It takes just one person to make change, and junior Michelle Chang is doing just that with her WeForShe club this year. A play on words, the club’s name derives from Emma Watson’s HeForShe movement, which strives to promote gender equality and awareness globally. Sponsored by latin teacher John Conant, the feminism club is starting this year with high hopes and goals.

“WeForShe is dedicated to educating our fellow students about intersectional feminism and having respectful discussions on relevant social issues in our society today,” senior Sofia Alemania said. “Overall we strive to promote gender equality.”

As a touchy and tricky subject, feminism has stirred a variety of controversies over the years as well as countless positive reforms, supported by all kinds of organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), Girl Scouts of the USA and more.

Chang said she hopes to dispel any false negative preconceptions and beliefs about feminism and wants to advocate awareness on campus with the WeForShe club.

“Most people think feminism is scary and feminists hate men or whatnot, but those are untrue stereotypes – it’s not about female domination and stuff like that. Feminism is more about promoting gender equality,” Chang said. “So WeForShe is all about educating its members on feminist issues.”

For Chang, feminism personally means a lot. It has helped shaped her into the confident person she is today. Not only is it the struggle of advocating for others, but it is also the empowerment of oneself.

“I’ve pretty much considered myself a feminist ever since eighth grade. Feminism has actually helped me grow so much as a person because basically the main underlying theme of feminism is choice and freedom; like, it’s is all about giving women choices and options and freedom, which is really empowering if you think about it,” Chang said. “When you stop judging other people you stop judging yourself, so feminism has actually really helped me with self-esteem and body positivity; I’m a lot more confident now than I was before.”

In regards to the future of the club, Chang has specific goals in mind.

“The three main goals of the club are to educate members about feminist issues such as body positivity and girls education, to empower our members and to offer community service,” Chang said.

She also spoke about the joint “Love your body” campaign with the Beautiful Impact club, a body positivity club here on campus, as well as a “who needs feminism” campaign, which advocates the positive values and beliefs towards change supported by feminists worldwide.

“The ‘Love your body’ campaign is a body positivity campaign sponsored by the National Organization for Women,” Chang said. “Basically, girls are constantly bombarded by the beauty industry and the media telling them what it means to be beautiful. We want to counteract those harmful messages by saying ‘hey! these standards of beauty are unrealistic and very harmful!’ We want to increase body positivity in the midst of unrealistic beauty standards and increase girls confidence. Basically, we want people at Woodbridge to love their body and be confident!”

The club meets every other Thursday in L104.