Gender equality. Most would agree it’s an important ideal to withhold and support.

Switch the words “gender equality” to “feminism” and suddenly people are hostile or dismissive of the subject.

While there are many branches of feminism, the main goal for most of them is equality for all.

They may, however, differ in their approach and domain.

Feminists can be any gender, sexual orientation, class, ability or race.

However sexism can be seen within schools and workplaces.

Many school dress codes are discriminatory against females in general.

Teaching them to, “cover up” instead of teaching teenage boys, how to act properly.

The most glaring example of sexsim in the workplace is the pay gap.

Even in white collar jobs when both a man and woman, both equally qualified, and put in the same effort and time the man will inevitably get paid more.

Over time, feminism has gained a negative label, which is mostly due to ignorance.

People often accuse feminists to be man-haters and want only woman to dominate the world.

Feminism isn’t about hating men, it’s about eliminating patriarchy and sexism.

Others may view gender equality as already achieved, and only poorer countries still retain a patriarchal system.

It’s doubtful that any county truly has complete equality. Even America’s problems pale in comparison to other parts of the world.

Females are subjected to honor killings, domestic abuse, and governments do little to help these women.

It’s the year 2016. Why is this still happening?

Some Islamic fundamentalists think that only through the murder of an offending family member can honor be restored to the rest of the family.

Both genders face the threat of honor killings in Pakistan and across 14 muslim countries.

Honor killings predominantly affect Pakistan women The United Nations gave an estimation of 943 women were killed under such circumstances in 2011 and another 869 in 2013.

The United Nations estimates that 35 percent of women worldwide have suffered either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives.

However, some national studies show that up to 70 percent of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime.

What’s worse is that a lot of issues are not taken seriously, and so many of them are misreported or underrepresented.

In some universities rape crimes are termed as “misconducted” so as to save the reputation of the university, and downplay the crime to make it seem trivial.

Feminism plays a major role in exposing certain issues that would otherwise be ignored.

There should be no need for feminism in all honesty, because in an ideal world women and men stand equally and without opposition of the opposite gender.