‘Fearless Girl’ stands up to old thinking
By now, we’ve all seen images of the new art installation on Wall Street of a young girl facing off with the infamous charging bull statue, hands on her hips and a look of defiance on her face, skirt billowing. The bull is such a striking symbol of recklessness, embodying the hyper-masculinity and toxic stop-for-nothing mentality that feeds the financial market. The Internet is going nuts over this standoff. But those responsible for it still don’t understand that the problem isn’t a lack of women on Wall Street — it is Wall Street itself.
State Street Global Advisors, investment managers, commissioned the sculpture, using it to highlight their effort at persuading companies to increase the gender parity of their boards. What’s wrong with this concept? It buys into the idea of “lean in” feminism, where women are told to work harder to join the status quo.
We’re told that for women to be fairly represented in the workplace, we simply need to work longer hours, make more sacrifices and strive for positions that have been maledominated. But to progress as a society, we need to move past this simplistic thinking and realize that feminism is about actively resisting the ideology behind these institutions.
This isn’t about women being left behind; it’s about women declaring that the male-dominated worlds of corporations and government are taking us down a path of global decline. Including more women on the board of ExxonMobil will not change the fundamental nature of the oil giant. Joining the men in the boardrooms who believe unregulated capitalism is anything but destructive to our communities, our planet and our future, is not what feminism is about.
Why are we still insisting that women adapt to the ideals of capitalism, when we have been shown by skyrocketing inequality that in fact the opposite needs to happen? Capitalism needs to adapt to the feminine ideals of a more equitable society, one that places people and the health of our planet above profits.
Feminism is not about joining the ranks of the men on the boards; it is about bringing back the power to the people.
Feminism is about eliminating the idea of putting profits above community. Feminism is about dismantling mass incarceration, commodified health care, unrestrained resource extraction, and education as a privilege not a right.
It’s the women-led movements around the world, like the Lakota women in North Dakota who battled to protect their drinking water and their sacred sites from an oil pipeline. It’s Berta Caceres leading the resistance against the Agua Zarca Dam in Honduras. It’s Sofia Gatica taking on pesticide poisoning and the agrochemical giant Monsanto in Argentina. It’s Kimberly Wasserman leading the fight against coal plants in Chicago neighborhoods and spurring the transformation of old industrial sites into public parks. These women have fought and sacrificed enormously, putting their lives at risk (sometimes losing) to speak up for those who are silenced.
They are not demanding to be let into the boardroom to rub shoulders with the privileged; they are demanding that their right to exist in a world free from oppression by profiteers be respected.
In this way, the statue of the defiant girl is perfect. She is challenging the bull head-on, fearlessly blocking its path of destruction with her life.