Your social science quote of the week is from bell hooks, which I posted in celebration of International Women’s Day.

Hope you all had a great International Women’s Day! Gender inequality is beginning to widen even further. The pay gap has reached its highest point in recent decades, with Australian women earning an average 19% less than men; 27% of Australian women report experiencing sexual violence; Indigenous women are almost four times more likely to be unemployed and their incarceration rate has increased by 60% (predominantly for petty issues like not paying car fines); and our federal government only has two women in Cabinet (Julie Bishop and Sussan Ley).

This quote is by my favourite feminist, bell hooks, whose book Feminism is For Everybody shows why feminism makes society better for all!

“Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression… As all advocates of feminist politics know, most people do not understand sexism, or if they do, they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.”

– bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody