Feminist Wins of The Week

This work is a derivative; original photo by Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service.
By Samantha Levine
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The team at Feminist Campus hopes your week has been great, because ours sure has! We’ve been busy getting ready for our conference and are super excited to announce Loretta Ross, Co-founder of SisterSong, will be speaking at #NYFLC18! Come hear from Loretta, as well as other high-profile influencers, activists on the ground, feminist political leaders, and students just like you who are doing stellar work on their campuses and in their communities. Register for NYFLC today!

In other news, here are some of this week’s feminist wins:

Black Panther breaks box office records

This weekend, Black Panther audiences around the world traveled to Wakanda, a fictional African country in the Marvel cinematic universe. The movie, which features a nearly all-Black, predominantly female cast, broke box office records for President’s Day weekend and saw the fifth-largest opening weekend ever. Hopefully, watching the film rack up $200 million in revenue in only three days will be enough to debunk old Hollywood’s misconception that viewers are only interested in watching white male protagonists.

Lupita Nyong'o, Michael B. Jordan and Danai Gurira speaking at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Black Panther", at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California
Photo by Gage Skidmore / Creative Commons. Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan and Danai Gurira speaking at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con International, for “Black Panther”, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.

While King T’Challa is the film’s hero, nearly every other major character is a woman. Black Panther‘s massive contributions to representation of Black actors, creators, and superheroes in mainstream media (as well as the many messages within the film) have been inspiring and groundbreaking: seventh grader Gabriela Myles summed it up perfectly saying, “Black women are as strong as any men and black little girls can be superheroes.”

Medicine says #MeToo

As the #MeToo movement continues to gain momentum, no industry can escape its impact; while entertainment, journalism, and politics have been under fire the most in the media, other fields are no different – including the health care industry. According to a NBC News investigation, nearly a dozen women in medicine described “widespread misconduct in hospitals and other health care settings, deeply woven into the fabric of their workplaces even as they made life-or-death decisions for their patients.” The story also cites a 2014 survey that found that about 30% of women in the field have experienced sexual harassment.

While female physicians – and especially surgeons – remain significantly outnumbered by their male counterparts, more and more women in the medicine field are beginning to speak up and let their voices be heard. Here’s hoping that we hear more from the world of medicine, and that its Me Too moment helps to spur change in the industry.

Dolls who code

In an attempt to encourage more young girls to pursue STEM, Mattel has announced a partnership with the education startup Tynker to create Barbie-branded coding lessons. “We believe Barbie is a beacon to empower girls,” Mattel CEO Margo Georgiadis told Fortune. “So we will continue to leverage Barbie to inspire girls to pursue the things they love.”

Graphic by Women’s Business Council / Creative Commons.

Girls and women are significantly underrepresented in STEM, one of the reasons why Mattel has made its mission to “techify” the company’s aging product lineup. This includes their new initiative of creating more early coding toys for younger children. According to Georgiadis, there are many other initiatives planned for utilizing Barbie to inspire girls to enter STEM-related fields.

Stars called Time’s Up on the BRIT Awards red carpet

Wednesday was one of the biggest nights of the year for British music, the BRIT Awards, and artists carried and wore white roses on the red carpet to show support for the growing Time’s up movement. Stars like Ed Sheeran, Rita Ora, and Liam Payne all showed their support by rocking the white roses at the BRITS. On Sunday, many British actors wore black outfits to the BAFTAs in solidarity with the campaign as well.

USA wins its first women’s cross country skiing medal ever

Kikkan Randall and Jessica Diggins took Olympic gold in women’s cross country skiing for Team USA on Wednesday night.

This is what history looks and sounds like. @jessdiggs and @kikkanimal win @TeamUSA‘s first ever gold medal in cross-country skiing.

You’ll want your sound up for this… pic.twitter.com/86PQ4KQaH3

— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) February 21, 2018

This win is not only the first medal for the U.S. women’s cross country skiing program – it’s also the first medal for the entire U.S. program (men and women) since 1976. The event was both historic and exciting, ending in a tight finish, but the women of Team USA eked it out to bring home the gold.

The featured image for this Feminist Wins blog post is a derivative; original photo by Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service / Creative Commons.

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