By Lorena Flores
Scrolling through Netflix, I stumbled upon a documentary on Women’s Rights. I could’ve re-watched another episode of “Friends,” but I clicked on it. What I saw shed a lot of light on topics many overlook.
What are Women’s Rights?
Start here: a struggle that is many centuries old. While we have fought many great battles and won many great victories, I can not conceal the fact that our rights are not on par with those of the men in this society. Even though the female population is a little more than half in our country, only 14% of the chief executives are female. Women still have to work to secure the same social, political and economic as men.
The documentary I watched on that lazy Sunday was called “Miss Representation.” It focused on the many different problems that women face. The producers interviewed Katie Couric, one of the best women journalists, as well as Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho and many more.
Katie Couric spoke of the need for women to show skin in order to be successful in journalism. Others discussed the contrasting personalities of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin and how one could be boring and the other one “dumb.”
The documentary also addressed societal expectations on what a woman should be. For example, the societal expectation that women need to be thin has produced eating disorders in adolescent girls.
A documentary like this not only sheds light on real mistreatment of women in the 21st century, but also brings awareness to the masses. The amount of injustice to women I saw that afternoon left me feeling sour, but also motivated me to do something to change that.