Women have for centuries been locked in to cultural stereotypes about how to be, dress and live. Yet there is no one size fits all in womanhood. It is as varied as the women who carry it, with different experiences, gifts, and stories. That diversity is what’s needed to break away from the old order and create a more open world.
- Challenging Traditional Expectations
Stereotypes depict women as narrow types: caretakers or protectors; they exclude them from all that’s possible. Women are scientists, entrepreneurs, athletes, artists and so on all doing the things that used to be deemed weird. By shaking up these outmoded expectations, women are rewriting the story of what it means to be successful.
- Celebrating Differences
Diversity of womanhood does not just happen on the job market. They’re all from different cultures, from different backgrounds, from different places. Each offers something different and is a social gift. To welcome this variety means to celebrate those differences instead of trying to compare and compare.
- Breaking Beauty Standards
Unfair beauty norms have purged women of some aesthetic sense. From body positivity to natural hair movement, women all over the world are taking their sex for granted. Each skin color, every body type and style is worthy of honor.
- Empowering Through Representation
Representation matters. Once women of all walks of life, all skill levels, all identities are represented in the media, leadership, and public arenas, people believe they can be. Representation resists stereotyping and shows that success and identity do not depend on gender or society.
- Supporting Each Other
Power grows within people who lift each other up. Women being the support for women (sponsoring, working with and supporting each other) helps create a more inclusive and powerful culture. Sisterhood doesn’t limit and brings women together in the common cause of equality.
- Encouraging Individuality
No woman’s story is the same and that’s lovely. To promote individuality is to honor women’s choices — be they about their families, careers, personal development or any combination thereof. The most freedom exists when women are able to live who they really are.
To escape stereotypes means coming together to value the plurality of womanhood. With women in celebration of being different, against the grain and helping each other, we can have a world where everyone’s voice counts, every story matters, and every woman prospers.
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