What have I learned? Coming into this class I had a very close minded perspective on rights/equality of men and women. I was raised in an environment that did not tolerate mistreatment of women and therefor I assumed that the remained of the world would not either. However, I was badly mistaken. America is a unique environment for women, we try our best to assimilate all cultures, races, and genders into our society so that there is freedom for all. I once believed that this was executed without flaw. How could America go wrong? This is the best country in the world. To an extent I am still correct, this is the best country in the world in my opinion, but we do have flaws. Gender equality did not begin until the early 1900’s and race equality did not begin to evolve until the early 1960’s. With these physical differences comes the unethical medical treatment, unequal education, and numerous other rights that are granted to all citizens of this nation no matter gender or race. Some of the major things that stuck out to me in this class were the Global Gender Gap, the difference in treatment of women based on geography/traditions, and immeasurable amount of physical/psychological harm brought on by sex trafficking.
No matter where you are located on Earth studies show that women are often healthier than men. Coming from southeastern North Carolina I grew up in a perfect example of this statement. Most of my family friends and family members have experienced the loss of a loved male in their family at an early age, most often a much earlier age than the loss of a female loved one. Before I thought about this statistic it did not resignate in my mind why this was occurring; now though, I see why women are living longer than men throughout the world. My father is currently a carpenter, before that his profession was hog farming, and before that he was a marine/firefighter. All of these professions are physically demanding and take a tremendous toll on the body. Often these jobs require patrons to work 12-16 hour days with little time off. Easy to see why people that work jobs such as these will have a tendency to let their health be a minor concern in their daily lives, especially if they have a family. This was the case with my father, he chewed tobacco, smoked cigars, and a pipe for nearly 40 years, and he continues to drink like a sailor. His doctors told him that these were the reasons he is overweight, and has abnormally high blood pressure, they said if he continued he would surely pass away earlier than expected. Unfortunately for many families in America this is the case for the man of the house. Most jobs that require this type of lifestyle are performed by men who are only providing for a family. At least that has been the norm until recently. Not only do men engage in life threatening work, we take pleasure in activities that greatly increase likelihood of death. Such as skydiving, bungee jumping, base jumping, and wingsuit flying just to name a few. But why? For the adrenaline rush of course. Men often take pleasure in outdoing another man, perhaps it’s to satisfy the superiority complex. Whatever the reason, we will often ignore risks in all facets of life to be the most manly man possible.
Where are women treated best? Studies show that the three best places for a woman to live are in Finland, Iceland, and Norway. The worst places are Somalia, Chad, and Yemen. Unfortunately America is 20th on almost every list. These ratings were all based on access/ease of healthcare, political equality, and amount of money women earn for every dollar a man earns. Most of the problems with our subpar rating was the result of women still not making as much money as a man in the same workplace. Since the early 1920’s women have been pushing the government for gender equality, yet there are still some changes that need to happen before women will gain true equality with men. Unfortunately many of those changes are not government related. Instead they need to be made at the lowest levels. In some parts of America women do not believe they such be given every right as a man, some of them believe their place is in the home. Now this is a very small percentage of women, but it does show there are some women who are skeptical of themselves. The percentage of men at these same levels of society who do not respect the work ethic and capacity of a woman is much higher. Many men in rural areas of America believe a woman should not and could not take part in politics or be capable of running a company. This is far more prevelant though in third world countries where women are not even allowed to attend school past a young age because of their requirement to stay home and support the family while the boys attend school. For instance, in India women are treated as second rate members of society from birth, that is if they even make it that far. Many families in this country will not allow a female child to be born if they learn of the gender before its birth. They do not want to have a girl because of the requirement to pay bridewealth upon her marriage. These practices are ancient and have been so firmly ingrained into their society that there is little hope for changing them. Countries like this also see no harm in men treating women however they want, keeping no laws against rape or sexual abuse.
Cambodia and Sierra Leone, these two countries have almost no respect for a woman’s personal rights. After watching the film Half the Sky I was disgusted with the way a woman could be shunned for even attempting to prosecute a man that physically or psychologically abused them. I knew that rape was an atrocity and have always felt that is deserves a maximum punishment, but I did not know that anyone in the world would be capable of ignoring it or even worse punishing the victim rather than the rapist. In America rape is punishable by prison and even death if the incident results in the death of the victim. However, in Sierra Leone if a woman is raped or assaulted she if often forced to live with her disgust and often STI that she contracts after the rape for the rest of her life with no penalty for the perpetrator. Women live in fear that a man could rape them and get no punishment because the government will not enforce their laws. Cambodia is even worse. Brothels are almost as popular as Mcdonald’s are here in America, and they are supplied by girls who have not even reached menarche before being forced to live a life of misery. Prior to seeing the film I did not realize that people were capable of such crimes and I am still not even able to fathom what these girls have gone through. As a Christian man I believe men were created to protect women, that is the reason for our superior strength, not so we can overpower them. This is truly as horrific of a crime as I have ever known.
So what have I learned? I learned that men can do great things for the world when we put our knowledge to use. Marion Sims made monumental strides toward the treatment of women and the study of Gynecology. But just as we can take steps forward, we can take even bigger steps backwards. Many countries in the world do not appreciate the value of women and it is my hope that eventually the world will see how women really do hold up half the sky.

HR: all artifacts/handouts to date