Image Makes All the Difference

So here we are, almost twenty years into the 21st century. We have touch screen cell phones that double as GPSs and even 3D printers. With this boom in technology and information, you would think that most of the issues we faced in the past would be far behind us, right? Well no. Despite all the problems facing our world today, women’s rights may be one of the most ongoing movements in the past decades. I’ve given a lot of information on this topic and its impact on society, but I struggled a bit with how to tackle it in the real world for my "You and the World" agent of change. How does one girl change an issue that is so huge within a short amount of time? Well if I had Obama’s number maybe I’d only have 98 problems, but I don’t. Even though the internet is a vast plethora of information and discovery, I only had so many resources. Since this is such a general and widespread issue, I figured the best way to create change was to spread awareness. The best weapon against wrong-doing is education. Educating those who have no use of gaining this knowledge otherwise is a more powerful tool that I had to use to my advantage, so I took that and ran with it, resulting in a presentation! I presented a small slideshow in front of my stream mates and it went pretty well...besides me sounding like Porky pig with all the stuttering I did. Other than that, I spread awareness on a topic that I’m very passionate about and hope to do more work to change it in the future. It surprised me how many people were also aware of what was going on in our society as well, because it’s not usually a topic brought up amongst kids and teens. I received great feedback from my very active audience and couldn’t be happier with the turnout. Even Ms. Giknis was inclusive in the discussion and added some really great points. I also referred to some topics I covered in my blog posts 1 and 2 which helped me explain the issue of women's issues even further. I gave some of the statistics about the low numbers of women in certain fields and educational programs, talked about equal pay, and also shared some of the results I collected from the survey I took in my second blog post. One point that I brought up was the issue of the images we

re given about a certain issue or topic within our society. The example I gave was how when women enter the workforce, they are constantly making decisions between family and career, as if there’s no in between. Either you’re a loving mother who would rather stay home and shake formula all day or a hard-working businesswoman who has no time for marriage or children. Why should we have to choose? Why can’t both worlds be blended into one to create a world of working mothers with supportive benefits and stable households? It’s all about image. If the image that society places on what a breadwinner looks is that of a male than that’s what will occur. Women feel that the world isn’t ready for our takeover as presidents, CEOs, astronauts, and even receptionists or painters. We should all be proud of what field we are in and not let gender stereotypes or misogynists hinder us from pursuing our careers, and we also shouldn’t be ashamed if we are making more money than our husbands/partners.

I would use social media as a source of delivery for all this research and information I’ve collected, but it was an idea a lot of people partook of and I wanted to do something slightly original. Even though presentations are somewhat mainstream, I figured it would be the best form of spreading the word.