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Spotlight [10] is a podcast feature series that highlights sound storytelling through fiction, non-fiction and comedy productions. Learn more about the world around you, or dive into a new reality built on sound storytelling.
Welcome to Spotlight 10. We share our favorite stories with you, spreading the full range of fiction, non fiction, and comedy. Learn more about the world around you or dive into a new reality built on sound storytelling. Each of these feature episodes has been crafted by a different host with a different style. Let's jump into this week's episode.
Speaker 2:At least one out of every three women have been beaten, raped, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. That isn't a headline from another country. It's a reality that stretches across continents, cultures, and generations. What is it like to be a woman? To find joy and belonging in the sisterhood, strength, and softness of girlhood.
Speaker 2:What does it mean to live in a world where being a woman so often comes with pain? Womanhood is breathtaking and marvelous. It can mean resilience, creation, collaboration, and revolution. From Marie Curie's Nobel winning research to Malala Youssef Zai's global advocacy for education, women have invented, resisted, built movements, and broken records. None of it granted, all of it fought for.
Speaker 2:But while women continue to rise, we cannot ignore the weight many of them carry because behind every inspiring headline is a harsher truth. These are the voices of daughters, mothers, students, and survivors. Some stories may sound familiar and others may not, and that's okay. Because her story isn't just one, it's millions, and every single one of them matters. For many women, gender inequality starts at an early age, and it starts in the home.
Speaker 2:Doctor Laura Apoll, a women's study professor at Michigan State University, explains that the patriarchy is not just found in individual stories, but it's built into law, into culture, and into everyday life.
Speaker 3:So I would say we gender children from the moment they're born. Girls and boys, pink and blue. And it's almost impossible to resist these inherited cultural assumptions. They morph into thinking about gendered behaviors, activities, characteristics that are instantiated into expectations. So we have sayings like boys will be boys and also into institutions like daycares and schools, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts.
Speaker 3:Eventually, they show up in political systems that empower men and ignore and sometimes even celebrate gendered violence. And, and this plays out in not allowing, women and female presenting people to protect themselves.
Speaker 2:Globally, violence against women is still very prevalent and brutal. Girls are denied access to education where boys are not. Women are forced into systems of abuse, silenced through violence, or punished for speaking out.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So globally, it there's widespread violence against women and girls. There's trafficking of women and girls. There's female genital mutilation. There's sex selective abortion.
Speaker 3:There are honor killings and bride burning. There's rape as a tool of genocide and war, and there's femicide that is, the ability to kill women with impunity. And these all grow out of power structures that privilege men, that celebrate power, and that glorify violence, something all women experience.
Speaker 2:But even here, in the land of the free, women face a quieter kind of oppression. The kind that shows up in paychecks, in courtrooms, and in cat calls, and the kind that tells women to shrink and to smile to survive. Progress does not mean completion, and freedom in name does not guarantee freedom in practice. Patriarchy isn't a relic. It's a reality, one that shape shifts and survives through culture, language, and silence.
Speaker 2:In the wake of the women's movement, we gained access to the ballot box, the boardroom, and the classroom. But American exceptionalism often blinds us to the inequality still embedded in our own systems. Like, women still make 82ยข for every dollar a man earns. They're penalized professionally for becoming mothers and expected to carry the bulk of domestic labor at home. But one of the most painful and personal forms of inequality women still face is violence.
Speaker 2:Whether on campus, in a relationship, or at the workplace, abuse remains alarmingly common. On college campuses alone, thirteen percent of all students experience rape or sexual assault, and that number jumps to twenty six percent if you're talking about women alone. For Amaya, a senior college student at Michigan State University, stories of abuse are extremely common and personal.
Speaker 4:I think I hear about sexual assault the most. I know that there's a history of violence with my family members, and that's unfortunate to hear about. So I think that that is more common than what people talk about because sometimes our people are scared to bring it up. But I think that sexual assault is probably the most common or just manipulative tactics that people don't even really realize are going on in relationships.
Speaker 2:Like Maya, many women agree that the trauma from sexual abuse doesn't end after the harm. Seventy five percent of women still suffer PTSD a month after abuse, and the emotional aftermath, shame, anxiety, and depression can linger for years.
Speaker 4:I think from my friends' experiences and also my personal experience as well, I think that women who have experienced this tend to shut down, and they are scared of vulnerability with men. I know for a fact I am. It's it's terrifying to let someone in after something like that happens. And I think that the best way or the most common way to cope is to kind of close yourself off and take time to yourself, and that's what I've noticed especially.
Speaker 2:And society doesn't make this any easier. It's no secret that victim blaming, legal system failures, and the fear of not being believed all keep women in silence. Most women agree that gender inequality means more to them than an equal paycheck or equal respect. It's about reclaiming your body, your voice, and your sense of self worth, especially when someone has taken that from you. Despite all the pain, the progress cannot be denied.
Speaker 2:The feminist movement, through its many waves, has transformed the world. Less than a hundred years ago, women in America couldn't vote. Until 1963, there was no law requiring equal pay for equal work. And it wasn't until 1974 that women were allowed to open a credit card without a male cosigner. These rights are recent, especially given how long women fought to earn them.
Speaker 2:Over the last century, women have rewritten the rules, reshaped entire systems, and redefined what leadership looks like. From winning the right to vote, to now running for the highest offices, from breaking scientific ground, to sparking global movements, women have never waited for permission to lead. They created a space for their voices where there was none. And generation after generation, women rise to the occasion to continue the fight. Her story is not just about the ones told today.
Speaker 2:It's about millions, millions of stories told across time zones, dinner tables, hospital beds, and protests. Each voice is different, each experience is valid, and each woman is powerful. This feature was written, produced, and narrated by Lottie Morehouse. I would like to give a special thanks to all of the women I interviewed and to every woman who's ever been made to feel small. This is your story too.
Speaker 1:Like what you hear? Rate us on Spotify, give us a like, and follow Audio Video Land on Instagram where you can find more Spotlight 10 updates, teasers, and behind the scenes content. Spotlight 10 is an audio video land production by digital storytelling students of Michigan State University in collaboration with Impact eighty nine FM.