Source: Motto
Anita Sarkeesian, a TIME 100 honoree, blogger and the founder of the Feminist Frequency nonprofit, spoke to Motto via email about the need to feature more women’s stories in media and her new Ordinary Women video series.
Motto: What was your goal with this documentary series? Why is it important to you?
Anita Sarkeesian: Ordinary Women really came out of a frustration with the kinds of stories about women that just so often aren’t being told. In school, young girls and boys, children of all genders, are taught about all these amazing things that men have done throughout human history, but so often the amazing accomplishments of women are completely overlooked. And it’s important to me that we collectively as a culture start to change this because our notions of what women have done in the past can have a real impact on our perceptions of what women can and should do in the present and the future. I think that often whenyoung girls, who have learned about all these amazing male inventors and scientists and pioneers in school but haven’t heard those kinds of stories about women, are exposed to stories about amazing women and their accomplishments, it can dramatically change their whole idea of what’s possible.
What went into choosing the women that are profiled on the series? How did you pick them, and why?
We started with a spreadsheet of around 50 women and whittled it down from there to the five who are featured in Ordinary Women. We wanted women from different cultures and different time periods throughout history because we wanted to communicate that, despite the considerable cultural restrictions they’ve faced, women have always and everywhere been accomplishing amazing things. We also wanted women whose accomplishments were in a variety of fields, so we have artists, technological innovators, and important and influential thinkers and writers. And we have Ching Shih, a fearsome 19th-century pirate who commanded a massive fleet, because we wanted to show that women can be historical villains as well as heroes.
Categories: History, The Muslim Times, Women