“Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes,” proclaims Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in a TED talk excerpted on Beyoncé’s “***Flawless,” a track on her new self-titled album. It seems that Queen B has taken Adichie’s message to heart.
In a short essay titled “Gender Equality Is a Myth!” included in the annual Shriver Report on women and gender equality, Beyoncé argues that it’s time we all stop pretending that we’ve achieved gender parity and work to actually make a difference:
We have a lot of work to do, but we can get there if we work together. Women are more than 50 percent of the population and more than 50 percent of voters. We must demand that we all receive 100 percent of the opportunities.
At a little over 200 words, the essay probably isn’t the most eloquent piece of prose to ever challenge sexist stereotypes, but it’s notable because so few female pop starts have come out as the dreaded F word, let alone penned a treatise about the female experienced tucked into a national report alongside pieces by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Kirsten Gillibrand.
Who run the world? Stats from the Shriver Report show it’s not girls — at least not yet.