmatize the word feminism, or what he jokingly refers to as “the other f-word.”
Senior Rachel Lesler agrees that it is important for both genders to be aware of feminism, but fears that Watson's campaign is centering the discussion too heavily on men.
“For me [Watson's stance] is problematic because it doesn't focus the conversation around women, it focuses it around men, and the conversation has always been focused on men � it keeps women from being fully realized persons in their own right, [separate from the male agenda],” Lesler said.
Lesler said that the fact that Watson encouraged men to support women because they are “your mother, your sister, your daughter or your friend” is also an issue because it suggests that women are only sympathetic to men if they possess a qualifier to identify them with, rather than viewing them simply as people.
“If you can only call yourself a feminist and understand feminism because you have a mom or because you realize that it's good for you too [as a man], than you're missing the point, because you aren't viewing women in their own right,” Lesler said.
Yet Lesler does concede that the campaign is beneficial in continuing conversation and education about the issue of feminism, and believes that it can spark curiosity and understanding amongst her peers.
Given the current gender gap, which Watson highlights in her speech, such understanding from both genders is needed.
Dirksen said our society still has a long way to go in order to attain full equality.
“I think the whole thing has changed a lot since I was in college, but its kind of like race relations in that yes, it's a lot better than it was in the �50s, but it could still be a lot better,” Dirksen said.
Dirksen said she has seen the negative effects of gender constrictions through studies conducted on the young men and women that enter Lee University.
“We have good data for Lee incoming freshman where we do [a] comprehensive institutional research profile, and [we find] that women's self esteem is always lower than men's - women always rate themselves lower than men do in very significant ways,” Dirksen said.
Data is collected every three years by distributing a survey created by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) to first-time, full-time freshman in their Gateway classes. Students are asked to rate themselves in comparison to their peers in a variety of categories, including relative academic ability, leadership ability, self-confidence and problem solving skills.
In the 2013 CIRP survey, women scored themselves lower than their male counterparts in 30 of 33 categories, scoring themselves higher only in sections related to empathy, cooperation and understanding of others-attributes that are traditionally affiliated with femininity.
One of the largest discrepancies fell under a category highlighting leadership ability, with only 24.6 percent of females ranking themselves in the highest 10 percent of their peers in terms of leadership ability, compared to 39.5 percent of males. There was a similar gap in the self-confidence section, with a divide of 12.37 percent between men and women's self-scores in the highest category.
Dirksen said that these statistics are distressing because they are not reflective of the achievement ability of Lee's students.
“If you look at our entering class, the women really do have higher test scores than guys, as well as higher GPA's for the most part,” Dirksen said. “So [it begs the question], why don't women have more self-confidence? I think it's partly because [women] are taught to be more self�effacing and to keep themselves humble.”
Pickard said that an increased awareness of the restrictions of gender roles and a push to look beyond what society has traditionally defined as appropriately masculine and feminine could be beneficial for Lee students.
“It's not just women who are affected by gender stereotypes � men very much are as well,” Pickard said. “Masculinity is not a danger to femininity, and femininity is not a danger to masculinity.”
Watson's campaign advocates for a freedom from these stereotypes for both men and women.
“Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong,” Watson said, according to her speech at the UN. “It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum, instead of two sets of opposing ideals. If we stop defining each other by what we are not, and start defining ourselves by who we are, we can all be freer, and this is what HeForShe is about. It's about freedom.”
Pickard said he supports Watson's assertion that gender should be viewed as existing on a spectrum, rather than an as a pair of conflicting ideologies.
“No one is completely masculine and no one is completely feminine, and when we allow people to just be who they are, we are empowering them to be free and independent and whole, rather than forcing them into stereotypes that don't work for everyone and are not [consistent] across the board,” Pickard said.
Lisa Stephenson, assistant professor of systematic theology, echoed this sentiment.
“Too often people associate negative stereotypes with the word �feminism' and do not realize that it can be a very positive thing in both men and women's lives,” Stephenson said. “A college campus is filled with young people discovering who they are as people and as Christians. Part of that discovery process for young women is figuring out what it means to be a woman, [and] feminism can play a positive [role] in that process.”
Lesler hopes that her peers will use this campaign as an opportunity to create positive changes on campus, and to increase their participation from simply discussion.
“This sounds really clich�, but we are the people who are going to be changing the world next, and if we don't do something now it may take another twenty or thirty years for a big change to happen,” Lesler said. “The evils and injustices of the world are happening right now - they aren't waiting for us to wake up and [inform] ourselves of [issues like these]�at some point you have to stop talking and start acting.”
For more information about the HeForShe campaign, or to hear Emma Watson's speech in full, visit www.heforshe.org.
