Women must embrace freedom of speech

Julianna Squires, Contributor

March 2, 2021

Dear Editor,

There is a matter we need to discuss. Freedom of speech is a big controversy in many aspects of our nation. People question themselves on what they can say and if they can even have a say at all. There is a lot of inequality in freedom of speech on who can say what. The most inequality I see today is women’s freedom of speech. 

As a woman, I get cautious around certain topics because I am scared to be discriminated against for my opinion. I shouldn’t have to be scared to voice my opinion. This just doesn’t happen to me though. It happens to women across the United States. Men get to use their right of freedom of speech to say what they want when they want but when women have an opinion it is “stupid” or is “invalid.” In all cases of opinion, I believe that all opinions should be valued whether if they are male or female. We should be able to use our right of freedom of speech alongside men, and it should be an equal amount of freedom.

I did a lot of research on ways that women’s freedom of speech inequality is shown. One of the biggest things I found was that in this year’s 117th Congress there are only 144 women out of 535 members.  There are 120 in the House and 24 in the Senate. This means that 27% of the House is women, and 24% of the Senate is women. Just this year the first woman Vice President was elected. Kamala Harris (The Vice President) gets death threats and hateful comments on Twitter and Facebook that say she is “disgraceful” and  “wrong” all because she is a woman. Just because she is a woman doesn’t mean that her views aren’t as valuable. We need more women in our government to use the freedom of speech given to us on women’s issues like abortion and pregnancy laws. The number of women in government needs to go up so that we can start having equal freedom of speech for women.

Other than Congress having freedom of speech inequality for women, our whole country  has counted women as less than since the beginning. Back in the 1800’s, women were expected to obey what their husbands said and take care of the children. They didn’t have a voice or a say on anything. Our country has grown from those days, but it still isn’t good that women are still viewed as less than. We are still told to shut up. We are still told that because for our gender freedom of speech does not apply.  Women still face obstacles when speaking up at debates or protests. In all, it is disgraceful and heartbreaking to see the inequality and discrimination in genders when it come to speaking out and using the right of the First Amendment. Women’s freedom of speech inequality is real and there needs to be something done about it.

Sincerely,

Julianna Squires

Websites used: 

https://reliefweb.int/

https://www.pewresearch.org/

https://www.ukessays.com/