Isabella Wulff - Digital design and marketing communicator at Impala Nordic, writer.
Mystery that we still have an International Women's Day to remind us that women are just as valuable to society as men.
Achieving gender equality is a difficult challenge. Women have fought for centuries to get the same rights and opportunities as men. Today, women still have difficulty breaking through the “thick glass ceiling” that often holds them back from the professional sphere and the public sphere. Despite these setbacks, there are many female pioneers who have paved the way for other women and at the same time taken our society forward. It is easy to begin to imagine what women could have achieved without these obstacles…
One of the ways in which women have been thwarted is that women’s history has often been overlooked and forgotten. It was not more than 65 years ago that the history of Swedish women began to be recognized, according to the Swedish Agency for Gender Equality. This explains why in historical contexts it can be more difficult to mention female role models than male ones. In addition, many women’s work and progress have been registered in their husbands’ names or have been overshadowed by a male figure who has taken their work further into the public sphere. There were laws that prohibited women from working or studying in Sweden, as well as strong norms that meant that women were not taken seriously or allowed to be seen and heard in the public sphere.
During my time at university, I have personally experienced that despite the fact that the historical teaching material included as many women as men, some students considered that the teaching material gave an “unbalanced” and biased picture of “reality”. Some students went so far as to report our professor to the Swedish National Agency for Education. This shows how deeply rooted our norms and prejudices around gender are and the media have been proven numerous times to have an impact on our worldview.
Throughout history, people have archived, registered and disseminated information via various media. This flow of information has helped shape our society into what it is today. In today's media, there is a subtle but constant fight against inequality. Media events that promote gender equality are occasionally highlighted, but more often than not, there are reports of incidents where women are oppressed, subjected to violence or exploitation. Unfortunately, old stereotypes and norms about the role of women in society are reproduced daily in the media. In advertising, on social media, in reality shows and in newspapers, you don't have to look far to find problematic representations of women, something that constantly works against gender equality.
Shouldn't it be so difficult? We are all human and we all deserve the same rights regardless of gender, sexuality, skin color or religion. To me it is a mystery that not everyone thinks that way, to me it is a mystery why men and women don't get equal pay for the same work and to me it is a mystery that we still need an "International Women's Day" that is there to remind us that women are just as valuable to society as men. It shouldn't be that hard... Together we can do small things every day to finally overturn the dominant media-driven representation of women. In Swedish society and in the world.
