Multiple protests have taken place throughout the world to show their support for gender equality through going topless in public.

Free the Nipple movement has been in the media increasingly since Lina Esco directed the “Free the Nipple” film which started the whole movement back in 2014.

My question here is, are there not bigger issues to support that will gain women the equality they are seeking? Is being able to go topless in public more critical than breaking the glass ceiling?

Of course not, but in my opinion hitting the streets topless is telling the world that having the right to free the nipple is the number one priority in attempting to achieve gender equality when in reality such a movement is doing very little for women.

According to Inquisitr, supporters of the Free the Nipple campaign hope to highlight and eliminate the sexual objectification of the female breast and believe that the female breast is not a sexual organ, and any use sexually is secondary to their natural function.

We are too focused on less important issues such as the Free The Nipple movement. We can not put the focus on our bodies and expect gender equality to come out of it. If anything the complete opposite will happen, the focus will once again be on the female body instead of our skills and significant intellectual attributions to society.

While the female breast does have a primary non-sexual function, why are far more significant issues being ignored?

According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar, research has shown that companies with three or more women on their boards scored higher on a number of performance metrics than companies with fewer female board members.

So if studies show that women are a great asset to a company. Why are only 16.6 percent of board seats held by women according to Fortune 500 Companies? Whereas in Norway, it is required that 40 percent of board seats must be held by women.

The Census Bureau recorded that 29.9 percent of men in 2014 attained a bachelor’s degree or higher while 30.2 percent of women had. If more women are pursuing a higher education why are men taking on most leadership positions?

Focusing on the right to go topless in public is teaching younger generations that being able to expose their bodies freely is more important than pursuing a CEO position. Or that rulings like the Stanford rapist case only require minimal protest, since having the right to legally bear all is number one on today’s feminist’s agenda.

Such protests are not the way to go about achieving gender equality in the 21st century. These causes we are pursuing put more of a focus on our bodies which is the complete opposite of what we need right now.

We should be working to protect our bodies and not let judges like Aaron Persky let them be seen as merely sexual objects to be taken advantage of. Fighting for the right to expose our bodies in public is going about this completely wrong.

While America has become the number one destination for sex traffickers to bring their victims, the gender wage gap has seen little to no progress and men are still only given about seven days of paternity leave. Modern feminists and media have overlooked all of this and have focused on legally being able to free the nipple.

So will activists continue to pursue gender equality through achieving the right of freely exposing their bodies? Or will somebody see the insignificance of such a movement compared to much more meaningful issues we face today?

Nicte Hernandez can be reached at [email protected] or @theorion_news on Twitter.