We're Women & We Can Think for Ourselves

Just like Rosie says: “We can do it.”

Being a woman does not mean we have any less of a brain in our heads than men do. Our hearts beat, our blood flows, our eyes blink in similar scientific ways that men’s do, so what’s the big deal? The past has not been historically pretty for women, but we don’t let that stop us. Time and time again women have been treated like they can’t think on their own and that we need to be supervised at all times. That needs to come to an end, and that begins with our government.

For years, there have been arguments, cases, protests, marches—and everything in between—regarding women’s rights. Should this even be a topic up for discussion? Women have proven to be magnificent human beings—just like men have. We can play sports just as well, perform a surgery successfully, create a new software that helps companies and so much more.

Yet, why aren’t we able to make our own decisions when it comes to our own bodies? No one can fully understand what a woman goes through, except for a woman. It baffles me that men have the audacity to want to decide our futures.

President Trump and affiliates, representatives from the House Freedom Caucus, have been under a lot of fire recently. According to Amanda Terkel in her article in The Huffington Post titled “Room Full of Men Decides Fate of Women’s Health Care,” the group was discussing possible adjustments to a revised healthcare bill and one alarming thing was on that list—not requiring insurance companies to provide some sort of maternity plans in their health plans.

Women have had to struggle to get their fair share with healthcare in the past—these fights for justice aren’t new to us. Terkel writes that in the times pre-Affordable Care Act, “it was completely legal for insurance companies to refuse coverage to women who were pregnant or might become pregnant in the future” (Terkel, “Room Full of Men Decides Fate of Women’s Health Care” para. 6).

Nothing about that is legal. Women should not be deprived of healthcare because of pregnancy—how would feel if that was your wife or girlfriend?

Has it gotten to the point where we are punishing women for being who they are? How is it that a table full of men get to decide what happens to women? More often than not, women cannot control what happens to them physically—a lot of the processes are natural, amongst them being childbirth, which is high on the list of amazing things a woman can do.

In another article by Terkel titled "Donald Trump Signs Anti-Abortion Executive Order Surrounded by Men,” she explains the detrimental effects of President Trump’s executive order regarding abortion—again being surround by men who do not have to endure what women go through.

Why is it that women are never able to represent themselves on the issues that affect us the most? Women are more than capable of making life-changing decisions—we do it nearly every day. These men are passing laws that they have no real knowledge on and that needs to stop.

According to research done by the Pew Research Center and in the article written by Anna Brown, 21 percent of the United States Senate is made up of women, 19 percent makes up the House of Representatives, and only eight percent of governors are women (Brown, “The Data on Women Leaders”). These numbers are drastically low—women deserve equal representation in all aspects of the government; men owe that to us after underestimating us for all these years.

The time is now and change begins with women. We need to break down the stereotypical brick walls that block us from reaching the top. People say that women are equal to men but if they really look past everything they are brainwashed by, they will realize that men still control us.

But as the saying goes: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

And we all will make history.