"Gender equality is a myth," Beyonce says

Beyonce and I have yet another thing in common. Not only are we both 32-year-old married black feminists with unique names and a love for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED talk  “We Should All Be Feminists,” but now we both write essays! (This is all leading to the day we become BFFs. I can feel it.) 

Mrs. Knowles-Carter penned an essay titled "Gender Equality Is a Myth" for The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink. The complete report can be downloaded for free through today.  I plan to read and write about the full report soon. 

In her essay, Beyonce states that "We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn't a reality yet. Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes." 

She goes on to say that in order for gender equality to be achieved one day, men must take a stand on the issue too:

"Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters earn more—commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender," she writes. 

Beyonce believes gender equality starts with how we raise our children: "We have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up, gender equality becomes a natural way of life. And we have to teach our girls that they can reach as high as humanly possible."

Bey's contribution is short, sweet, and to the point and as The Hairpin noted, "Bey is as completely right as she is obvious."

The ideas she puts forth are simple. Quite frankly, they're common sense. But sadly I fear there folks out there who would still disagree. There are people who still see gender equality as some radical notion from us "crazy liberals" and not the simple notion that women are people too.  

As Beyonce states in the piece, "Humanity requires both men and women, and we are equally important and need one another. So why are we viewed as less than equal?"