The present is female
- Girl Up Elkins High School
- Aug 29, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 16, 2020
by Yasmin Quiambao
This is the sentence that we chose to include on our school club shirts. Girl Up, after all, stands as an organization partnered with the United Nations to help support adolescent females and overall, promote female empowerment across the world. This school year, we’ve used that specific sentence to showcase who we work with (as shown on our instagram page) and to guide our planned activities despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
But at the very root of it, I believe that female empowerment begins with education. By knowing more on the issues at hand, organizations and individuals can start the spread of proper information and aid to those who need it. As of now, the World Bank (working under the World Bank Group) has completed four projects in Bangladesh, Ghana, Pakistan, and Nigeria to boost advocacy for girls’ education. And, of course, Malala Yousafzai heavily sponsors girls’ education through the Malala Fund, constantly working to give girls trapped in poverty, war, and discrimination a chance for education to even begin or continue.
And beyond school, we’ve begun to see a more noticeable ripple in the efforts to overcome gender inequality. Just three years ago, in 2017, there were nearly 75 million women in the workforce and women own nearly 10 million businesses (which have accounted for $1.4 trillion on record). Fast forward a year into 2018, where the Washington Post reported that 100 women were confirmed to have been admitted into the House of Representatives, even though previously, the most number of women in the House was up to 84.
So the present is thriving with feminism, and (I suspect) we’ll be living in through that cycle of change for a long, long time. Day by day, the world is recognizing that women can match the feats of men and do them just as well. We’re all a part of this effort to equalize the roles of men and women in society, and with our generation spreading knowledge on these issues, the goal becomes more and more attainable.
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