Gender Equality : My Social Movement

Women have been fighting the fight for women’s rights for a long time. In fact, evidence can be traced back centuries of women’s desire for equality. Specifically, women have fought for their rights in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

“No Society treats its women as well as its men” is a quote from the United Nations Development Program when they were asked about the issue of gender inequality, which was featured in the Chicago Tribune News. Fifty years earlier, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which specified that everyone, regardless of gender, was entitled to the same rights and freedoms (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Fifty years later though, countries are still falling short of achieving the goal of gender equality. Many find it hard to believe that the United States is among the countries that have yet to fulfill the goal of achieving gender equality. Women began the fight for equality in 1848 by

Martin Luther King Jr. once said “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” However, I will not be silent. Sexism is a thing of the past, present, and future. Women have never been seen as equal to men. This idea and concept affect how women carry out their lives. Women may act different or speak different just based on society's thoughts about their gender. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and in today’s society it is clear that because of women’s perceived “weakness”, men now dominate women legally, physically and financially.

Although some of the worst employment discrimination was eliminated by the Civil Rights Act in 1964, many women continue to undergo unfair and unlawful discrimination in the workplace. Even though women have come a long way, they are still being discriminated against in certain fields of work. High-end jobs, most commonly large companies and medical fields, continue to discriminate against women even though they have the same job qualifications as men.

1869 Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton create the National Woman Suffrage Association. They intend that the institution would change the way that the masses perceive women in general. The main purpose of the group is to relate to the Constitution as one of the documents emphasizing that Congress should allow women to be provided with voting rights.

Women have been fighting the fight for women’s rights for a long time. In fact, evidence can be traced back centuries of women’s desire for equality. Specifically, women have fought for their rights in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Efforts of social justice are more prominent now than ever. From Black Lives Matter to the LGBTQ community, people are making their voices heard. In the case of Black Lives Matter, it could start with a handful of people deciding they want a better life. Or, a movement can have a long lineage of people fighting to make a difference. With American culture, we've experienced many changes. But women's rights have been a mainstay for a century. We have women from many backgrounds getting their words across in different ways. But each one embodies similar core principles. They look towards feminism to provide equality and unity.

Susan B Anthony once said, “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less." For decades now, our society has been dealing with gender inequality. Most men wouldn’t care about this issue because their lives aren’t being impacted by this. Women have been, and are still facing discrimination against their gender. The inequality negatively influences a woman’s life at home, school, and at work. It also limits the things that they are capable of doing and it violates their human rights. Compared to how it was back then, there has been a great amount of change in our society, but men are still preferred over women in most situations.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (2011) found that 98 % of Fortune 500 CEOs are men, and 97 % of them are White. Women are not able to enter the career fields such as science, politics and business. “Although America has opened its doors to the 50% population women college graduates entering the working world, it has locked its gates on promotions above the first management tier, except for the few that were able to knock the gates down”(Lana 1). Lana reveals that it is difficult for women to earn higher positions even both genders have similar opportunities to get jobs nowadays. Women have gained their independence from a male dominated society and are rising to become less dependent on their husbands for financial support. Feminism movements not only have helped to raise the confidence and self-esteem of women but also helped them to get a better life from advocating gender equality. Thus, this shows that gender equality have been improved over the years but there are still gender Inequality due to the gender stereotype in our society.

Gender discrimination in the United States are not tolerated. There are movements and group that helps the society fight gender discrimination. In today’s era, women are treated more equally to men compare to the past few decades. Although, until today there are still cases of gender discrimination.

Whenever one looks at historical social movements, one common element that one often will find is that one of their major goals is to push for equality. The women's suffrage movement, the African American Civil Rights movement and the current struggle that LGBT Americans have for greater acceptance within society are all examples of this seeking of equality. However, one question that should be asked is whether or not equality within society can be achieved and thus if such actions to increase equality are legitimate. This is not to question the historic discrimination that existed for many of those social movements that sought equality, but rather to examine the notion that equality can exist within a society at all and if so at what costs.

One of the areas of research that I find myself drawn to is social movements. There are a multitude of questions attached to this branch of sociology, as it is encompassing of an expansive and complex niche of history. In my academic career, I have addressed specific social movements through a socio-historic lens, oftentimes placing emphasis on the impact of media. I have looked at the roots and development of a movement, the conditions necessary for a successful one, and how they interact with each other. Throughout my college career to date, this has manifested itself in a number of papers on the women’s movement, most recently on the progression of the different “waves” of the movement throughout history. I paid particular focus to how each

Social movements have been prevalent since the beginning of time. Social movements are the coming together of individuals that seek to carry out, resist, or undo social change politically and socially. Social movements can be caused by cultural drifts, social disorganization, and social injustice. These movements are a response to social change, usually regarding the inequality and unjust treatment of people. Studying these movements sparks an interest in researchers because these observations make it easy to see how social movements develop and how society can be more inclusive and equal to all individuals in society. An example of a social movement is the women 's movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s when the role of women changed drastically from being a housewife to entering the paid workforce.

Such as in the work place companies create job requirements that standardly only fit men which disadvantages women from wanting to apply and then not offering them the position. For example, “in the HR technology start-up community that is rooted in Silicon Valley and London, institutional sexism rears its ugly head when men who look and fit the “part” are entrusted with millions of dollars while women have to bend over backwards to prove that they can manage a checkbook, won’t get pregnant during the launch of a company and will work long hours and stick with an idea long after the first round of funding hits the

As a child, I had always believed that there was only one difference between girls or boys, one of them has cooties, besides that I had always thought of them as equals. As I grew out of that young and venerable age, I slowly started to realize that even in first world countries, women were being oppressed. They weren’t seen as equals, simply because of their gender, not because of experience or knowledge, just because they are women.