Women in the field
After voting suffrage was won, and especially after the pay gap and discrimination allowed for it, feminism helped more women go to medical school, and university, or become a wide range of caregivers and technicians, teachers, public servants, and scientists.
We are still seeing many women entering the field of medicine and teaching as well as roles of leadership for such policy, today. Most, if not all, fight for equality, which is the definition of feminism.
During many of these years, LGBTQ+ people also fought for basic human rights. Their activism helped Dr. Anthony Fauci to determine much more had to be done to help the HIV epidemic in the 1980s, as well as more international illnesses worldwide.
As a result of decades of study, the HIV virus, and many other zoonotic viral and bacterial infections have been studied. The science has been a work in progress. In an amazing burst of international cooperation after the pandemic took off, vaccinations for COVID-19 were developed and released in record time, saving millions, if not a billion, lives.
Your life then, may well have been saved by some of the most hated, and excluded people on the planet.
Women in the field of medicine and science have long been activated for the nurturing of human health, and for the health of the planet, which is integral to our air, water, and food quality.
The world is ready for equality
Most farmers on Earth are women, it should be noted. And many women are mothers to feminists of all genders, and queer people everywhere. We still need more women and LGBTQ+ people in STEM, and in policy-making, but before that, we need to be grateful that they exist.
Without millions of people working behind the scenes, and without international cooperation and development, we would be suffering a much worse outcome than we presently are, even though the Coronavirus is still an ongoing menace.
Especially as essential workers, feminists, and other marginalized people have been very crucial to any success we have had.
When you stop to think about it, even if you are an anti-feminist, a homophobic partisan, or hold any kind of prejudice against marginalized people, you still owe your life to many of them.
As Dr. Fauci leaves the NIH, maybe more people will step up to fill his sizable shoes. Love him, or hate him, he has served for decades. He and many thousands of unheralded workers have saved many lives.
Fauci acknowledges the huge debt he owes to women and men, queer folk and straight, and he is straightforward in sharing that abuse and death threats are not unusual in a role such as his.
That we allowed a pandemic to become political is not very progressive for science, or for humanity.
Let’s rethink that situation. We owe so much to feminism, to gay people, to tireless warriors, and to all the martyrs that come before triumph.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Zach Vessels on Unsplash