thewomentakeover: “The best way to encourage women not to judge other women is to encourage and create connections between them. When someone is human and vulnerable, it’s a whole lot harder to make blanket statements and judgments about her. On a larger scale, we need to stop portraying women as catty b*tches out to get each other. If girls grow up seeing complicated, deep relationships between women who are working together instead of against each other in real life and in pop culture, they’re less likely to expect those judgments from other women or to level them themselves.” - Emma Gray Read the rest of the interview here. Photo by Andres Bohorquez.
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thewomentakeover:

“The best way to encourage women not to judge other women is to encourage and create connections between them. When someone is human and vulnerable, it’s a whole lot harder to make blanket statements and judgments about her. On a larger scale, we need to stop portraying women as catty b*tches out to get each other. If girls grow up seeing complicated, deep relationships between women who are working together instead of against each other in real life and in pop culture, they’re less likely to expect those judgments from other women or to level them themselves.” - Emma Gray

Read the rest of the interview here.

Photo by Andres Bohorquez.

thewomentakeover: “Even though I have lived all over the country, I live in my home state of Oklahoma because I see opportunities to make a difference here. My home state happens to be one of the most difficult places for a woman to live and thrive. Oklahoma is consistently rated poorly when it comes to laws protecting reproductive rights, gender pay equality, female legislative representation, etc. We have a low percentage of women seeking higher education and professional degrees. Women here don’t obtain graduate degrees at rates like we see in other, more progressive parts of the country. But also many Oklahoma women who do get advanced degrees often leave the state for places where economic opportunity is greater and social autonomy is supported and encouraged.”  Read Spring Houghton’s story here.
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thewomentakeover:

“Even though I have lived all over the country, I live in my home state of Oklahoma because I see opportunities to make a difference here. My home state happens to be one of the most difficult places for a woman to live and thrive. Oklahoma is consistently rated poorly when it comes to laws protecting reproductive rights, gender pay equality, female legislative representation, etc. We have a low percentage of women seeking higher education and professional degrees. Women here don’t obtain graduate degrees at rates like we see in other, more progressive parts of the country. But also many Oklahoma women who do get advanced degrees often leave the state for places where economic opportunity is greater and social autonomy is supported and encouraged.” 

Read Spring Houghton’s story here.

thewomentakeover: JESSICA BENNETT: WRITER, EDITOR, ADVOCATE Some people are so gifted with words that you want to drop everything and read anything they’ve ever written. For me, no one fits that description more perfectly than Jessica Bennett. Besides being an outspoken advocate for equal rights, she’s been the executive editor at Tumblr, a senior editor at Newsweek, and has had pieces published everywhere from The Atlantic to The New York Times. All her brilliance aside, she also happens to be really nice and incredibly funny. Do you consider yourself a feminist?Fuck yes! And proud. How do you define “feminism”?Feminism is the belief in equality for men and women. That’s not just how I define it, that is the definition. I can’t stand when people say they believe in the above (ahem, Marisa Mayer) but that they’re not a feminist. YES YOU ARE. Own it, girl! Why do you think women are tentative to call themselves feminists?The word feminism has a lot of baggage… angry, humorless, combat-boot wearing, bra-burning… no matter that none of this is true. (Seriously, if I had a nickel for every time somebody referenced “bra-burning” to me. It didn’t happen! Look it up!). But I think there’s something else at play here, too: the idea that young women who are outpacing their male peers in academics don’t need feminism. You know, they’ve been raised on Girl Power, they had a female Secretary of State, and so forth. But the reality is that gender inequality is still rampant, albeit in subtle ways. Many of those ways become visible when women graduate from school and enter into the workforce. So I think what we end up seeing is a lot of women embracing feminism later than our mother’s generations. I know that was the case for me. But really, better late than never. Read the entire interview here.
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thewomentakeover:

JESSICA BENNETT: WRITER, EDITOR, ADVOCATE

Some people are so gifted with words that you want to drop everything and read anything they’ve ever written. For me, no one fits that description more perfectly than Jessica Bennett. Besides being an outspoken advocate for equal rights, she’s been the executive editor at Tumblr, a senior editor at Newsweek, and has had pieces published everywhere from The Atlantic to The New York Times.

All her brilliance aside, she also happens to be really nice and incredibly funny.

Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Fuck yes! And proud.

How do you define “feminism”?
Feminism is the belief in equality for men and women. That’s not just how I define it, that is the definition. I can’t stand when people say they believe in the above (ahem, Marisa Mayer) but that they’re not a feminist. YES YOU ARE. Own it, girl!

Why do you think women are tentative to call themselves feminists?
The word feminism has a lot of baggage… angry, humorless, combat-boot wearing, bra-burning… no matter that none of this is true. (Seriously, if I had a nickel for every time somebody referenced “bra-burning” to me. It didn’t happen! Look it up!). But I think there’s something else at play here, too: the idea that young women who are outpacing their male peers in academics don’t need feminism. You know, they’ve been raised on Girl Power, they had a female Secretary of State, and so forth. But the reality is that gender inequality is still rampant, albeit in subtle ways. Many of those ways become visible when women graduate from school and enter into the workforce. So I think what we end up seeing is a lot of women embracing feminism later than our mother’s generations. I know that was the case for me. But really, better late than never.

Read the entire interview here.