#IamME
The #MeToo movement was built on the groundswell of women speaking up and out about their own sexual harassment and assault. The straw finally broke the camels back and the domino effect is being heard loud and clear around the globe. Women are not going to take sexual harassment in any form anymore. This behavior is no longer going to be looked past, ignored or compartmentalized. If you can’t figure out how to behave yourself, then you are going to be in big trouble among your peers as most men are signed up for the #MeToo movement too.
It is time that we are all treated equally and that means equal opportunities from the get-go. Women should be given complete respect for who they are inside not what they look like. Sure we all love a good compliment because looking good can also mean feeling good about yourself but finally, lines have been firmly drawn around what is appropriate and what is not. Not that the line wasn’t there before but much to my dismay many people did not get the memo.
I read two articles over the weekend which made me think there needs to be another movement. The first one was about a group of tech female founders in Rwanda who decided to toss Miss Rwanda for a new kind of competition that judged women on their brilliance, not their beauty. This began in 2014 and they called it Miss Geek. The long tail of this has been felt in that country far and wide. It has made girls change the way they think about what they can do. That is powerful.
The other article is about the surge of female entrepreneurs in Muslim countries. As more women become entrepreneurs the long-term effect has been job creation for emerging markets in Muslim countries. 50 million Muslim women have joined the workforce in the past 15 years going from home to the workplace. That is also powerful.
These are the stories that make my day. I just love the idea of Miss Geek USA. Perhaps we need to start another hashtag called #IamME as should all embrace each other for who we are and who we want to be, period.