Gender and Sex Inequalities: Implications and Resistance By: Kelly L. Hazel and Kerry S. Kleyman; Published: August 12, 2019
The research article Gender and Sex Inequalities: Implications and Resistance describes how gender equality is still very prevalent in today’s world and may have a much longer period before its resolution than one may think. Women still have a long way to go in order to fully gain equality in the areas of economic participation and opportunity, education, healthcare resources, political empowerment, and gaining general equal rights and opportunities for women who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community. When looking at economic opportunities only about five percent of CEOs in America are women and in general women still only earn between seventy and 90 percent of what men make when working the same job. It is predicted that the wage gap will not be fully be closed for all women until 2233. When looking at the education women receive, research still shows that biases exist in which women are encouraged to go in a more accepted field based on gender stereotypes and are much less encouraged to go into fields revolving around math or science. In regarding women’s health research has shown that eating disorders in women has increased on a global scale, as the media has depicted an unrealistic standard of beauty. When looking into women’s political empowerment, women in the United States only hold nineteen percent of the seats in Congress and twenty-one percent of the seats in the Senate, but women make up fifty-one percent of the nation’s population. It is suspected that women will not have equal representation in the United States government until 2121. Lastly, women of the LGBTQ+ community still face consistent discrimination as the most wonderful things in life such as marriage and starting a family are made severely difficult for them to do.
Women have come a long way from the discrimination that existed in the early and mid-twentieth century, but unfortunately it seems have a very long way to go. The gender discrimination that still exists today in the areas of economic participation and opportunity, education, healthcare resources, political empowerment are predicted not to even fully go away for over a hundred more years. Although these different areas of gender inequality were stated separately in the article, when analyzing them they are all connected in order to create the patriarchal and systematically gender biased society we live in today. The misdirected education for majority of women across the globe in which women are not encouraged to study subjects such as math and science has led to the inequality in economic participation and opportunity. If women are discouraged from a young age to shoot for the stars, it makes sense that men dominate CEO positions in America. The sexualization of woman that is widespread in the media also puts the idea that looking pretty should be a woman’s upmost priority, even over her education. The increase of eating disorders due to toxic media representations of women also speaks volumes to the fact that constantly seeing pictures of the ‘perfect’ woman really takes a psychological toll on a person. All of these factors tie into the lack of woman representation in governments across the globe and misogynistic views mixed with homophobia perpetuate the intense discrimination that women in the LGBTQ+ community still face every day.
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