Whether We’re Women Or Men, In The End, We’re All Human

We are all human beings, regardless of our gender, so why aren’t we treated equally, even today in modern society?

Gender Inequality

Although we’ve come far as a society on how we treat women, there’s still always this idea that women and girls aren’t smart enough, capable enough and experienced enough to do certain tasks. Women are still treated unfairly based on stereotypes and there has always been that gender barrier for them. It prevents opportunities, experiences and more. Many people think we’ve changed, but the reality is, we haven’t.

Gender Inequality is the discrimination of women, with the mindset that men are superior to them. Therefore this creates the idea that women can’t achieve success and there are only specific tasks they can do. Gender inequalities are present in our everyday lives whether it’s subconsciously discriminating or intentionally preventing women and girls from a human right.

Girls Education

Quality and Access to education has been and is still now a huge barrier for women and girls. Having a quality education has the potential to open windows of opportunities, and girls are being prevented from it. Currently, 130 million girls are out of school, 34.3 million primary kids, 30 million lower secondary age, and 67.4 million upper secondary age. This is a huge number of girls missing out on a key portion of their lives and potential for their future.

This is because of things like families in poverty, who can’t afford to send their children to school and therefore once they get the opportunity to, their son is sent before their daughter. They think that a boy will be able to support the family with a job, while girls have a role to play only within the household, therefore, do not need an education. Even if girls get a chance to even go to school, there are many safety concerns. Many girls have the risk of being sexually abused on their way to or at school. This can result in early pregnancies, forcing the girls out of school while also facing judgement from their communities. Girls being at school is not completely normalized, especially within countries of poverty because of sanitation specifically for girls during a menstruation cycle. They are at risk of being humiliated therefore decreasing engagement in class or dropping out.

Women In The Workplace

Luckily, in modern-day society in more developed countries, girls are able to have somewhat of an education, but when it comes to jobs and earning money there are even more barriers than before. From actually getting a job to salaries to treat and far beyond this, women face several barriers in various workplace industries.

The problem starts with even being able to find a job that suits your passion. Sure, if a woman wanted to be a teacher or a maid that would be perfectly fine. But what if a woman wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor. For women, they have to work so much harder just to get into a position they are passionate about because there’s always this idea, not always said outright but we all know it's there. People assume that women do not have the capabilities to work in a job that does not pertain to household or motherly duties. Even though women are able to now get more jobs than before, salaries and promotions are very unfair and increase at a low rate. “Coincidentally”, men are chosen for the promotion, and yes of course they do earn their spots and they are hard workers, but it’s always the women who have to work 10x harder to get where they want to be while struggling to even put food on the table or balance their personal life. Unfortunately, Only 22% of c-suite executives are women.

What about someone like Kamala Harris? Oprah Winfrey? Jennifer Doudna? Sheryl Sandberg? They're successful, but behind the scenes, they still have to work 10 times harder “to prove themselves” to society. The fact that it is only now that the United States has gotten their first female vice president, worries me on how far our society has really come. A female vice president or a woman in the technology industry should be normalized. It shouldn’t have to be such a big deal that a woman becomes successful over a man. We shouldn’t have to “break the glass”. We should have an equal opportunity for women to climb to the top, the same way as men.

In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders

-Sheryl Sandberg

Intersectional Feminism

Intersectional feminism is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s recognizing the fact that many women have other challenges and barriers to deal with. It’s the intersection between gender inequalities and many other factors including race, class, ability, sexuality and more. Women a part of a community of colour, or part of the LGBTQ+ community or with disabilities have that added barrier of discrimination and lack of access to opportunities present in their lives.

Why has no change been made?

If this is such a huge problem and there so many facts to back it up, why has no change been made? This is because the issue is rooted in the cultural norms of society. We subconsciously have these discriminatory opinions and decisions against women.

Media also plays a huge factor with influencing us with gender inequalities. TV shows and movies portray women as mothers, sensitive, weak and on the contrary, men are portrayed as hard-working, strong, emotionless and more.

How We Can Make a Difference

Raising Awareness

Due to the fact that gender inequalities are caused because of cultural norms and mindsets, one of the most impactful things we can do is to raise awareness.

Gender Equality at a smaller scale

We need to pass on the idea of gender equality to future generations, so we need to teach this on a smaller scale. In your households, it’s the little things like making sure chores are divided evenly between genders, the girls in your house don’t have to always wash the dishes or fold the laundry! Teachers, girls don’t always have to sweep the floor in classrooms while the boys are putting away the heavier chairs, why not vice versa?!

Think before you speak

As previously mentioned, gender inequalities are present subconsciously in our minds. Some comments we say come off as sexist and are hurtful towards women. Sometimes we “judge a book by its cover” and women are judged for their looks only and they know this. We have to be more conscious about what we say or do!

Women Empowering Women

The best place to start is women lifting each other up. We need to support and empower each other so that each and every woman in the world has the hope for equality and continue fighting their journey against discrimination.