Hello everyone!

Welcome back to Little Notes.

I hope everyone has had a lovely week :)

This week I have seen a lot online about micro-feminism so I thought it would be interesting to talk about how we can input these acts into everyday life! So, what is microfeminism? Micro-feminism is small acts of resistance to confront everyday gender inequalities. The most obvious one is when discussing a manager, you would say ‘she’ instead of saying ‘he’. It is a way of ‘evening the scales’ so to speak. I will list some at the end that you can incorporate into everyday life, but first let’s discuss why we have to do this in the first place.

Gender inequality is still a taboo subject in today's society. Many (men mainly) believe that being a feminist means you want women to be valued more than men. Feminism is the belief that everyone, regardless of gender, should have equal rights and opportunities. (side note can I just say when researching the correct definition for feminism, it was all male authors????). Growing up I will be honest, I believed feminists were angry, men hating women (which in most cases we are), but I think a lot of people have missed the point. Instead of focusing on what these ‘angry’ women were saying, the way they held themselves was the focus, which in turn created this whole ordeal that feminists do not want the best for men and women. Feminism is fighting for EVERYONE’S rights. A quick google search would say this but apparently we use social media as our sources nowadays.

So now we know what feminism is, let’s discuss why we need it. The world we live in is built and catered for men, this is called the patriarchy. The patriarchy is a social system where men have primary power. Patriarchy infringes on every part of our lives including education, government, work, health and safety to name a few. This means whilst we live in this system, women will never be equal to men. A real example which displays this is the use of car crash dummies in tests. The most widely used dummy for testing car and plane crashes depicts a 175cm man weighing 78kg, which has been used for around 47 years. Testing does include a small female dummy for around 25% of tests, but this dummy is more shaped and weighted similar to a 12 year old. Only recently have Swedish engineers created a dummy which mimics an actual female. Mindblowing no? Every car and plane women have sat in has been tested to maximise a male life, female organs are completely different to a man, how is this not spoken about more? Women were also only used in medical trials from the 1990s!!! It was only until the Revitalisation Act was introduced that women and members of racial and ethnic minority groups were to be included in trials. That was less than 30 years ago!

Back to micro-feminism, these subtle, quiet acts reclaim space and amplify women creating an important impact on gender equality. These acts are more accessible to people in everyday life and are easier than partaking in large-scale activism if one does not have the time. I think it is excellent that this is becoming viral on social media again and we should all (inc. men) try to incorporate these into everyday life!

Thank you for reading, I think this is such an important topic to discuss so I hope you enjoyed it.

Until the next little note,

K

<3

Acts of Micro-feminism

• Calling the fathers instead of the mothers if their child is ill

• Not moving out of a man’s way on the pavement

• Addressing women first in emails or meetings

• Calling out interruptions made by men

• Avoiding unnecessary apologies (stop saying ‘just’, SAY IT)

• Holding the door open for men and insisting they go first

• Calling women women, not girls

• Keeping your last name

• Referring to animals as she

• Asking men if they need help

• Asking a man why they are being emotional if they are being overly aggressive

• Actively watching, reading and sharing work created by women

• Using police officer and firefighter (not policeman etc)

• Not hiding period products

• Using Ms

Sources

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/systemic-insights/202409/what-is-micro-feminism

https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/what-is-feminism

https://plan-uk.org/our-work/girls-rights/what-is-the-patriarchy

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/plane-car-crash-testing-safety-emergency-landing-b2866791.html

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10759148/