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President Obama has written a powerful essay about what feminism means in 2016, and why it’s important for both women and men.
The essay was published in Glamour magazine in the US, and titled ‘President Obama says, ‘This Is What A Feminist Looks Like”.
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In it, he admitted that wife Michelle had shouldered most of the childrearing – and that she had had to make “trade-offs” that he didn’t.
“Like many working mothers, she worried about the expectations and judgments of how she should handle the trade-offs, knowing that few people would question my choices.
“And the reality was that when our girls were young, I was often away from home serving in the state legislature, while also juggling my teaching responsibilities as a law professor. I can look back now and see that, while I helped out, it was usually on my schedule and on my terms. The burden disproportionately and unfairly fell on Michelle.”
He also challenged the way we raise young girls, saying: “We need to keep changing the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticises our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear.”
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He asserted that he identified as a feminist, and that he and Michelle had taught daughters Malia and Sasha how to identify being treated unfairly for their gender and race.
“And yes, it’s important that their dad is a feminist, because now that’s what they expect of all men.”
He finished the piece by breaking down the meaning of modern feminism to its simplest notion.
“That’s what twenty-first century feminism is about: the idea that when everybody is equal, we are all more free.”
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