Most of us may have experienced one of these at least once: getting catcalls by men on the streets, being felt up by some stranger in a tight bus, or receiving a compliment from a man for our accomplishments only to hear it followed up with that loathsome qualifying clause “…for a woman”.
A website called The Everyday Sexism Project catalogs instances of sexism experienced by women on a day-to-day basis. They range from serious assaults or outrageously offensive remarks, to something seemingly minor like an old man who greets a woman every morning with “you’ve got a great ass, sweetie.”
But even more disturbing about these niggling occurrences of sexism is that they have become so normalized, that to raise issue about them might earn a woman the title “uptight”, “prudish” or a “bitter feminist’.
The Project aims to record stories, from one-sentence descriptions to short testimonies, of sexism faced on a daily basis by ordinary women in ordinary places in the US, the UK to South Africa. It wants to encourage debates about sexism, equality and women’s right in a society that perceives itself to have achieved gender equality, and to “prove wrong those who tell women they can’t complain because we’re equal”.
Check out their website and maybe you’d like to share your stories too.
Also check out the following video of Lauren Bates, a UK-based journalist and activist who founded this project, and some of the stories shared in the website.
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