I walked up to a floral sheathed table outside of the EMU’s main entrance. In addition to two smiling faces, I was greeted by a spread complete with a basket of sanitary pads and tubes of chapstick along with various buttons and stickers that screamed feminism.
The table belonged to the ASUO Women’s Center, whose mission is to “advocate for the best education and working environment for the women at the University of Oregon,” as stated on its website. Those involved with the organization offer a range of resources to UO women from the smallest of things like panty-liners to large-scale efforts geared towards creating a societal change in regards to the oppression of women.
The two ladies who I got to speak with are both international students: Elsie Fedha from Kenya and Chenle Xu from China. Fedha is a member of the Women’s Center and helps out with group efforts as a volunteer, while Xu holds the official position of international student advocate. The two seem to take pride in advocating for women, both locally and internationally, which is clearly shown through their involvement in the center’s annual International Women’s Day celebration.
On March 5, the female-centered organization presented the UO community with a night full of diverse foods and performances from around the world in the LLC Performance Hall to celebrate and honor women, as well as honor the process of peace and human rights in the world.
The event was open to all genders; admission was free and they offered guests complementary gifts.
“When I first came here and saw that no one really pays attention to International Women’s Day, or even knows about it, I was sad,” Xu said. “That’s why, or one of the reasons why, I wanted this position so I could help plan a very big celebration on campus for women.”
Both Xu and Fedha shared this disappointment for the lack of communal commemoration for women on International Women’s Day in the U.S.
“In Kenya, Women’s Day is a big deal, especially in the public sector. Like in the government, there are meetings with the women in parliament, and this is when they work to revise laws in Kenya specifically to help women,” Fedha said.
Inequality between men and women has been a universal struggle, but definitely more prominent in certain regions. The U.S. is often seen as a Western, free country where equality is valued; however, both Xu and Fedha think there is work to be done here.
The type of gender imbalance found in America does not exactly mirror the discrimination of rural women in China and Kenya, as the UO ladies shared examples of with me. There are other forms of discrimination around us on both a national-scale and locally on our college campus.
“Sexual assault,” Xu said. “This is one of the biggest problems I see for young people and it goes back to the inequality between men and women. Sure, women are not the only victims, but we are the majority of victims. Women here are still looked at like objects. The American dating culture is imbalanced, and more of a hook-up culture, and all of these things cause major problems like assault.”
Fedha adds that much of the nation’s social issues stem from how the government works and how there should be a top-down movement to improve life for people, especially for women.
“The U.S. justice system is very flawed in terms of how they react to situations of rape, for example,” Fedha said. “I just don’t get how the justice system doesn’t see the inequality in treatment between men and women.”
Discrimination comes in many forms, but the two that Xu, Fedha and I think need to be tolerated more in our lives today have to do with race and gender. Children are being raised in a society that has the tendency to racially and sexually discriminate, skewing kids’ perceptions of the world from the beginning.
“It’s a matter of fighting for what’s right and against what’s wrong,” Fedha said. “So first, people need to become aware of what really is wrong. A lot of people need to be educated on what women and minority populations have gone through so that new generations can also see this and help with it not getting repeated.”