Consider where you would be in life if you could not read or write beyond a basic level.
I am a college student that has a part time job at Starbucks. If I were illiterate, I wouldn’t be in school and I wouldn’t even be able to work a retail position like I do at Starbucks. This is a scary thought and is one of the reasons raising awareness of illiteracy is important to me. I know that my position is much more privileged than millions around the world and I hope to use this privilege to help others.
There are 750 million women around the world who cannot read or write which leads to poverty, lack of self-confidence, extreme sexism, and child marriage. In doing research for these articles, I often feel despair for the women around the world that can’t read or write and do not have the access to education in order to fix this. I have realized that it is my responsibility to turn that emotional reaction into something good. The situations these girls face are severe but not overlooked. Many foundations around the world are focusing their attention on female illiteracy and its serious consequences like child marriage.
It can be beneficial to look into the illiteracy in a specific country to help raise awareness of the extent of the issue of female illiteracy. For one reason or another, some countries struggle with female literacy more than others. Afghanistan, in particular has serious issues with female literacy due to lack of development and cultural barriers.
The general opinion on feminism in the United States is one that I am disagreeing with more and more. Sometime last week Dave Hon published an article in news press now titled “Why I’ll Never Date a Feminist.” The article suggests, among other things, that feminists are “man haters” and that the wage gap in the U.S. does not exist. Unfortunately, Hon is not alone in his opinions. I’m tired of seeing men denounce feminism, I’m tired of seeing women proudly announce that they aren’t feminists, and I’m very tired of everyone so preoccupied arguing over whether or not feminists are man-haters (they aren’t) that they’re missing the point behind the word itself. This isn’t only a misunderstanding of the word “feminism,” although some might need a refresher, this is a cultural problem.
