It’s upon us. Womxn’s Month. Yesterday was International Womxn’s Day, and we celebrated here in America by having no viable womxn candidates for the 2020 Presidential Election (and losing an hour of sleep on top of it all). It’s tough out there for womxn. It seems like every step forward for non-cishet white men, we take another step backward.
If womxn are deemed unremarkable, incapable, less than, having no cause for celebration, then we don’t see them acknowledged, and if we never see them acknowledged, we assume they’re (we’re) unremarkable, have no capabilities, are less than, and nothing to contribute. And then round and round we go, diminishing the abilities and accomplishments of half the global population.
What can we do as creatives?
Hire womxn. Pay them equitably. Take womxn’s needs into account when doing market research, listen to their opinions, stop shouting over them, taking credit for their ideas. Give (because it’s earned, not a handout) your womxn peers the time they need to be full humans instead of expecting them to live by the standards we’ve come to expect from men.
I’ve written womxn vs women because not every woman has certain body parts and not every person with certain body parts is a woman. It’s more inclusive and that matters.
This project by TIME was very, very cool. They went back 100 years and created a cover with a womxn who would’ve won had it not been “man of the year” until 1999 when it became “person of the year.”
At any rate, let’s do better, together.
Someone forgot to tell Simone Biles she’s supposed to be incapable of greatness (photo courtesy of Glamour)