Author: mrangel5

?Member Spotlight: Carmen Rangel

Hey! I’m Carmen Rangel one of the contributing members of Unite For The Uterus, and as we reach the end of our project, we have decided to make ourselves the spotlight women of the week. This is a way to give our followers insight into who we are, why we care about the organization, and who has been inspirational in our life.
As a woman, it’s no surprise that I take an interest in women’s rights and my experience as a woman of color has made me place importance on understanding the various experiences of womanhood. I soon realized that we must put an emphasis on equality in order to make a future empowered females in a world where many of us face injustice and oppression. I believe that women deserve access to health care and reproductive planning and should be able to voice their opinions with local and federal representatives and should and will be taken seriously. I also hope to change a culture that degrades women and allows violence towards women to continue to occur without consequences. Additionally, the negative rhetoric towards females and the unrealistic beauty standards in our society have caused harmful effects on young girls leading to self-esteem issues which is another reason why I feel we need to tackle these issues today to make a substantial positive change for generations to come. As you can see there is so much to work on that I am passionate about, and with your help, we can make it possible!
There are so many women in my life and in history that have made me who I am, and I would like to time this as an opportunity to give Frida Kahlo one of the most influential women in my life a spotlight. Frida Kahlo is known for her incredible surrealist and self-portrait paintings and her feminist activist work during her lifetime as a Mexican painter up until the mid-1950’s.

I think that I relate so much to her because I am a Mexican American women, feminist, and artist but I can only dream to be as awesome as she was! Not only is she known as one of the greatest artists she was admired for her strength and determination as a creator. Kahlo started painting after she was in a tragic bus accident that left her bedridden where she worked on her craft but the injuries sustained throughout her entire life but that never stopped her from painting or from being politically active. Despite her physical limitation she never let anything stand in her way and made her named known in a male-dominated art world, fought for a better society, and freedom of expression. Overall she was a total badass, and I admire her for everything that she has accomplished and for being such an inspiration to me!

?Sunday Spotlight: Kimberlé Crenshaw

To achieve the efforts of feminism, we must unite to include all women and acknowledge the various experiences of womanhood regardless of race, class, and sex. Intersectional feminism does just that through the understanding that there is an overlapping and independent system of discrimination and disadvantages for different women. Intersectionality in feminism is important because it notes that the issues that women face are not the same and go beyond the ones that impact white middle-class women as previous feminist movements have done. If the movement of feminism strives to seek gender equality and to empower women then wouldn’t it need to be intersectional?

That is exactly what Kimberlé Crenshaw a professor of civil rights, critical race theory, and law at UCLA law thought when she introduced intersectionality to feminism in 1989. She acclaimed that the identity of the marginalized is often excluded from political movements, something that she experienced as a woman of color. Crenshaw published a study of the relation between racism and sexism in the context of violence against women. In her article, she recognized that there is a correlation between a person’s identity and the oppression and discrimination that they encounter.

After her discovery, the term and movement have gained momentum in political movements. We thank Kimberlé Crenshaw for her influential work that has indeed brought unity to gender equality. Since then Crenshaw has had a successful career with many accomplishments in her field.
– Elected Professor of the Year by the 1991 and 1994 at UCLA
– Published Critical Race Theory 1995 and Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment in 1993
– Awarded the 2007 Fulbright Chair for Latin America in Brazil
– Nominated an Alphonse Fletcher Fellow
– Awarded with an in-residence fellowship at the Center for Advanced Behavioral Studies at

The movement for women’s rights and gender equality has been a hard one but to positively progress from where we are at we have to advocate for the employment of intersectionality. Feminism that doesn’t consider all women doesn’t accurately represent and acknowledge the issues and lives of the entire population of women. No women should be left behind because of their race, class, gender, sex, or disability because this fight is for all of us!

?Love Yourself

Day in and day out we are surrounded by the media, whether it is a magazine we happen to skim our eyes over that demoralizes a celebrities appearance or an advertisement brainwashing us into believing we need to be or look a certain way. We are living in a media-filled world and the control of the message is truly out of our control. According to nationaleatingdisorders.org, “Over 80% of Americans watch television daily” (national). People of all ages engage on multiple social media outlets daily almost hourly that fuel and contribute to the definition of what is beautiful. We feel the need to fit societies expectations day in and day out. These expectations can lead to eating disorders, depression, or a constant lack of confidence or dissatisfaction with oneself. We must break away from people viewing others for how they look but for their heart and in our mind.

Our society utilizes the media to brainwash and pound the ideal body image into our brains through advertisements. Even media for young children, for example animated shows and children’s videos touch on the importance of looking attractive. Women and men are sexually objectified in commercials and print ads. Take for example the bit Carl’s Jr. pulled with models eating hamburgers in swimsuits in a sexual manner.  We must not submit to these advertisements and hidden innuendos.  If we give in we are allowing the media to tell our loved one’s what makes them unique an beautiful.

Tracey Spicer, an Australian journalist, gave a Ted talk in regards to how much time we put into our body care and body image to fit societies expectations. When in reality we could utilize the time spent on our productivity. In her speech she stated, for women, it works out at 3,276 hours (of grooming) over a lifetime and for men, they only devote 1,092 hours: about a third of the time spent.” As a newsroom journalist she has faced expectations and faced cruel criticism for her body image. She recommends these first steps of making a personal change for you. She says to remove the make up, wear the clothes YOU want to wear, and know you may receive backlash for it but that how any change will slowly happen.

If we spent less time giving into the media’s ideas of beauty we would maintain a higher confidence and be fulfilled with happiness of who we are as a person. Love yourself because you are a unique individual.  When we love ourself we are an example to those around us who are growing up in a world where our societies expectations are skewed. Who know’s with the time you would have spent grooming yourself to fit societies expectations you could have learned a new language, explored a new hobby and shared the important message of loving yourself for who you are!

 

?Sunday Spotlight: Trans Women Making History

This week we’re discussing transgender rights and the importance of intersectional feminist. Here are a few transgender women who have made an impact on the transgender community. The activist efforts of these women have empowered fellow transgenders and have redefined what it means to be a woman and the various experiences of womanhood.

Sarah Mcbride

Sarah Mcbride is the National Press Secretary for the Human Rights Campaign and the first transgender person to speak at a national convention and work in the White House. Her voice and presence at the White House have been extremely influential to policies on LGBT rights under the Obama administration. By publicly sharing her story she has brought awareness to transgender people and provided a voice for them in politics.

Jazz Jennings

Jazz Jennings in a transgender Youtube personality who uses her online presence to advocate for LGBT rights. She has become one of the first open teen transgender figures who brings support to other trans youth and has publicly shared her story in various interviews. Jazz and her parents created the Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation that provides supports to trans children by educating, providing financial aid to research, and transforming the negative stigma society has towards transgenders.

Laverne Cox

Laverne Cox is a transgender actress, TV star, and LGBT advocate who uses her status in Hollywood to fight for transgender rights. In addition to being a successful advocate, she is also the first transgender women to be nominated for an Emmy Award. Her position has been an effective platform that has really brought a lot of awareness of transgender rights, discrimination, and violence. She emphasizes intersectionality in her grassroots efforts because transgender women of color face are targets of violence.

March is Women’s History Month and these are just a few of the powerful women making history for our generation. Unite for the Uterus strongly stands by these amazing women that have made strides to fight for trans rights, women’s rights, and gender equality. We unite for all women who fight for our rights and promote feminist ideals that apply to all women regardless of race and identity. No uterus is required to support us and our fellow women!!

?Gender Wage Gap: Doesn’t Make Cents

Equal pay for equal work seems totally reasonable, right? Well, unfortunately, it’s just not that simple a key issue that the women’s movement is undertaking is the gender wage gap. The wage gap is the difference between a man and a woman’s average income salary. When looking into this issue there is one common statistic that is stated which is that women make 79¢ to every dollar a man makes but this fact doesn’t really reveal much about the matter because not every man and women have the same job. This statistic mainly applies to college educated individuals working full-time jobs but pay can vary for many reasons beyond sex like education, race, disability status, age, socioeconomic status, and experience (AAUW).

The 21% difference in pay primarily applies to white woman which are a small portion of all women, therefore neglecting to represent the various experiences of other women in the working field. The difference in pay is far more drastic for women of color with Hispanic and latina women with the lowest pay and biggest difference when compared to the pay of a white male (AAUW). Age is another big contributor to the wage gap even though many workers (male and female) will get an increase in pay as they get older and get more expertise the gap also becomes considerably larger. The disparities in salaries are prevalent in almost every field even the sports sector making women who pay the same sports as men make considerably less and by doing this the industry is encouraging gender inequality and discrimination towards women.

In order to tackle the gender wage gap, these additional findings need to be known more than just the 79¢ statistic for any substantial progress to occur. We need to obtain gender equality that applies to all women but what can we do to pave the way and abolish the wage gap? Here are a few tips that I came up with.

  • Advocate for equal pay and promotions for yourself and your lady friends
  • Talk to your employers about the Equal Pay Act
  • Tell Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act
  • If you are business owner make a commitment to provide equal pay for equal work
  • Educate others to bring awareness to the issue
  • Document any events that may suggest that you are being paid unfairly
  • File a complaint if you have been discriminated against
  • And most importantly is Know Your Worth!

?#TBT Women’s Liberation in American History

 

It’s 2017 and millions of citizens peacefully protested for women’s rights around the world but what exactly lead to this event to occur in this current age where we have advanced in so many ways? After seeing images of elderly women holding protest signs reading “I can’t believe I still have to protest this sh*t” from the marches I really began to wonder what have the women in America faced before me and what does that say about where we are today. In order to understand the current issues that women are facing in America, I think it’s important to understand the history of women’s rights in America and what we can do about the future of women.

Women have faced various issues in American history like restrictions towards voting, employment opportunities, access to education, unfair treatment, unequal pay, reproductive rights, maternity leave, and violence. The shocking thing is that many of these are still very prevalent today some have improved which shows a sign of progression. The women’s rights movement arose out of the frustration towards the unfair treatment around the mid-1800’s with the National Women’s Rights Convention that brought attention to the struggles they faced (Imbornoni). I can’t even imagine how shocking this was for a male dominated society to hear their frustrations but the voice of women needed to be heard.

The women’s suffrage reform movement soon began but weren’t granted the right to vote until the 19th amendment was passed in 1920 over 50 years after the women’s rights movement began. The women’s movement also focused on labor issues because they weren’t given equal employment opportunities and wages due to discrimination and the strong belief in traditional gender roles. Some areas of the U.S. were more forward-looking than others offering new jobs for women but while still setting limitations like in Illinois they weren’t allowed to practice law (Imbornoni).  These new advances were great and all but it mainly applied to white women leaving all women of color behind. Okay, so some progress nonetheless with restrictions on the side but what about women of color?

The National Association of Colored Women was formed in 1896 with the mission of  “raising to the highest plane the home life, moral standards, and civic life of our race” (Imbornoni). This divide between these movements relates to the current issues with white feminism which is so important why our feminism must intersectional if we want to grow as a gender and seek equality. Another big historical event was the creation of Planned Parenthood in 1942 and the invention of birth control soon after that. With these new establishments for reproductive health, there came a lot of backlashes that resulted in restrictions towards access to contraceptives and abortions. So it turns out that our current issues with women’s rights aren’t so new therefore making the statements on those elderly woman’s signs at the protest totally reasonable.

The rights that we have today were only possible after years of our fellow women demanding equality and though we’re not quite there yet we could be heading in the right direction but how many more years will it take? I think that this question is one of the biggest reason that the Women’s March was so powerful because we have come a long way and don’t want to regress especially after the misogynous comments that our President made during his election. Fighting for equal treatment has never been easy and will remain a challenge and this is the time that we need to stand up to the fight and continue not only for ourselves but for all the ladies of the world. The want for basic human rights, justice and liberation is nothing new and we need to bring our strength together to fight for all women, our society, and for future generations like in the past women have for us!
Imbornoni, Ann-Marie. “Women’s Rights Movement in the U.S.” Infoplease. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2017.

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