I would like to begin by telling you a quote by Malala Yousafzai , the brave Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban because she  championed for a woman’s right to education. She said “I raise up my voice-not so I can shout but so that those without a voice can be heard...we cannot succeed when half of us are held back.”

Malala’s quote reminded me of a vacation is took when I was 13. I had gone on a holiday to India and I visited my ancestors village. While seeing the village we stumbled upon a school, inside the school only boys were being educated, no girls to be seen for miles, initially I thought the schools were gender segregated as is common in traditional Indian culture, so I asked my mom where the girls studied.  My mom told me in this village girls do not go to school as their parents believe a girl should learn domestic skills like cooking and cleaning so the can become good wives, sometimes at the tender age of 14 and 15, not much older than us. This shocked me as my mom herself was college educated, I later realized this was because she was raised in a city. While trying to assimilate what I just learnt, I thought “ ~ 600 million Indians are woman, and with a sizable majority of them living in villages was I just told all of them are illiterate?”

Even though India is a democratic nation and officially children, both boys and girls have a legal right to study until 8th Grade many of them don't attend school, largely due to their parent’s mindset. This sort of discrimination is ubiquitous in the modern world and as Malala said, progress will not happen as long as half of the population is being proactively held behind. For change to occur an individual’s mindset needs to be changed, no set of laws will lead to equality as long as individuals do not believe in equality, and this is the purpose of the article, to do my part inspiring change.

Woman have historically be discriminated against due to the common belief that woman are weaker, however woman are are extremely strong, Woman are entrusted with bearing the children of the next generation, raising the children of the next generation, and most importantly without woman there would be no next generation. If a woman can be entrusted with raising tomorrows presidents, tomorrows teachers, tomorrows politicians, tomorrows CEO’s and most importantly the entire population of tomorrow, individuals who will no doubt do their part in making the world a better place, no matter how big or how small. Why can’t woman a woman drive a car, why can’t a woman vote for president, a president which was raised by a woman; why can’t a woman leave her house, why can’t a woman go to school? The answer is they can, they can do everything a man can do and they can excel in it, jut like they have excelled in raising the people of tomorrow since the start of the world. The reason they do not vote, or drive, or go to school is because men do not want them to, because men don’t want to be challenged, and most importantly because men don’t want to lose their position in a sexist, male dominated patriarchal society.

What men don’t realize however is that woman are the key to the success of the next generation, if a woman can’t go to school, it means they can't work, if woman can’t work it means half the world is responsible for providing for the other half, and that prevents woman from unleashing their full potential.  When woman have been treated as equals, they have become president, they have become astronauts and gone to space, they have become Guinness World Record holders, they have become police officers, they have become firefighters, they have become pilots, they have proven when woman are treated as equals, they can do whatever a man can do with the same, or even higher results compared to their male counterparts.

Todays individuals have a choice to make, a choice which will affect future generations, we need to decide if we should free woman and have them contribute to this world, which woman have proven to be very capable at, or if we should suppress woman and literally have half the world doing nothing to contribute to this planets success and future.

Over the course of history the Anti-Feminist movement has been largely based on one principle: Men stronger than woman, and as Kishida Toshiko, a Japanese woman’s rights activist from the late 1800’s so rightly put it  “If it is true that men are better than woman because they are stronger, why aren't our sumo wrestlers in the government?