Women’s fight for equality is long from over and, in many ways, has taken another step in the right direction after the success of the Women’s March a couple weeks ago. The need for feminism has greatly increased as the rights of women have continued to be lower than the rights of men.

Women are constantly facing sexism and disrespect on a regular basis. Women are still cat-called on the streets and are expected to reach one particular type of beauty standard in order to obtain society's view of 'beautiful'. Women who do not reach this ideal body type are often judged, shamed and are conditioned to believe that something is wrong with them. In addition, women are often ridiculed and even denied the rights to make decisions for their own body and have many politicians, such as President Donald Trump, who believe that women do not have the right to make the decision to have an abortion by themselves and that the government must make the decision for them.

A feminist is "a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes", said Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - a world famous Nigerian-feminist writer. Adichie states that women in Nigeria need the assistance of a man to do many simple things. For example, she states that women need the help of a man to enter a hotel because if they are alone they are automatically labeled a sex worker and denied access. Although I do not know much about Nigeria in general, I do not understand why someone would think that a woman would never be getting a hotel room by herself and why she is automatically labeled in such a negative way as a sex worker. This story by Adichie came as a great shock to me and although women in America do not face a problem as severe as this, we still face many challenges of our own. We live in a world where rape is still seen as the victim's fault rather than the fault of a man that forces a woman into doing a sexual activity she does not want to do. A woman does not deserve to have her body violated so that someone else can feel pleasure. No woman is simply an object. On top of that, women are often degraded while being slut shamed or cat-called. A couple weeks ago, while walking to my internship in New York City, a car pulled up next to me with three men yelling inappropriate sexual remarks. My first reaction was freight and decided to ignore them and keep walking. After I paid no mind to their outrageous comments, their sexual comments and verbally stating their desires of me turned into unpleasant and critical comments because I was not reacting the way they had hoped. After this unfortunate situation, I began to think of the mindset that someone must have to verbally harass someone innocently walking on the street. I have heard in the past that men only cat-call women in revealing clothing, however, I have seen this to be untrue as I was wearing dress pants, ballet flats, and a long pea coat; I have come to the conclusion that some men who cat-call do not see my value as a person and are just not thinking. In the end, I believe it is common occurrences such as this that increases the need for feminism and the continuation of the fight for women’s rights.

In fact, Kristen Anderson wrote in Modern Misogyny that the benefits revolving around considering one’s self a feminist are immense. Although often getting a bad reputation, feminists often have much better psychological health than women who hold more traditional values. Additionally, feminist women are less preoccupied with thinness of their body, are less likely to suffer from eating disorders, and experience better sexual intercourse. Moreover, they reject mass media’s idea of praising a thin, “perfect” body type.

Reasons like this are just a few motives for why I promote feminism. I believe feminist women are the women that will make a difference in the world and fight for what all women deserve including equal pay, more women CEOs, more representation in government, rights to their own body, less sexism, less emphasis on gender roles, and no more unnecessary degrading of women everywhere.