What is Gender Equality?

Gender Equality for Me

"Equal doesn't mean identical. Saying women and men are equal doesn't mean one is saying men and women have no differences. It simply means those differences should not translate to different levels of access to benefits and opportunities in society," said Obuoforibo, a Senior Product Manager that is also an activist. I agree with what he claims is gender equality.

I often see people have a misleading conception of what we call gender equality. Many people I find think that gender equality will erase the nature of men and women. It won't, ladies and gentlemen. Some particular groups of men say that this movement will just give them disincentives for their position in society. Well, again, it won't.

Gender equality defends both men and women to be able to achieve their rights, to make them do what they want to do as humans without worrying what labels will society give to them as men or women. It highlights the equality that men and women deserve to have to be human beings, not what men and women should be like based on society's mold.

We may constantly hear people speaking about gender equality and they just talk about inequality in a general and global environment such as workplaces and organizations where men mostly gain more benefits for their gender to get higher position more easily than women. Yes, it is right. However, gender equality is also talking about what men cannot do comfortably for society's rules.

For instance, we all, Indonesian particularly familiar with the utterance "Kamu laki-laki, jangan nangis! Malu." (Men shouldn't cry unless they want to be embarrassed). By this utterance, we can see how society defines men. They should be strong, though, and insensitive. Whereas, there's nothing wrong with being sensitive and emotional regardless of our gender. On the other hand, women will experience the same thing if they behave rather boyish and like a leader, let's say. Society will think that is not normal as women should be soft, feminine, and sweet.

This conventional idea of putting men and women in a stiff society mold is the thing that leads to gender inequality in the more general and wider scope. Thus, it is we, the new generation that has the responsibility to change this mindset. "Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong." ~Emma Watson at the HeForShe Campaign.

ð Watch the full speech here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkjW9PZBRfk&t=608s

ð Commit to the HeForShe Campaign here https://www.heforshe.org/en