On Monday night, the author of several well-known books and TED talk speaker came to Gustavus to speak about performing gender roles and about feminist issues in general. Before Chimamanda Adichie came to campus, I had watched her other TED talk video about how we should all be feminists. A link to the talk is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc
I had never really seen myself as a feminist before; in fact, I saw myself as ant-feminist because I did not think that women should be above men, which is what I thought feminism stood for. After watching her TED talk on feminism, I really started feeling and believing more strongly toward empowering women.
Having her on campus was incredible! The entire Alumni Hall was full of people, and quite a few people had to sit on the floor due to lack of chairs. I was also sitting on the floor! She spoke about a few stories with experiences she had in Lagos, Nigeria, where she encountered injustice or inequality. Amazingly, she spent the rest of her time answering questions that the Gustavus audience had brought up. It was interesting and inspiring to hear her responses about human equality and the empowerment of women. I wanted to bring up a recent situation where my male cousin had made some offensive comments to me about my role as a woman in society.
Did anyone else attend her speech? What insight did you find or take away?
I wasn’t able to be there in person. 🙁 I was able to watch some of the event being streamed.
I’m always interested in how feminism is defined (and enacted). This would be a great conversation to have in class when we talk about how families, work, etc. are depicted in social studies materials and children’s literature!