My Journey from Passive to Active Feminism

This post was written by one of our team members as a personal reflection piece.

I was 25 when I realized I was a feminist.

I was sitting in a class on the socio-psychological theories of conflict resolution in Tel Aviv. We had just learned that women perform better in negotiations when they negotiate on behalf of others than when they negotiate on behalf of themselves. Society doesn’t expect women to advocate for themselves, but they do expect women to caretake for others. As such, negotiating on behalf of others falls within society’s (primitive) expectations of women, and people thus respond more favorably than when women negotiate on behalf of themselves. And women, who have picked up on these societal expectations and associated responses, have (subconsciously and on average) become more hesitant and nervous to negotiate on behalf of themselves for fear of social backlash. And to be clear, that fear is not unwarranted. In a 2013 study, Amanatullah and Tinsely showed that, “Assertive, self-advocating women suffer a social backlash (for example, decreased likability) because their behavior is associated with high negative masculine and low positive feminine characterizations.”

There in Tel Aviv, sitting in my humid classroom, I was infuriated as I processed this information. But in the same moment, I had this overwhelming feeling of pride about being a woman and the sudden intense realization that I was a feminist.

“We had just learned that women perform better in negotiations when they negotiate on behalf of others than when they negotiate on behalf of themselves. Society doesn’t expect women to advocate for themselves, but they do expect women to caretake for others. ”

 But why did I only realize I was a feminist when I was 25?

 It’s surprising actually.

I grew up Jewish. Reform Jewish to be precise. And Reform Jews view the traditional distinctions and inequities between men and women as antithetical to the ethical principles of Judaism. The Reform Jews in Massachusetts where I grew up were particularly progressive. In my congregation, we didn’t even refer to God as a “He.” I like to say that my form of Jewishness is Tikkun Olam Judaism: “Repair the World”/social justice Judaism. During Passover we would apply the concepts of the Seder to current events and discuss oppressed and enslaved peoples today. Political discourse and civic engagement were an integral part of my Judaism. And women were a strong, and honestly dominating, presence in my family and in my surrounding community.

Which leads me to my family. My mom is a (tiny) force of nature. She is the first person in her family to go to college, and she didn’t just go to college. She went to Cornell, then to NYU Medical School and then to Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard for her (two) residencies. She sat in at the student union in protest with the Black students while at Cornell and later walked out of her college graduation when her college president insulted the Civil Rights Movement. She has worked as a psychiatrist for over 40 years, working long hours doing emotionally draining work and still managing to always be fully present in my life.

But it wasn’t just mom who shaped my perception of gender. My dad did too. Potentially even more so. My dad worked for himself most of my life and thus had a more flexible schedule than my mom. My mom was the breadwinner with the regular 9-5 job (which was more like 8-8), so my dad was the one who drove me to school and packed my lunches and picked me up from sports and play practices. And he did so happily and humbly. Both of my parents cooked and cleaned. They played different, complementary roles in raising me, and neither of them was the clear “leader of the house.” And this equality extended beyond the two of them. I got a vote in what we did, where we went, how we did things. My parents very much let me have my own voice, and listened to that voice, from the moment I was able to speak.

 Sounds like the makings of a feminist to me!

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Yes, you would think so. Everything in my life pointed in that direction- my culture, my family, my family culture. And yet, I distinctly didn’t consider myself a feminist. I took my equal voice in my world for granted. I took my mom’s power and my dad’s willingness to let her be powerful, for granted. And I had internalized society’s insidious, pervasive conception that being a feminist was somehow dirty. In fact, I had even internalized some of society’s gender stereotypes. Throughout my life, there were moments when I would have thoughts or do things that were distinctly traditional or even anti-feminist. I would find myself relieved when I found out I had a male doctor (and remember, my mom is a doctor). Or I would be too nervous to ask a guy out on a date. Don’t get me wrong, I was still a strong, independent woman. I participated in class, played sports with the boys, and spoke up when I saw injustice. But I also clearly had some conceptions of gender roles that were very counter to feminism. These biases point to just how powerful societal stereotypes can be. How the images we are bombarded with about how women should act or what women are good at overpowered my own culture and my own lived experiences. At least initially.

“I took my equal voice in my world for granted. I took my mom’s power and my dad’s willingness to let her be powerful, for granted.”

 It was during my time in Tel Aviv that I started to notice, question, and analyze some of those gender biases that I harbored and began to own the fact that I was a feminist. But it wasn’t until the 2016 presidential campaign and then when I arrived at business school that I really started to actively identify as a feminist. And I think the correlation is clear: Our identities become more salient and dearer to us when they feel threatened.

The small flame that had been ignited when I heard those statistics about gender inequities in negotiations became an inferno during the 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent presidency. I could feel my dignity and respect as a female under attack and my feminism burgeoned as a result. Equal and opposite reactions. The more derogatory the president was, the more pronounced my feminism became.

“And I think the correlation is clear: Our identities become more salient and dearer to us when they feel threatened.”

And this all culminated with going to business school. At first, I was astounded by the stories of my female classmates who talked about how they weren’t listened to or fully respected in their workplaces, or even worse, how they were harassed or mistreated. Sure, I knew abstractly that these things happened but to hear my friends talk about their personal experiences and to see how pervasive it was, was eye-opening. In addition to being shocked, I was also initially somewhat thankful.

I had worked in education, a woman-dominated field, and hadn’t had any experiences like that, I thought. But then I started to think about it further. I recalled how my 8th grade students listened better to the male teachers, how I had to earn their respect in a way that my male counterparts did not, and how they didn’t yell at the male teachers the way they did at the female teachers. I recalled who dominated our 8th grade team meetings. I reflected upon my time working at all the public middle schools in San Francisco and how most of the teachers were women, but most of the principals and district leaders were men. And at Stanford, I realized that almost all my professors and guest speakers were male. And that my male counterparts spoke up more (and got called on more) in class. With every realization and story, I could feel that fire growing.

The Oxford dictionary defines feminism as, “The advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.” I hope one day I don’t need to be a feminist. I hope I don’t need to advocate for women or fight for the equality of genders (all genders and of all colors). I hope that we don’t need a Women’s History Month. I hope I can just love being a woman and that’s it. But until that happens, we need to be active in our fight for equality for women. And not just during Women’s History Month. But all the time, in our everyday actions, in our everyday comments. Because that is where the change happens. So until then, I fight. And I am a proud feminist.

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