Hello readers! My name is Faith Harlan and I am a first year biology student at Santa Clara University. I was born in Chico, California and lived there until I was eight-years-old when my mother married my stepfather and we moved to Davis, California. Our family consists of myself, my mother, my stepfather, two dogs named Lucy and Jasper, and a salamander named Lucky.
It was there in Davis that I finished the rest of my elementary, junior high, and high school education. I got involved in sports as soon as we moved, but chose to pursue an athletic career in only softball and basketball. I played each sport both competitively and during high school season, but quit softball my sophomore year and only stuck with basketball through the high school program. Upon arriving to Santa Clara, I joined the Women’s Club Rugby team and have absolutely loved every moment of it.
I am a complete and total science nerd, and love everything to do with the natural world and all of its living creatures. This passion for a love of life was passed on from my mother to me, as she was also a biology major and takes great care in appreciating our earth and each individual form of life. She always taught me that no matter how big or small a life force may be, it is incredibly special and must be handled with great tenderness and care. She emphasized the importance of leaving behind the least impactful footprint, as everywhere we step we leave an everlasting mark of our presence. Her love of nature and appreciating all things great and small was hugely impactful on who I am today. As a biology major, I crave to learn everything I can about how the natural world works from the smallest scale of molecular interactions to the greater scheme of how everything on earth works together. I am incredibly passionate about the mistreatment of our planet along with the disregard for life other than that of the human race.
Because of this, I began to pay more attention to the public affairs of environmental issues and my eyes were opened to a whole other passion: politics. This is something I never thought I would get involved in as it is a messy and corrupt topic that tends to only disrupt the harmony that we as individuals seek to find. It was only recently that I allowed myself to share this newly found interest with my external environment. This blog acts an outlet and a way for me to express some of my views and is centered around the topic of success and ability and how we as a society define these two words. More specifically, this blog focuses on a more controversial topic of how gender influences these definitions, an issue that I believe is the consequence of the inequality of men and women in our culture. Many of our country’s foundational beliefs are based on highly outdated, sexist, and flat out WRONG patriarchal views. Women have been systematically oppressed by men throughout history and continue to face unjust prejudices today.
We are somehow the weaker sex, labeled as less able and have a harder time being “successful” because of one simple difference between having an X or Y chromosome. While opportunity may be equal between men and women and some previously accepted bigotries have been done away with for the most part, there is still a huge gap in professional achievement. It is time for reform to begin and for men and women to be fully seen as equal in all aspects, and this blog aims to support that call for action.
-FH