At the moment, I am writing a speech for the upcoming TEDxBallybofey which I have been asked to speak at. The theme is ‘Beyond Borders’ I am talking about the borders concerning gender. So it has got me thinking, why is feminism such a dirty word?

I am a FEMINIST and I am not embarrassed by that. I have learned that only 9% of women identify as feminists. I think that if you are anti-feminist, you might want to revaluate that decision, because I find it kind of scary that we could live in a world where many people don’t believe that the sexes shouldn’t be socially and economically equal.

An inspiration of mine, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote in her book ‘that the word feminist, and the idea of feminism itself, is also limited by stereotypes’. I know feminists who would never ever identify as feminists for many reasons like being viewed as: aggressive, a man hater, unable to be feminine or hellbent on having power over men. These just simply aren’t true, not one of them is required to be a feminist.

There are arguments much to the opinion that ‘what more do women want?’, to that I say first world women, for example, want to close the pay gap but women in third world countries are still fighting for their basic rights, women weren’t allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia until 2017. Just because you have one right and someone else does not, it doesn’t diminish the value of a right you don’t have, you just need to have perspective. It also doesn’t mean that the fight is over, feminism is still so relevant to our daily lives.