What I Think HeForShe Is About

A while ago I shared a link to a talk given by Emma Watson on the UN Women HeForShe campaign. I mentioned that I hadn't thought about feminism in depth before because I hadn't really needed to. Following that line of thought a bit further, I think the other reason that I haven't researched feminism more is because, all too often in our current society, feminists are portrayed as women who think they don't need men. I don't believe this either. I believe we need both men and women, working together and supporting each other in order to allow all people to reach their full potential.

I think the key difference that separates this campaign from other movements is  that men are the target of this campaign. Throughout history, women's rights have been fought for primarily by women. These women have needed to appeal to men in order to be allowed to vote. To be allowed to study. For rights to own property. By bringing men on board, HeForShe are directly targeting the people who are able to drive this change the fastest. Because, let's face it, currently in this world, many leadership positions and positions of influence are positions held by men. I am of the opinion that if the people who hold positions of influence start changing their mindsets, so will those that admire the influencer also change their mindsets. Women can drive and campaign for equal rights as much as possible, but if we don't have both men and women on board, we will never be able to reach equality.

The HeForShe campaign really appeals to me. I like that, at it's essence, it's a campaign about equality. Equality for women and men. This is what makes the HeForShe campaign different. It's a campaign that is asking societies to stop treating women as objects and start treating them as people. It's asking that society allow men the freedom to express emotion without fear that this is seen as a weakness. It's a campaign that is asking that people show each other respect. This campaign is asking for people to change their mindsets. And changing mindsets is quite possibly the most difficult task of all...

Equality

If you're interested in finding out more about this campaign, you can go to heforshe.org and sign up. 

(I've done it. I even ticked that little box. If you don't know what box I'm talking about, go to the site and find out!)

There are so many other thoughts and aspects to this that I want to explore - if you don't want to miss any posts, you can lik my facebook page or follow me on Bloglovin.

Have You Heard About HeForShe

You know, feminism hasn't been something that I've felt strongly about before. I've never needed to because that fight was fought for me and I have benefited from the results of past feminist movements. I've been privileged enough to be brought up in an environment where I was not limited because of my sex. I went to a school that encouraged women to be strong and independent and go-getters. I didn't have to fight to study an engineering degree. I worked in the maintenance department of a factory and I was lucky enough to never have been made to feel that my femaleness was a disadvantage, instead I became the in-house "expert" on some of our systems.

However, I recently watched Emma Watson give a talk on a campaign that UN Women have launched, called HeForShe. It struck a chord with me and has made me think. It has made me think so many thoughts that I can't even begin to pin them down in one post. Instead, like Emma, I am going to appeal to you - my readers, my friends, my family, male, female, young, old. To sign up for this campaign and start taking ALL gender inequality seriously. (In the mean time, I will carry on ordering my thoughts so that I can share them with you when I've figured them out!)

To find out more, watch Emma's speech below. 

Finally, now that you've watched Emma's speech, I am going to use the words of my friend Claire, who has summed this up much better than me:

"So if you haven't already, head along to the HeforShe website and sign up. Or don't. But do take a look at the awesome map. So far only 494* men from South Africa have signed up. Yes, many people don't have internet access, and yes, many men do not want to be spammed with emails, but this is not just for women. It's for equality. Something definitely worth being spammed for."

* This was up to 555 by the time I had signed up. Hopefully it's grown even more by the time you read this!

Pink Drive

No makeup selfies are popping up everywhere on facebook. Yesterday morning when logging in to facebook, I saw that I had been nominated by my friend Kate, to take a no makeup selfie and donate money to the pink drive in support of cancer research.

In perusing through the internet, I've found various sources saying different things on the origin of this trend - suffice to say, I don't know exactly where it started but somehow, the #nomakeupselfie is becoming synonymous with donations towards cancer research. 

South Africans wanting to get involved can visit the Pink Drive website to find out more about cancer awareness (specifically breast cancer awareness) in South Africa. The website also tells you about upcoming events in your area. For those in Cape Town, the Pink Drive will be at the Pick 'n Pay Women's Walk in Kenilworth this coming Saturday, 29th March. Gates open at 07:30 am and the walk starts at 09:00 am.

If you haven't been nominated to take a selfie, I would like to nominate you and encourage you to sms the word "pinkdrive" to the number 40158. And here's my proof of donation to the pink drive

Gents, if you're feeling brave, why don't you try out the #manupandmakeup trend by uploading a picture of yourself onto facebook and donating towards the worthy cause of prostate cancer research! Click here and go to their donations page to find their bank details. 

Cape Town SAGirlEng Event

Last Saturday my colleague and I had the privilege of going to speak in Cape Town for the Western Cape SAGirlEng event that was held at UCT.

SAGirlEng is a branch of the SAWomEng initiative which was started by Mabohlale Addae and Naadiya Moosajee in 2005 with the aim of encouraging more female involvement in the engineering sector. It's an NGO and has a few different branches:

SAWomEng GirlEng - aims to expose high school girls to the idea of engineering as a career through information sessions, workshops and mentorship sessions with university students.

SAWomEng Conference - university students from across the country come together to participate in team driven projects which cover social and engineering problems and require the teams to come up with an engineering solution to these problems. The students are also exposed to different sponsors of WomEng, meet other females who are actively involved in the industry and network with fellow lady engineers.

SAWomEng@Network - allows practicing female engineers to network and acts as a means of guidance for career development as well as encouraging them to carry on pursuing a career in the engineering field.

Click here to find out more about the SAWomEng initiative.

We were asked to give a presentation at the GirlEng workshop event and included information on the different types of engineering and how engineers fit into our company as a lot of girls at high school don't really know the different types of engineering options that they have. We were able to expose them to the different types of engineers that we use in our company and give them a few details on what the different types of jobs involve. There was also a presentation given by a representative from the CBEm(Council for the Built Environment) which was extremely informative. You can read more about them here. After the presentations there were lots of questions from both the high school girls as well as their university level mentors. They ranged in topic, some were technical, some were general, but all of the questions allowed us to uncover a bit more about engineering, the "working world" and what it was all about.

This was my first interaction with SAWomEng and I really think that this organisation has an amazing idea, so much so that I've just completed my registration with them! Encouraging more girls to enter into a technical degree is something that I feel incredible strongly about - I only wish that I had had proper information on what engineering was about while I was at high school. I fell into engineering through chance and "luck" - imagine how many more people would pursue a career in engineering if they were exposed to it at a high school level!

Take a peek at some of the pics below that I took at the event :)

Hat Decorating

More Hat Decorating

In my pink hat after decorating.
I had a lovely time chatting to some of
the young ladies who attended the event.

SAWomEng - thanks for such a great event!
I look forward to the coming events