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Gender Equality Written and illustrated by Julia Jennings
Female empowerment: What are we empowering? As a mother of an opinionated, feisty 7-yearold girl I am always thankful that we were lucky enough to be born in the UK and will never be able to fully comprehend some of the hardships and injustices so many women and girls endure around the world. Sheltered and content, with all our basic needs met the question I am presented with is how to do I impose this abstract concept of female empowerment to a child who has never felt powerless because of her gender? How do I allow her to continue to enjoy her freedom and innocence but at the same time teach her to be savvy to discriminative cracks ever present just beneath the surface in the heavily mediated western world? From our position of luxury, identifying the wrongness of issues such as early marriage, inequality in employment rights and violence towards women is easy to spark the emotive ideologies of girl power and equality. My difficulties begin with the question, how is a seven-year-old taught to express this sense of empowerment and who is teaching them? With access to a multitude of media platforms like never before, the power of marketing and pop culture are at the forefront. It is clear to see the shift in the female stereotype, with obvious examples in the live action remakes of the Disney Classics and use of girls in the advertising of stereotypically male toys by companies such as Smyths. The issue that keeps resonating with me is that girls are being pumped
11 Green Zine 2021
with the empowerment message and the importance of assertiveness and expressing oneself, but where is the ethical grounding behind these statements that links to the everyday life of a seven year old? Surely there should be more to it than just being kind to people and fashion choices? Perhaps I am over thinking it, but I can’t help but identify an opening for manipulation and exploitation if empowerment is allowed to be marketed with less wholesome undertones; potentially triggering the undoing of progress through attitudes taught through influential mediation. A dangerous thought when put in context with changes to abortion law in certain areas and extreme dystopian scenarios such as is depicted in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Fragility is the word that comes to mind. According to the European Institute for Gender Equality, female empowerment can be defined as the “Process by which women gain power and control over their own lives and acquire the ability to make strategic choices.” This is said to involve five components: “Women’s sense of self-worth; their right to have access to opportunities and resources; their right to have power and control of their own lives, both within and outside the home; and their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally.”
Sustainable Development Goals