Do All Females Want Equality?
Females have been advocating for equal rights among all genders in the United States, but is that really the mission of the feminist movement? What is the opposing argument? I point to a couple of ideas presented in society today that explain why females do or maybe don’t really want equality in the United States. I personally believe that the following ideas should be considered: the social institution, pessimism, progression, and their resources being limited.
Yes, females want to level the playing field within professionalism with men for many obvious reasons. The leading motive is to having the same resources and opportunities. Examples of this would include job wages in the workforce and the perception of them being equal. In order for all genders to be equal in the job force, there needs to be a couple of changes.
First, I address a common factor in general equality, specifically concerning wages, and that is motherhood being a penalty. Motherhood is counted as a deduction or penalty to female salaries with the notion that pregnancy implies a leave of absence which men do not have. To me this means that because of their different biological reproductive processes, women are unequal to men in the workforce. This is unfair because their sexual organs should not define their reliability as an employee. However, there is such a thing as a paternity leave for male workers of two weeks at max, but the duration should be lengthened to the ten weeks given to females for equality to be achieved and to put the argument of maternity leave to rest.
Next, you might be wondering, can this actually work? The answer is yes, it can work and there’s proof; Iceland did it. The country has laws for equal pay for women and interestingly enough, half of its political party is female. In addition, each gender is given five months of paid leave when they have a child as an option according to an article from Harpers Bazaar titled “America Is An Actual Sh*thole When It Comes To Gender Equality.” The two questions that arise are how Iceland got to this state of affairs and if the United States could emulate this by changing our culture’s perception of a female.
How people perceive gender is the result of how media portrays them. For example, the woman being the significant other of the male protagonist of a movie and nothing merely a sexual object is very common in film and television, especially romantic comedies such as the Tobey Maguire version of Spider-Man, She’s All That, and The Little Mermaid just to name a few. There have been romantic comedies where the roles are reversed, such as She’s The Man where young a Amanda Bynes impostures her brother, dressing to the male stereotype, as her only chance to play on the soccer team. I want to see more media platforms portray all genders equally to progress how people view them in society. Through popular culture, we can influence the public to normalize gender equality and provide resources that women have been excluded from.
In addition, the social institutions of America have transcribed this belief system in our women that they don’t have what it takes to be equal to the man. The social institutions are comprised of a group of people who come together for a common purpose to govern the behavior and expectations of individuals. This ultimately scribed the gender roles in America which has changed throughout the nation’s history. However, females today might be pessimistic when it comes to progress towards them being perceived as equal to men because of how slow change is in my opinion. Maybe, they succumb to the status quo or they are not aware of their limitations as a gender in the country. What I mean by this is that females may think that it is normal for their resources to be limited as opposed to a man because of how much repetition occurs within the social institutions of media and the treatment of them from other men are reinforced. An article from BBC News titled “Why so many young women don’t call themselves feminist” refers to a study of 27,000 people in the U.S. which found that two-thirds of them believed in gender equality in 2016, up from a quarter in 1977. This means that the remaining third do not believe in gender equality which may relate to the myriad of reasons stated which is a shame.
What I believe in is equality as it relates to every individual in America. All it will take is time, effort, and awareness to achieve this goal. We all have to work together in abundance if we want to make this dream a reality and I am proud to create a dialogue for this social problem.
