What the recent U.S. election means for woman’s rights

To the Editor, The recent U.S. election has got me thinking about women’s rights, and sexism in the modern world. I saw photos of women 94 years and older who had been alive before women had the right to vote, devastated because they wanted to see the first woman elected president before they passed away. In general, this election was a huge blow to women’s rights.

I realize we’re in Canada and it’s easy to distance ourselves from everything that’s going on there, but may I remind you, Canada has had only one female prime minister, who served from June 1993 to November 1993, after winning a party leadership race when PM Brian Mulroney retired. She then lost in the 1993 election. So really, we aren’t much better than the U.S.

One of the things I heard following the election that angered me the most was a political analyst saying that the main reason people refrained from voting Hillary Clinton was that they didn’t want another Clinton in the White House. But as many before me have pointed out, we as women are not our husbands. We are not our husbands, or brothers, or fathers. We are our own people, capable of independent thought process that is not altered by those we love, or are related to. Unfortunately, it’s not only this that women have going against them. Almost any woman in the field of science, or math, can tell you that they have at one point in their career been belittled, or pushed aside because they were female. I know women who have had male colleagues try to take credit for their success. Sexism still exists today, and it is very real.

It’s not only women in the science field who face sexism on the daily. Every woman can fall victim to acts of sexism. There are some so small that they can go unnoticed. For example, asking strictly the male students to help move heavy things, instead of the female students. It’s not a big deal, but it’s still a small reminder that some ways of life are still with us today. This can also happen with assertive women being called names but assertive men being called leaders, victim blaming,