Essay On Gender Inequality

In the 21st century, many people believe that we have overcome the obstacle of gender inequality and evolved into a society of fairness and righteousness. As many know, females can be just as proficient and qualified as males at any task. Though some efforts to off–set this gender imbalance is in place, it is still commonly acknowledged that many careers are stated to be a male job such as lawyers, and female jobs such as secretaries. Gender inequality is a visible fact in our society and in this essay, I hypothesize that gender inequality still exists as a result of factors such as post–secondary education differences of the two genders, role of females in families, female objectification, career choice differences of the two genders, and...show more content...

This negative trend demonstrates that many females have slowly adapted to the stereotypes of the society and accepted their assigned roles in the labour force and in their family unintentionally. Conventionally, females played a very insignificant role in the paid work force of a society as many times they were expected to be home taking care of their family. Their roles at home can often include grocery shopping, meeting all the needs of her children and husband. As time moved on, our society became more accepted of sharing housework between the couples, but even so, the traditionally more feminine housework such as cooking, caring for sick children, and shopping for the entire family are mostly done by the females of the house. It is argued in a research journal Work and Occupations (Witkowski & Leicht, 1995) that in an average North American family, females take on roughly three–quarters of the housework. Even though we are in a democratic society, parenting roles in the household are assigned based on gender rather than in a democratic fashion (Winslow–Bowe, 2009). Because of the many responsibilities and obligations that are associated with the female gender, their career paths are eventually affected for the worse. According to Statistics Canada (2001), for every dollar a man earns, a single woman earns 93 cents and a married woman earns 69 cents. These statistics

Get more content

Essay On Gender Equality

Equality has been a fighting issue for centuries, whether in race, gender, religion, etc. While strides have occurred to decrease these discrimination, there are still a plethora of situations fought within the government to create a safe space for all and create equitable opportunity for all. Within the political and economic world, one battle being fought is the barrier ofgender equality amongst employees. Gender inequality became socially normal especially within the workplace, a social normative implemented into people's mind since youth. Implications are created by society on the role of women in the workplace, limiting the exploration for woman to expand into new, higher professions. Society pressures women into lower position jobs rather than providing equitable opportunity to proceed into higher position jobs. Research accumulated by CNN concluded that only 14.2% of the top five leadership positions at the companies are women. Women obtain far fewer positions in high paying jobs due to past dictation that a woman's place is within "soft" jobs, though women have begun to perforate this predetermined situation by integrating themselves in a myriad of different careers. Another research, done by Harvard Business, states that "On average men's projects had budgets twice as big and three times as many staffers as women's" (Harvard Business Review). Not only do women acquire lower position jobs, but when they do achieve these jobs, men receive more beneficial resources

Get more content

Essay On Gender Inequality

The concept of gender denotes the distinction between culturally driven and created roles of masculinity and femininity. These specific and normalized attitudes and behaviors transcend and effect how differently men and women live their lives. Based on society's continual re–enforcement of such gender stereotypes, we see an on–going dilemma of gender inequality. Though some may argue that men experience gender inequality, this seems to exist on a much more invasive level for women. As of recently, the awareness of gender inequality in the workplace has increased. With the fight for equal pay and equal respect, society is already making strides towards the equality of women. With that being said, one aspect of gender inequality that seems...show more content...

As of December 2008, "Swedish citizens can apply for a tax deduction amounting to 50% of the labor cost for renovations, repair, cleaning, and maintenance work on homes" (European Monitoring Centre on Change). In other words, this policy encourages families to hire help such as cleaning, maid and nanny services for domestic duties. As a result, the domestic workload for women decreases as it is fulfilled by hired services. Of course, not every family is going to want to hire help but the tax deduction increases the chances of using such services. In fact, Sweden has had much success with this policy as "90% of the surveyed companies felt that the ROT–deduction had a positive impact on reducing undeclared [domestic] work" (European Monitoring Centre on Change). Integrating this policy in the United States would theoretically have the same effect on gender inequality at home. By monetizing domestic work, it not only boost employment projections for that category of employment but encourages women to transition away from household duties to other work opportunities in the outside labor market which would also help with gender inequality present in the workforce.

Income Based Affordable Child Care Comparatively, to Sweden's policy to decrease domestic work, it also has policies in place to ease the workload of child care. As most parents would agree, taking care of a child is a full–time job and society has normalized the idea that a majority of that job

Get more content

Essay On Gender Inequality

Amnesty International

5 Penn Plaza, 16th Floor

New York, NY 1001

Dear Advocacy Representative, As many of us know throughout history there have been many inequalities that the world has been faced with; whether it is race, gender, or ethnic background. I am writing you, the representatives for Equal Rights to discuss an urgent concern of American women in the workplace. Althoughgender inequality is decreasing, it still exists and makes a lot of people suffer its consequences every day. Gender inequality is unfair rights between male and female based on different gender roles which leads to unequal treatment. Gender inequality has been widely known in human history but not until the beginning of the 20th century has the change of...show more content... This historic rise came about in 2005 and, since then, the pay gap has remained roughly unchanged. Women as a whole experience the gender pay gap but there is also a racial pay gap. Awoman makes 77 cents for every dollar a Caucasian man makes. Last year when looking at median hourly pay, black workers earned $18.49 an hour. White workers earned an average of $25.22 an hour. Caucasian women make about 75 cents to every dollar a caucasian man makes. Asian women make an average of 85 cents to every dollar a caucasian man makes. For black, Latina, and Native women, that number is significantly lower. On average, Latina and black women who are low–wage earners and work full time live below the poverty line. White men who are low–wage earners and work full time live above the poverty line.

According to the map from National Women's Law Center women lose $418,800 over a 40–year career. That number is more than double from latina and black women. It will take years for the gap to be resolved. In the U.S the gender wage gap is lower than it is in any country although there has not being improvements since the 1990s. However, the contribution of men to household and childcare has grown significantly in recent years, it is still far below women's' contributions. In today's society, women make up almost half of the workforce; in four out of ten families, women are the equal, if not main, breadwinners as

Everybody is born equal, but are not treated equally. Gender equality has been an ongoing fight in the United States for decades. The majority of people in the United States would agree that equality is fantastic and that there could be no downside to complete equality. However, in the case of gender equality (only referring to male and female), it may be better for one gender to dominate a particular role to increase effectiveness. This only applies to some specialized fields, such as the military, teaching, and child care.

The push for gender equality has always been led by women, as males have historically dominated all positions of power (with a few exceptions), in both politics and business. Today, many actively push for more women in male dominated roles, and more males in female dominated roles. One such male role is in the military. There are also those who fight for more balance between men and women in teaching and childcare. In these cases, scientific studies may suggest that having more women in combat and more men in childcare and teaching may not be as much of a positive endeavor as some may think. Women are generally not as well equipped for combat as men are. Men are generally not as well equipped for dealing with children as women are. Biological differences play a serious role in how effective certain jobs can be. War and conflict between humans has always been around, and always will be. Historically, men have always been the warriors. There have been

Get more content

What Are The Barriers Of Gender Equality

Today, the world is not doing as well as people would like: gender equality has yet to be achieved, climate change is putting millions at risk, two–hundred million people are unemployed, and people are more stressed than ever. Trying to solve these world challenges, people are working more and more hours, yet little progress is being made. The solution is rather simple: work less.

Women around the world are under–represented in the workforce, making up less than 20% of CEO positions, and, in America, fewer than 20% of Congressional positions are filled by women. Reasons for this lack of representation may be due to prejudice, but it is important to recognize that women are viewed as the primary child caregiver in most families. For this reason, many women take off work for several months after childbirth and are often thwarted from higher positions because they take leave. If both males and females had shorter work weeks, then both genders would be able to devote more time to child care, allowing women to continue to work sooner and progress in their fields. In addition, studies have shown that men who take paternity leave are more devoted to their families and are 50% more likely to help their wives with domestic labor, such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Thus, the shorter work week would lead to both equal representation in the work place and at home, subsequently, breaking the barriers ofgender inequality.

Shorter work weeks will not only benefit parents, but they

Get more content

Freedom and equality are ideas this country has had for centuries that have evolved over time. In 1776, what Thomas Jefferson meant by "all men are created equal", is that white males are dominant in society. Women are treated worse than men and slaves treated worse than women. People that weren't of the "superior" race/gender of a white male were typically treated as if they were less. Women and African–Americans aren't being treated as bad today, but they're still being treated worse than the white males of society. Even today, when white males are typically the leaders of society, it's not always race and gender that createsinequality; sometimes it's money that creates the issue. Not just from past evidence, but from present...show more content...

Now the students are missing out on the curriculum the rest of the country is trying to reach because they need to have the skills to have a demanding job. Schools in a high–income society usually get even more than the curriculum. Private schools have just about everything. They have good materials, good educators, good students, etc. Students in private schools are taught to love learning. "In 90 minutes of observing the private–school class, there were zero interruptions, zero yawns, and zero cell phones", (Godsey, 2015). Although when Godsey observed that there were zero interruptions in 90 minutes, he later went to a public–school and it ended up being a nearly the opposite observation. "It 's not completely clear how fluent he [the teacher] is in the subject matter, however, because he has been interrupted or distracted by 20 things in 20 minutes: a pencil being sharpened, a paper bag being crumpled and tossed..." (Godsey, 2015). Comparing the private–school to the public–school, the private–school had more opportunities and focus than the public–school, thus creating a better environment for students to learn and be successful. Schools are evidently unequal when comparing them based on the focus, curriculum, and money. Secondly, Inequality is evident in the United States through the many riots, police brutality incidents,

Get more content

Gender Equality Essay

In today's world, when you look around there are so many different types of people. Different races, different backgrounds, and also different stories. We live in a world of a diverse group of people. Some would think living in such a diverse world we would form a common ground and maybe unite together to be "equal" but that is far from true. No I'm not talking about the inequality of people based off of race or background, the grouping of sex is the issue here. From the beginning of time till now, cultural practices have formed these boundaries. There has always been a separation of males and females and the way they are raised and taught even to what occupations they take on. Over time these became a set of gender boundaries. I believe...show more content...

Lorber focuses on the biological differences between male and female. She goes into detail about how women are separated or treated differently from men just because of a biological difference. In comparison, Tannen discusses the behavior and language of males and females in a classroom setting, discussing how males take on different types of questions and public speaking differently than females. She discusses how males and females learn to participate in different ways. Between the two authors, there is one point that serves for the basis of my argument and that would be the inequality that both genders face due to these gender boundaries. For example, in Lorber's essay, she formulates a issues called the Bathroom Problem. This is a perfect example of how society tries to make both sexes equal when in reality, they are not. In this Bathroom Problem, we give both males and females the same amount of bathroom facilities. But as Lorber states on page 732, "[A]lthough an equal number of bathrooms seems fair, equality would mean more women's bathrooms or allowing women to use men's bathrooms for a certain amount of time." (732). If you want both sexes to be equal, then help both sexes out by giving them the supplies or facilities that they need. This point also ties into Tannen's argument about how both male and female students participate

Get more content

Gender and Gender Inequality

Gender, what is gender? Where does it come from? How long has it existed? These are all very good question and questions that are asked a lot in today's modern society. Most people think of gender as the physical features of a man and a woman, but it is not just physical features that define gender. There are obvious biological differences between a man and a woman, but is that what gender is defined by? There are many different theories on gender and how it is defined. How is gender inequality present in today's world?

Gender vs. Sex these two things are some of the most commonly misunderstood concepts. According to James M. Henslin the author of the book Essentials of Sociology A Down–to–Earth Approach,...show more content...

It is known that males have more testosterone produced in their bodies and females have more estrogen produced in their bodies. Is this what causes males to be more aggressive and females to be more nurturing and submissive? There was a study which was called The Vietnam Veterans Study. This study was on males and their levels of testosterone. According to James M. Henslin, in 1985 the U.S. government began a health study of Vietnam veterans. To be certain that the study was representative; the researchers chose a random sample of 4,462 men. They collected testosterone measurements from each of the participating individuals. This study showed evidence that when the veterans with higher testosterone levels were boys, they were more likely to get in trouble with parents and teachers and to become delinquents. As adults they were more likely to use hard drugs, to get into fights, to end up in lower–status jobs, and to have more sexual partners. This study make it sound like biology is a basis for behavior, but this is where something known as social class comes into play. The researchers compared high–testosterone men from higher and lower social classes and found that the men from lower social classes were more likely to get in trouble with the law, do poorly in school, and mistreat their wives. So as it was stated up above, gender consists of whatever behaviors and attitudes a group considers is proper for Get more content

It is only recently that sociology has begun to explore the topic of gender. Before this, inequalities within society were based primarily on factors such as social class and status. This paper will discuss gender itself: what makes us who we are and how we are represented. It will also explore discrimination towards women throughout history, focusing mainly on women and the right to vote, inequalities between males and females in the work place and how gender is represented in the media. The term 'gender' was coined by John Money in 1955: "Gender is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself /herself as having the status of a boy or man, girl or woman, respectively" (Coleman and Money, 1991, 13). In...show more content... This perhaps explains why so many women changed their name to that of a male to be able to get their work published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For example, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brönte published their work under the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

Studies have also been carried out into whether or not there are differences between male and female brain size and whether this affects how we relate to each other in terms of gender. Simon Baron–Cohen believes that male brains are wired towards systematic understanding and females are wired towards empathy. In addition he says that this is not necessarily always the case but the majority are wired in this way: "Both sexes have their strengths and weaknesses. Neither sex is superior overall." (Baron–Cohen, S. 2003).

It is also thought that much of the gender inequality in today's society can be put down to social and biological construction of our characteristics. Stereotypically, men are seen as the "strong" gender and women as the "weak". In reality, women fail to make full use of their bodies potential and with a greater awareness of getting hurt, are less likely to take part in a dangerous activity. "Men more often move out toward a ball in flight...women tend to wait for it and then react to its approach" (Young, I. 2010, 207).

Women have always been seen as a lower social class than males and are therefore identified as having limited privileges and rights compared to men. Get more content