Global Gender Gap
In many aspects of twenty-first century societal norms, we find disparities in equity of women to men. We find many times that women are receiving the short end of the stick across multiple aspects of life. For a world were civil governments have formed and basic human rights have been established, it baffles me to still find areas of the world that treat women inhumanly.
The global gender gap, in the sense of the term is describing the gap of equity from males to females. The United States of America has made many strides in the past through law and culture shift to create equal opportunity in the job market, and in major societal and governmental roles. Women’s suffrage marked a time in history where across the globe, people and nations were becoming increasingly aware of the “gap” and made changes as well. We have human trafficking and sex trafficking laws in place as well as voting rights and sanctions on corporations to provide equal pay. The US has also placed laws against child marriage, polygamy and polygyny, but in some rare instances and in religious cults, young women are still held against their will in these small circumstances, but, in fact, in 2017, this still occurs…KNOWINGLY . Not only that, but in areas around the world, specifically the central African region, as well as the middle east have major disparities across all aspects of daily life for women. They are in constant subordinate perception, being used as pawns/slaves by the oppressive men (Hinks, PP). Many cultures have advanced and have adopted societal changes, but many more cultures that we, as people of a first world country, have not adopted these changes. It is shown in the charts presented in the lecture Global Gender Gap presentation that these areas are plagued with this “gap”. According to the table presented in the Global gender gap Top Ten, the top 10 countries in this ranking were all in parts of northern Europe, and in nordic rooted territories such as Iceland. Inversely, the bottom 10 countries seemed to all be located in the middle east and the eastern countries of Africa (Global gender gap 1). This lead me to draw a personal correlation between a wide range of societal aspects including: education, child marriage, maternal mortality, physical security, polygyny etc., and seeing how those aspects compared to the locations effected. It then became very obvious that if there were problems in gender equality in one area, many times, that wasn’t the only area where women were being discriminated against.
The specific area of gender gap that I would like to focus on is the wage gap. This is an issue that continues to be a problem in the US and has been brought to global attention and been talked about for years now. There are many countries that have many other overarching issues, in my opinion, that contribute to gender in equality more than any individual practice does or could. Regardless, in my home country, the great United States of America, land of the free home of the brave, we still have gender wage gap issues? This has seemed to always blow my mind as to how we can preach equality amongst all, but don’t even have our own ducks in a row. According to the Global gender gap table, the United States ranks 26th overall in the area of “Economic participation and opportunity” (Global gender gap 2). That man not seem like a red flag at first, but I decided to dig deeper and find were the US stacked up in higher education equality. I was shocked to see the US ranked number 1. How could a country provide the highest level of equal opportunity for attaining an education rank 26th in economic opportunity? Granted there are many other countries on the list that rank as a 1 for equal education opportunity, but those countries rank much higher than the US in overall global ranking, as well as economic opportunity. The New York Times article,The Gender Pay Gap Is Largely Because of Motherhood, its is outlined how motherhood contributes greatly to the gender wage gap. Much of the wage gap begins during the young adult years where many women are likely to have children (Miller 1) . Because of this employers are inclined to pay less during maternity leave among others theorized reasons. The gap is a lot smaller when analyzing unmarried women. Taking motherhood into account, the article also makes the point that mothers take on more responsibility in their personal lives and this contributes to employers paying less in labor work as well as professional careers (Miller 2). The article does a pretty good job at outlining the point that women are affected by the wage gap across the job/career spectrum. In conclusion, social scientists state that in order for change in the social problem to happen, workplace and public policy needs to be implemented for men and women. Whether that be government subsidies, federal law mandates and sanctions on companies and employers, a change in the way things are done need to happen (Miller 3). Women cannot be forced into compartments of capitalistic America because of their decision to wed or to bare child.
Work Cited
Miller, Claire Cain. “The Gender Pay Gap Is Largely Because of Motherhood.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 May 2017. Web. 3 June 2017. <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html?emc=edit_th_20170517&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=55364616&_r=1>.
“Rankings.” Global Gender Gap Report 2016. World Economic Forum, n.d. Web. 2 June 2017. <http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/rankings/>.
Dr. Hinks Powerpoint presentation, Canvas, Global Gender Gap.
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