So lets get started, Emma Watson, national treasure in the making and Harry Potter’s finest female character - ok just in our opinion - became UN Women’s Goodwill Ambassador back in 2014. She launched their campaign ‘HeForShe’ and her speech was so inspiring, uplifting and unifying for both women and men to join the conversation for gender equality. As a brilliant story teller, Emma perfectly voices her upbringing in Britain and there are many other relatable aspects of feminism many people don’t really think about in regards to gender stereotyping in western societies for both sexes and the effect that can take on someone’s life. We could all have a re-think about our own actions, love and encouragement towards our children and embrace the feminist movement to reach equality sooner rather than later!
“When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of their beloved sports teams, because they didn’t want to appear muscle-y, when at 18, my male friends were unable to express their feelings, I decided that I was a feminist.”
Another inspiring woman who gave a gem of a Ted talk, which sparked a book and even a movie is currently being made from her talk. Every so often, somebody comes along and says something so honest, so inspiring, so wise, that there’s nothing left to do except stare at them unblinkingly, while letting the bottom halves of our mouths fall to the floor.
From this 2013 Ted Talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, wrote the book of the same name, ‘We should all be feminists’, which is now translated into 32 languages, sparked a movement of change and even lent her words to Beyonce’s anthem “Flawless”. Adichie’s oration weaved together human stories from her youth in Nigeria with a complicated discourse about gender roles in the modern world. Empower yourselves!
“Our society teaches a woman at a certain age who is unmarried to see it as a deep personal failure. While a man at a certain age who is unmarried has not quite come around to making his pick.”
Lastly, and no means least, we were guided to this Ted talk from the wonderful women in the Allbright Community, a group of inspiring women holding hands to help and encourage each other to reach further in their careers in London. Lidia Yuknavitch talks talks to those who might not be fitting into society in the wider picture and calls to the ‘misfits’ out there, as she takes us on her own journey to reinvention and taking the troubles in her life to portals of transformation. Yogis can relate for sure!
Lidia Yuknavitch’s very personal story to becoming the writer she was born to be, her journey to self love and freedom are laid bare in her memoir which tells us from the debris of her troubled early life, she weaves an astonishing tale of survival in which ‘The Chronology of Water’ lays a life bare. It is the life of a misfit, one that forges a fierce and untrodden path to creativity and comes together in the shape of love. How the self can transform itself again and again. Utterly, deeply, inspiring.
“Even at the moment of your failure, right then you are beautiful. You don’t know it yet, but you have the ability to re-invent yourself endlessly. That’s your beauty.”
Let us all celebrate how far we have come to gender equality and empowerment and think to the future changes we want to make, together. Happy International Women’s Day!
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