TSWELOPELE MAKOE
Johannesburg - Feminism is a word that is frequenting our modern lives lately. From Twitter to church, feminists are the topic on people’s lips. Many claim to be feminists themselves, but in reality, many people don’t understand what feminism is.
Feminism is a movement that aims to establish the socioeconomic, political, and institutional equality of the sexes. Feminism is the advocacy for women’s rights in a patriarchal, male-centred and sexist world. When I say ‘women’, I mean ‘females’, but it is also valuable to understand that all genders are inherently protected in the true definition of feminism (although LGBTQIA+ communities lead the advocacy for the equality of non-binary and queer people).
Feminism is not just about the rights of women, but about the societies that create stratified relations between males and females. Feminism calls for women’s agency to make decisions about their bodies, and it fights for women in workplaces to receive equal pay to their male counterparts. Feminism also calls for more female leaders in all sectors of society, as well as putting women in the forefront of typically male roles, such as leading lobola negotiations, and being a breadwinner in households.
Feminism is not about the validation of women, it is about the recognition of women as deserving members of society. It goes beyond the respect of women, and at its core, calls for the equality of women.
There have been many misconstruing notions about feminism, the most popular being that feminists are women who hate men - popularly deemed ‘feminazis’ (a contraction of ‘female’ and ‘nazi’). Don’t believe these fallacies that seek to worsen the fractured relations amongst sexes. Feminism is an age-old construct that fights patriarchal structures in societies all over the world. There are variations of feminism - such as African feminism - that deal with the needs, experiences and conditions of continental African women. African feminists, for example, stand for the rights of African women in African societies, with the contentions and complexities of heritage, culture, socio-economic dynamics, and so many other intersections.
Feminists believe in the right to use their bodies as they please, to live a life with the same freedoms and opportunities as males, and to engage in, and redress societal structures that seek to problematise and subjugate women.
The feminist movement is not exclusive to women alone. There are many males, non-binary and queer people that are proud feminists and advocate for women’s rights. Being a feminist does not entail long strikes and formal arguments with institutional leaders. It just means standing in solidarity with oppressed women. It means calling out the violence against women that is so often overlooked. It means engaging with fellow men about their treatment of women. It means standing up against workplaces and religious figures and institutions that seek to abuse and oppress women. Feminism is the utmost support of women in male-dominated fields such as taxi-driving, piloting, construction work and electricals, to name a few.
Being a feminist means having the empathy to understand that women and men are treated differently. It is understanding that women are more likely to be physically attacked, sexually abused, human trafficked, and killed. It stands to reason that women are more likely to die from poor medical care whilst giving birth, than from natural causes. But most of all, it is worth noting, and appreciating, that every single human being alive, has come from a woman. A woman may face extraordinary hardships in this world, but they are life-giving, effectual, resilient queens, and they deserve to be treated as such.
*Tswelopele Makoe is an MA (Ethics) student at the University of Western Cape and a gender activist