Imagine being determined how much you earn in the way you look. A Harvard Law School student who was 1 in 9 women to be there in 1956 was discriminated despite the abilities that her ideas had to offer because she was a woman (ACLU). Upon graduating Law school, she was recommended for a clerkship position, but no one wanted to take her seriously even though she took the same tests and went through the same qualifications to get a degree which Harvard Law student men also obtained. They were simply “not ready to hire a woman.” This exact experience occurred to 85-year-old Supreme Court jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is now one of the most powerful women worldwide (ACLU). This event occurs every day not just in small jobs but in big corporations and companies. They want to sell a fantasy of masculinity that makes them believe it reflects power and knowledge. Women are pushed aside for the ideas they may have and don't receive the credit for their work when given the opportunity. “42% of women have received gender discrimination” (Pew Research). The over-representation of men in male-dominated work and educational areas disproportionately affects women in the same areas. So as to protect women, there need to be stricter laws for women to start being paid based on a job and not based on gender, rules need to be implemented, so men can stop seeing women as a sex object and realize that their job doesn’t include objectification. When sexist people see past gender and start looking at the intelligence of a woman, and their ideas, we can create something much greater.
Discrimination towards women has been occurring for a while, starting from the beginning, voting began in 1789 but women were barely granted access to vote in 1920. Before these women were not allowed to voice their opinion even on a ballot. So what changed? What allowed for the U.S constitution to include the 19th amendment and level some sort of equality towards men and women? For decades the suffrage movement had been fighting for the opportunity to vote and “it took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy” (History 1). Yes, women were allowed some sort of compromise to share opinions, but did they really? Ultimately, what is at stake here is trapping an intelligent mind because of their gender. Not being allowed to perceive education and gain knowledge. It makes some of us wonder if men are just fearful that women will accomplish bigger things. In reality, all women want is an equal opportunity at life. Not to be on top of men; certainly not to be lower, but to be equal to men. A big part of where discrimination began was women not being allowed to receive an education. Without education no one takes the person seriously, no one listens to the ideas that a person may have to offer, as great as they may be. This was the problem with society in the past, women weren’t taken seriously enough. They were seen as these objects that were only useful for being in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning, or taking care of kids. In June of 1996, the United States v. Virginia case occurred were, “the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) boasted a long and proud tradition as Virginia's only exclusively male public undergraduate higher learning institution”(Oyez 3). Virginia didn’t want to allow single-sex education and wasn’t allowing women to be educated as well, because of this the case was argued. Finally after so long “people compromised by saying that better-educated women make better mothers and wives; it's been a pretty standard defense over the centuries” this was also the only smart defense used so others could listen and it worked (Thorpe 13).
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Women started attending college and receiving an education. Now even though the tactic to “be better wives” seemed to have worked, it was really taken into consideration, because although, “by 1970, sex segregation had ended at most state colleges and universities. Women’s opportunities in the first half of the 20th century continued to be limited mostly to traditional nurturing professions like teaching, nursing, and home economics” (CUNY 4). Some may think that the complaining never stopped because women were allowed to vote and to go to college. This is because, although it was a start for years of fighting, women still didn’t have the same opportunities a man had to major and study majors like law or science. In the end all the majors they offered for women lead back to men's masculinity of being the powerful person. Women were only given an opportunity to go back from where they started, which is being the housewife and taking care of children, only now they had the degree for it. Now men had another reason to objectify them, they were able to pick out a woman based on their intelligence in “nursing and home economics.” Let’s take the opportunity to look at our world without people like Marie Curie, Rosa Parks, Marie Stopes. There would not be much change to the world right now, would there? These women used a voice to advocate for change, make a discovery and had the courage to stand up for what no one else was able to accomplish. Marie Curie was able to discover radioactivity a discovery that is known now to be dangerous to the human body. These women didn’t only have a powerful voice but an intelligent mind. Without her intelligence, we may not be having that step closer towards safety. Now that is only the example of what a woman can do when she is allowed the education. When we finally start to allow women to have the tools needed to share ideas they can accomplish a historical change. Education is where change initiates. Education is the foundation of giving women an opportunity.
Most men who are in power feel it's necessary to bring down women in more ways other than taking away their ability to think. They want women to be completely divided from men. Making women feel inferior to prejudice, stereotyping, discriminatory actions. A lot of women take these actions to heart and feel that they can’t do anything to change this corrupt system. They feel that speaking up will only make things worse. How can words become so powerful to a woman? Well, women don’t only receive threats, or hear the occasional “you’re such a girl.” Many women have gone through such terrible abuse and neglect from both coworkers and husbands. If they aren’t done as they're told men will turn to violence to reassure themselves and the women of the power they believe they have over them. These women aren’t just receiving a small slap on the hand for not listening other, “in 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner. That’s an average of three women every day. Of all the women murdered in the U.S., about one-third were killed by an intimate partner” (now 2). Such sexist actions are leading to women being dangerously injured or murdered and nothing. This makes women twice as scared to speak out as they are the victims and main targets of these men. When women do start to have the courage to finally run and find help it's rare to find actual help. Whom will people believe more? The wife that wasn’t “obeying” her husband, or the powerful man? “Harassment most often occurs in environments where leaders ignore it or discourage complaints. In contrast, highly visible and proactive leadership improves conditions and helps retain women” (ncwit 5). Even if these victims find someone who believes them the problem often goes ignored. Leaving these women in the same place they started from, if not worse if their husbands end up finding out they tried to reach out for help. However, it is important to know that all this discrimination and abuse is, in fact, illegal, “harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person's sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general” (Equal Employment 3).
The worst part of all of this is that more than one community is affected. The LGBT community (transgender people specifically) and women of color are affected as well. Transgender people face discrimination of their own because of transphobic comments made on a daily basis whether people believe they are a real man or women. Women of color fall in the same spectrum of discrimination and, rumors and offensive remarks will be made so that these people will have a higher chance of not being promoted in a job or be discriminated in the streets. Women discrimination ends up leaving women, women of color, and transgender people suffering the most. To make things much more complicated it also puts transgender women of color in danger. People who are superior and much more powerful create this unnecessary division. It would be assumed that only transgender women would be affected in a situation about women, but this also affects transgender men. Transgender men are in a constant state of mistreatment because of transphobic people seeing them as their assigned birth, in this case, a woman, it was “showed that 26% of trans people lost a job due to bias, 50% were harassed on the job, 20% were evicted or denied housing, and 78% of trans students were harassed or assaulted” (Trans Equality 1). Because of transgender men not being viewed as real men, but as women, they have discriminated once again for being seen as women. Now when transgender women are discriminated most of the time it isn’t because their pronouns are being respected, but because these women are still seen as men but now as much more feminine or less masculine men, which is discriminated a lot against. What is initially at stake here is “they can cause... officials to discipline Black children at disproportionate rates. They can leave Asians invisible or as the butt of jokes. They can cause emotional and physical harm to transgender people. And they can limit women’s access to higher paying jobs, reproductive health care, and much more.” (nwlc 1). At jobs, women don't feel like they fit in. This is more targeted towards women of color when “there are differences by race and ethnicity as well. While roughly half of the employed black women (53%) say they have experienced at least one type of gender discrimination at work, fewer white and Hispanic women say the same (40% for each group)” (Kim & Funk 23). All women face discrimination at work, but women of color are twice as a target to be discriminated. Women whom all can fit into a minority other than being just women are the ones who end up being discriminated. There is a long list of types of employment discrimination, “examples of workplace discrimination include, age, gender, race, ethnicity, skin color, sexuality, national origin, mental or physical disability, genetic information, relationship to someone who may be discriminated against, pregnancy or parenthood” (Doyle 5). Typically what occurs is people find ways to view women differently to show they aren’t capable of doing the same work as others.
The effects of all of this are involves messing with the system and risking not following the rules to prove a point. Such negative effects like sexual assaults. This all needs to stop, the doors for change have been open for a long time. A lot of women go to work every day and not realize what is in store for them. A woman may see a man staring at her so much. Many times it’s not because he wants to take her out for coffee, or the occasional date, many times it’s because he wants to see what is under that skirt. They just want to get through the day without being catcalled and disrespected for their body. This makes women feel so uncomfortable that it drives them away from continuing to work and they eventually end up quitting their jobs. Table 1 shows that “54% of women said they have received unwanted sexual advances from a man that they felt were inappropriate whether or not those advances were work-related; 30% said this had happened to them at work” (Kim & Funk 9).
This makes women feel so uncomfortable that it drives them away from continuing to work and they eventually end up quitting their jobs. The problem is they start to feel isolated and not included when as it was mentioned before, others doubt their ideas and their skillset. The problem is evidently women are not in a safe space because others don’t believe they are capable of being at the same level as them. There is harassment in the work field, harassment is a form of discrimination that to someone else may seem harmless, but it is also “illegal to discriminate....when hiring or in the workplace” (Doyle 4). If it is illegal why does it not get reported? Well, employees or coworkers will plan what they are doing beforehand and have other people have there back. If any problem happens they have an alibi and someone to testify that they weren’t in the same room; that it did not happen.
Women are becoming more and more at risk of losing jobs. A lot of women like it was mentioned before feel the need to quit because of an uncomfortable situation or experience. Others aren’t receiving the pay that they deserve even though, “when paying a salary to men and women of the same qualifications, responsibility, skill level, and position, employers are forbidden to discriminate on the basis of gender. Also, businesses are forbidden from lowering one gender's salary in order to equalize pay between men and women” (Doyle 27). The same work contribution is being inputted but yet there is a pay gap. This affects all women but specifically women who are financially independent and rely on their jobs to gain money to feed themselves every day. While these are constant problems in the mind of women, men don’t have to face this problem simply because men are seen above women. Most of these jobs involve companies in which you received educational experience and have a degree, “in some occupations, women collectively are receiving billions less than they would with equal pay; for instance, women working as physicians and surgeons are paid $19 billion less annually than if they were paid the same as men in that occupation” (AAUW 15). A degree evidently means nothing anymore when you are a woman in the working world. No matter how small or big the job may be there is always a big gap in wage, “for every $436 increase women get in annual earnings for doing more high-tech jobs, the study found, men get $740. That’s a gap of 41 percent” (Holder 15). Men are taking over jobs and aren’t letting women have an equal opportunity. This becomes unfair when it comes to a realization that “if women were paid what men were paid, women would gain billions in earnings every year” (AAUW 9). Policymakers have become blind to all of this and nothing is being done to change this. In fact, the gap just expands over time.
Although there is still a big form of discrimination and inequality towards women, there are still forms of help and place to turn to. The me-too movement was founded in 2006 to help sexual violence survivors and their “work continues to focus on helping those who need it to find entry points for individual healing and galvanizing a broad base of survivors to disrupt the systems that allow for the global proliferation of sexual violence” (metoomvmt 2). This movement connects survivors to different resources to help them in any way possible. Women who are being mistreated can have a safe place to turn to, someone that will listen. For the transgender community that is being discriminated in the work field because of how they may look, “California protects transgender employees from workplace discrimination by including gender identity or expression within the statutory definition of sex for purposes of its anti-discrimination laws” (Justia 2). Transgender people can live with less fear knowing that when they are in their workplace nothing should happen to them. Not much can really change unless matters are taken seriously and laws are implemented. That is why there should be more women in charge when it comes to checking workplaces so that there is more equality when it comes to being paid and being treated. “When it comes to wages, working women with a bachelor’s degree or more are much more likely than those with less education to say they have earned less than a man who performed the same job,”(pew research 10). A degree shouldn’t be able to define a woman's thinking. Women should have as much power as a man to say what they think or feel without feeling silenced because someone thinks of them as a joke because someone doesn’t believe their ideas are important enough or can make a difference someday. Gender shouldn’t define the ability of what someone can get done.
Women are being discriminated and being put in a spectrum with men every day. They aren’t being treated equally and are prevented from many opportunities. The over-representation of men in male-dominated work and educational areas disproportionately affects women in the same areas. Women weren't allowed the ability to go to school and gain an education. While working or at home, most of them are being harassed, abused, and disrespected. Looking different has affected women because they may not fit into the definition of what a woman may be because of their age, gender, race, ethnicity, skin color, sexuality, national origin, mental or physical disability. Billions of earnings are going somewhere else instead of women because they are being paid less than men for the same job. Both women and men involvement is important but it can’t truly be effective if both parties aren’t being handed the same tools. There is an imbalance of power and this issue hasn’t been completely fixed. People that care are doing everything they can to have their voices be heard and make a difference. This may not affect us personally but affects people we may care and love. We already have men in other states as of now have an opinion on what women evidently should do with their bodies, if people don’t begin to open there eyes to the matter much worse can continue to happen. This issue isn’t just a necessity but basic human rights.
Works Cited
- Doyle, Alison. “Types of Employment Discrimination.” The Balance Careers, The Balance, 26 Apr. 2019, www.thebalancecareers.com/types-of-employment-discrimination-with-examples-2060914.
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- “Non-Discrimination Laws.” National Center for Transgender Equality, transequality.org/issues/non-discrimination-laws. Accessed 20 May 2019.
- Parker, Kim, and Cary Funk. “42% Of US Working Women Have Faced Gender Discrimination on the Job.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 14 Dec. 2017, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/12/14/gender-discrimination-comes-in-many-forms-for-todays-working-women/.
- “Public Higher Education in America.” CUNY, cuny.edu/site/cc/higher-education/women-higher-ed.html. Accessed 16 May 2019.
- Sex-Based Discrimination, www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm. Accessed 20 May 2019.
- Sarah Holder @sarahsholder Feed Sarah Holder, and CityLab. 'Why Prepping For the Automation Revolution Can't Leave Out Women Workers.' CityLab. N.p., 13 Mar. 2019. Web. 28 May 2019.
- “The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap.” AAUW, www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/. Accessed 28 May 2019.
- Thorpe, JR. “Here's How Women Fought For The Right To Be Educated.” Bustle, Bustle, 8 May 2019, www.bustle.com/p/heres-how-women-fought-for-the-right-to-be-educated-throughout-history-53150. Accessed 16 May 2019.
- “Transgender Discrimination in the Workplace.” Justia, www.justia.com/lgbtq/employment-discrimination/transgender-gender-identity/. Accessed 20 May 2019.
- “Tribute: The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and WRP Staff.” American Civil Liberties Union, www.aclu.org/other/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-wrp-staff. Accessed 16 May 2019.
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