We Should All Be Feminists

Diaspora

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30 min

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2012

Story

We teach girls that they can have ambition, but not too much. To be successful, but not too successful. Or they'll threaten men, says author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In this classic talk that started a worldwide conversation about feminism, Adichie asks that we begin to dream about and plan for a different, fairer world - of happier men and women who are truer to themselves.

“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Did you know?

The 2012 TEDxEuston talk inspired Adichie's bestselling essay of the same name. Beyoncé later sampled part of the speech in “***Flawless”, carrying its central argument into global popular culture.

Adichie's debut novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, was named the Women's Prize for Fiction "Best of the Best" - the best winner of the prize's first decade.