Feminism: Is It Still Needed in 2015?

Maegan Griffin

Mrs. Flanagan

English 111

September 9, 2015

Feminism: Is it still needed in 2015?

        Is feminism still needed in 2015? Women have accomplished so much since winning the right to vote in the 1920’s. Woman can now go to work and do the same job as men but still get paid less. Women can still be mothers and work the same hours as her partner but are still expected to take care of the home and children. Women are ostracized for dressing a certain way that distract men but no one looks at the larger problem with the way women look at themselves. In this paper, I argue against the people that think feminism is obsolete in 2015.

        Woman began working in the factories during WWII in 1942, when men were drafted and they were needed to keep the military munitions plants going (Web Head 2015). Woman didn’t want to stop working and they didn’t from that point on. Women now make up over half of the work force but only earn 78 percent of what men do (Web Lyles 2015). There are still many women fighting for a bill to be passed for equal pay. April 14th is equal pay day, the date represents how long into the year women have to work just to make the same amount as men did the last year. Women still need to stand up to society for doing the same job as a man but not getting paid the same.         

        Many women want it all, the husband, the children and the career, historically men have always had this so why shouldn’t a woman be able to? Today they are but in most households they are still expected to work the same hours as a man and go home and take care of the house and children. In early feminism they were striving just to be able to work but now a lot of women don’t have a choice they need to work and they still want to take care of their family. Feminism is still needed because women today need to know that just because they are women they are not the confined to the gender roles of society.

        Women have always had skewed way of looking at themselves but in today’s society with the 24 hour news cycle and social media it’s so much worse than it has ever been. Girls don’t have good role models in today’s media. The media teaches them to sexualize their bodies because that’s all that really matters to boys. It’s hard to tell a young girl that isn’t all that matter when her role model is Kim Kardashian who became famous off making sex tapes. America’s young girls need to know that there is so much more to them than just the way they look. Without feminism there would be no hope of any sort of media reform that doesn’t make women’s look like objects instead of humans.