I Call Myself A Feminist: The View from Twenty-Five Women Under Thirty

by Victoria Pepe

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women. Nora Ephron

‘Good for a girl’ is so often offered as a compliment, yet it is in fact a free pass to failure and mediocrity. Good for a girl gets us the validation we’re told to seek, so why try harder? If one doesn’t succeed in matching the men, there’s always beauty, marriage and kids.

The lack of women in boardrooms isn’t a more pressing issue than violence against women, but we cannot tackle one successfully if we do not stand against the injustice of the other.

– it was my inner critic doubting the validity of my opinions. I know that silencing my inner misogynist will take time.

‘If you were my wife I’d give you a dose of poison’. No need of that, my friend,’ I replied cheerfully, ‘If I were your wife I’d take it’. The audience yelled with delight and my tormentor left the meeting early.

Sometimes people just want to feel heard.

My great-grandmother, Sylvia Pankhurst, was the same age as I am now when she, her mother Emmeline and her sister Christabel formed the Women’s Social and Political Union. The WSPU, nicknamed the Suffragettes,

But what of this word ‘feminism’? For me, a feminist is someone who believes in the need to fight for the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.

However, if you put aside the word ‘feminism’ and talk about the ideas that it represents, most people agree with the principles involved and believe in the importance of fighting for equality.

My ‘dream’ action for the women’s liberation movement: a smile boycott, at which declaration all women would instantly abandon their ‘pleasing’ smiles, henceforth smiling only when something pleased them.