Rise of
awareness on equity is intensively increasing in world now. More and more
societies demand for equal rights and power, which leads to numerous transformations
of dictatorship or patriarchal governmental system and policies. Equity established
on the foundation of “empowerment”, whereby power must be able to be transferred
to other group or person, but not the absolute privilege of any specific people
in a power structure. Besides, at the expense of the powerful ones or so-called
“zero-sum”, power shall be able to be shared to the less powerful ones with
mutual agreement and collaboration (Page
& E. Czuba, 1999; Kreisberg,
1992). Hence, empowerment simply means a social process in which the powerful
ones endow authority and preserve the rights of the less powerful ones.
This article focuses on the issue of gender
empowerment on female, by discussing the phenomenon and development of equality
on gender. Gender empowerment grants women with the rights to destine their own
lives, by enabling them to set own goals, make decisions and demand that they
deserve, and also request necessary support from the society and state (Institute
of Development Studies, 1997). In order to have a comprehensive understanding
on this concept, this present discourse would discuss on multi-level aspects that
are related to gender empowerment namely personal and collective dimensions.
At the level of
personal, individual’s knowledge on self-worth and confidence and ability to
reconstruct current power structure and resist oppression is measured (Rowland,
1997). It is very important for an individual to evaluate their own status on
gender equality. One’s attitude regarding the treatment that they get because
of their gender and the will to create a change is critically important for
gender empowerment to take place. Sadly, the responses from the women that
reflect their knowledge and reluctance towards gender inequality are not
optimistic. Track back to 10 years before, in India, women seem to have confirmed
to the discriminatory norms as 30.4% India population experienced physical
violence, 8.2% experienced sexual violence and 13.6% encountered emotional
violence (losing rights to make decision for oneself and family) from spouse
and they deemed it as “husband right” (Sunita & Gupta, 2006).
9 years past,
the situation seems to have no great improvement on the issue of gender equality.
According to a global report, “Attitudes
to Gender”, whereby around the world, women still getting income that is 33%
lesser than men; each year 700 million women experiencing physical and sexual
violence; out of 774 illiterate adults, 516 of them are women; and women only
have 19% of board seats in global businesses. In Britain, it was recorded more
women than men agreed that the primary role of a wife is to take care of her
husband, while 74% of Middle East respondents also answered so, and 54% of them
thought that home is the place for women, while 48% of them thought that women
expressing firm views in public is inappropriate (Dahlgreen, 2015). Scholars
and politicians in 20 years ago had already pin-pointed out individual
awareness and change as the prior criteria for social change and gender
empowerment (Wilson, 1996). However, the thinking of some societies today still
remained conservative and prohibits improvement to take place. Though the idea
of gender equality is globally popularized, but the inequalities are subtly acknowledged
in most societies’ norm.
Despite the
majority’s awareness on the importance of gender equality is not prevalence
enough, the iconic people from the minority did not lose their momentum in
combating the gender discriminatory oppression. Emma Watson, a British actress
and model, made good use of social media and advertising channel, cheered for
gender equality during the past International Women’s Day. She provided
statistics and facts on the loss of lives due to gender inequality and discrimination
in the wars happened in 20th century and her saying was then being broadcasted
through internet, TV and newspapers (Linda, 2016).
Then, she also
launched a feminist book club named, “Our Shared Shelf”, which could be
accessed through the online book platform and social networking sites, to
inculcate gender empowerment message.
More than that,
Emma Watson also rendered her support to United Nation (UN)’s “HeForShe” gender
empowerment campaign, by playing the role of ambassador and delivered
mind-provoking speech that highlighted the roles of men in empowering gender
equality (UN Women, 2016). Her speech was then intensively tweeted in twitter and shared in Facebook and Youtube, which earned her quite a number of accolades
and some critiques at the same time.
Right after her
speech was virally discussed in the social networking sites, 9 other
celebrities then backed up Emma by republishing her speech and publicly
prepared write up and took photos that support her campaign (Shaunna, 2016). Another
issue rose by a female Hollywood star, Jennifer Lawrence, who is also an Oscar
Award winner, where she openly expressed her anger in her essay to the media on
the pay gap that happened between her and her male co-stars. Her writing with disappointment
and anger, stressed on how unedifying gender inequality is now happening in the
world now, in which talent or ability is ranked secondary than gender (Smith,
2015).
Hence, we can
observe how these by public figures at their individual level could stand up and
fight for the chance to empower both gender. Perhaps, their action might not
bring all positive feedbacks, but at least they ignite discussion on gender
inequality, which is essentially needed to emphasize the seriousness of this
issue and urge for a change for gender empowerment.
Recently, we are
able to see more and more advertising and social media industries take the lead
to make a difference for women by creating a culture of “femvertising”. One of
the significant works would be Dove’s decade-old Real Beauty campaign on social
media called ‘Dove Real Beauty Sketches | You’re more beautiful than you think’,
which ask people to describe their own look and an artist without seeing them
in person would draw their portrait based on their description. After that,
Dove will invite those people’s friends to describe again their friend’s look
and the artist will draw their portrait again based on the description. The
result surprised those people who described themselves, because the drawing
that based on the description from their friends and the description from
themselves are not compatible, because they looked much more beautiful than
they described. This advertisement aimed to inspire women that they should live
more confidence and be proud to show their beauty as a woman (Heather, 2013).
Then, Pantene
also in arouse public’s attention with a social media campaign called “#ShineStong”
with a viral publicity of their short film titled “Sorry, Not Sorry” on social
networking sites to urge women challenge current gender unjust and discrimination.
Last but not least, a big success earned by #LikeAGirl from Always advertiser,
who asked adults to do some physical actions like a girl, and the adult did all
the actions in a weak and embarrassed manner. However, when the advertiser
asked some young girls to do the same tasks, those girls in contrast ran do it
fast and hard. This public service advertisement gained more than 85m views and
inspired people that being a girl does not mean weak and vulnerable, but strong
and outstanding (Nosheen, 2015).
In conclusion, through
the lead of advertising industry, knowledge on gender empowerment is widely
shared and stimulate people’s mind from worldwide. However, collective action
like this would still need the help and effort from individual to take the step
in embracing gender empowerment and makes gender equality become the universal
norm. If not together, how do we achieve?
Reference:
Dahlgreen, W. (2015). YouGov Global report: attitudes to gender. YouGov:
What the world thinks.
Retrieved 14 March 2016, from https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/11/12/global-gender-equality-report/
Heather,. (2013). Dove's 'real beauty
sketches' ad deserves some praise. The Guardian. Retrieved 14 March 2016, from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/20/dove-real-beauty-sketches-ad-women-perfection
Kreisberg, S. (1992). Transforming
power: Domination, empowerment, and education. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Linda, Q. (2016). Emma Watson: More
lives are lost due to gender discrimination than in all 20th century wars. Politifact. Retrieved 14
March 2016, from http://www.politifact.com/global-news/statements/2016/mar/15/emma-watson/emma-watson-more-lives-are-lost-due-gender-discrim/
Nosheen,. (2015). Femvertising: how
brands are selling #empowerment to women. The Guardian. Retrieved 15 March 2016, from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/12/femvertising-branded-feminism
Page, N., & E. Czuba, C. (1999).
Empowerment: What Is It?. Journal Of Extension, 37(5)..
Shaunna,. (2016). 9 Celebrities Who
Are Publicly Supporting Emma Watson's Gender Equality
Campaign. MTV News. Retrieved 17 March 2016, from http://www.mtv.com/news/1939988/emma-watson-heforshe-campaign-celebrities-tweet-support/
Smith, N. (2015). Jennifer Lawrence
expresses anger at Hollywood's gender pay gap. the Guardian. Retrieved 17 March 2016, from http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/13/jennifer-lawrence-hollywood gender-pay-gap
Sunita & Gupta. 2006. Gender
Equality and Women’s Empowerment in India. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), India, 2005-06. Mumbai:
International Institute for Population
Sciences; Calverton, Maryland, USA: ICF Macro.
Wilson, P. (1996). Empowerment:
Community economic development from the inside out.
Urban Studies, 33(4-5), 617-630.
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