text: Maria Petrea

illustration: Cristina Radoaica

Each of us has a dream. My dream is to be an example for those around me, for future generations, for my family and friends. Nowadays it is difficult to be a girl, to be constantly pulled down by the misogynist system we live in, to fight for your rights and to be surrounded by insecurity and injustice.

I want to wake up one morning and not be afraid to go out in the street, dressed in a short skirt and a low-cut top. I wish I wasn't labeled for the way I express my creativity. I want to not be considered inferior to a boy and verbal harassment from a partner is no longer normalized. 

Without pretending to generalize, most girls encounter such misogynistic situations at least once in their lives. Situations that shape us as future women. Either we accept the situation or we oppose these outdated principles. Her Time made me feel like I belonged in a community, even before I became an ambassador. Her Time has shown me, over the years, what it means to be a woman. Since I started following this page, I have become more and more involved in protecting my own rights and in the idea of teaching the people around me what it means to be a feminist and how much it would help our community. 

But Her Time isn't just about feminism, it's also about gender equality and the LGBTQIA+ community. It's about the problems we or our friends face every day that affect us, influence us, limit our creativity and how we can grow. These unpleasant situations caused by people without access to education, with a traditionalist mentality, who are not open to change, limit our personal growth and development. I believe that the most important thing to be able to make the world better is to be better yourself, and this aspect has a lot to do with education. For example, I come from a religious family that is homophobic. If I had taken the education I received at home, I would not have evolved in any way that would have made me proud of the person I am becoming. Education is a balance between what our parents teach us and what we learn. A kind of "school of life", I could say. 

Thus, I want equality between genders to be promoted as much as possible and relations between people from the LGBTQIA+ community to be as normalized as possible in today's society.