This poster is making the rounds on Facebook:

One person commented, “Same with boys and men. How about just having ‘children’ and ‘adults'”?

I think a lot of these posters bear a closer look to see what they’re really saying. Yet when I saw this one, I saw it as an innocuous message of empowerment to what are still second-class citizens* as a whole. I don’t think women have enough empowering messages yet, especially of the kind that help us see how we derail ourselves.

Along with that, we are still excluded from certain organizations, pay scales, considerations…we’ve come a long way, but we’re still catching up. I’m not sure if it would be better to skip the catching up and head straight to all-inclusiveness; I do know that all big goals have little steps. And that a poster with a single topic does not negate the needs of others not addressed in that poster. 

Basically, I think there shouldn’t be such a rush to say, “This item doesn’t also talk about X,Y, and Z, so therefore it’s invalid.” But I’m not entirely sure I’m right about that, either.

Where does the line fall between empowering and excluding?

*I don’t particularly like trotting out the “second-class citizens” phrase, and have been thinking I need to replace it with something more apt.