What I Learned in the Women and Gender Studies Class

My feelings upon the completion of this class is the feeling of accomplishment and motivation. I have learned so much from this course. Information that I never knew that existed in our country’s history. It makes me wonder why there is so much that we are not required to learn in history classes. It makes me proud to be a woman and know how far we have gone to get to where we are at today. We definitely do have a long way to go to have equal rights amongst all. I would take another women’s studies class if I had to take another electives class. This women’s studies class was insightful and kept me intrigued. My questions were answered. I learned much more than I would ever expect. I did have fears that this class was going to get heated,

This class has brought a lot of change to my views on the seemingly everlasting prevalence of sexism in America. Before taking women and writing this semester I had not realized how the stereotypes surrounding masculine identity have taken hold of much of the Greek life on college campuses, male-dominated/labor intensive jobs, as well as influencing a significant portion of the mainstream advertising and media that my peers and I consume on a daily basis. The readings that accompanied the course were clear, informative, and provided me with more insight to the challenges and inequality that women have had to confront in the past and continue to face in the present. This class taught me many things about the current

The first time that I ever took a woman’s and gender studies class was this semester, and before taking the course all information regarding gender, class, sex, language, identity, exile, agency, power, and race was based on personal experience. I have never formally learned about the proper terminologies that define the systems of oppression that I experienced in my everyday life. I feel that this information was vital to me because now that I can properly identify these problems I have the tools necessary to fix them. I also learned that may of those themes are universal and the way that women in particular suffer is the same across various cultures. Considering the theories, novels lectures, class discussions, and presentations I can say that I am walking away from this class with an ample amount of critical information. Most importantly are the themes that contributed to my new perception of the world and the role that I play in it. I have learned that gender and sex, contrary to popular belief, are not synonymous terms. This is important because society has a set of sex and gender roles that society says people are supposed to follow. While one is not given the opportunity to choose their sex, they are given the opportunity to choose what gender and behavioral expectations they uphold. This in turn means that gender is not assigned at birth; it is culturally mandated and therefore allows for change. Additionally, one of the most important terms that I learned in this

Men were the only people for many years to have jobs to maintain the family. I believe because women were so late in gaining equal rights they, till this day they are underpaid. It is unfair that both sexes can have the same qualifications and job and yet women still fall short in salary pay. Even when it comes to promotions bosses tend to choose men because it gives their company a better imagine, a more “manly” image. A man in front of a company is said to show more strength and business knowledge rather than a women. People tend to be somewhat skeptical of what a women is capable of handling in their jobs as well as in a everyday life situation. Women aren’t as involved in meetings are given any challenging tasks because women are seen as incapable to handle it. During the hiring process there tends an abundance of discrimination. Women are typically chosen for women-based jobs like cleaning or nursing. Men are typically chosen for manly jobs like business and construction. Women able to to the same jobs so it’s not like they don’t try, they just aren’t very likely in getting the job. When it comes to the hiring process sexism tends to be programmed into people 's brains.

Women are continually being overlooked for promotions and additional projects in the workplace for the same reasons. Employers assume that women with families have other obligations, so they won’t consider those women for additional responsibility. Because of this, women aren’t even given the opportunity of job advancement and the opportunity to compete with men in the workplace.

During the early history in America women were deprived of some of the many rights given to the male citizens. It has almost been a century since women were awarded the right to vote in the United States. It’s been half a century after the Equal Pay Act was established. “The Equal Pay act led to a reduction in the wage gap, but wage differences based on sex persist” (Korgen & Giraffe, 2015). Sadly, there is still a lot of prejudice towards women in the workplace. Bigotry towards women in the workplace has been dominant through the years. Many perceive women as being weak and not able to effectively provide their leadership duties in their workplaces due to their emotions (weaker sex). Positions in leadership are often given

2. I chose this test because I was interested in seeing what I thought about male/female roles.

Something I have learned this semester that is bigger than what has been presented was the realization of the women of this country, who had gone to work during World War II, while the men had gone to war. I never really knew how important this opportunity had been as a turning point for all women in regards to having the ability to prove they could contribute to society and to the patriotism of this country acknowledging the accomplishments of fulfilling the same jobs the men had been involved in.

Women are not a getting an opportunity to be promoted at the same rate as men in the workplace. Women at their profession are “finding themselves trapped in what’s called the marzipan layer in the corporation just below the senior management,” says Gray. The marzipan layer refers to how a woman is stuck under the highest-level in the corporation. “When a woman applies for a job she has excellent qualification and experience they will not hire the woman because the long-time clients will rather deal with a men employer than a female employer.” Another essential point that “Sex” clarifies is that women are not getting a fair chance to advance in the workplace. They are being fired from their jobs due to company cutbacks and reorganization while men in the same job and less sonority than the female are allow keep their job. “Sex” continues saying, “Women who worked in the company for several years receive exemplary reviews and an Employee of the Year Awards, yet when women applied for a

Promotion and pay gap are the main concerns in gender discrimination. Many studies in the past and present have shown that women do not get promoted as fast as

For myself in this course I was here to receive an education, after taking this class and understanding things more I now can say I’ve been here to claim my education. When I first thought about taking this, my impression was it was going to be the history of things not on current events and topics that were discussed. This course has opened my eyes and mind to another aspect of the world. Asserting myself and being heard and not just seen is something I have been working on with my counselor. Finding my inner voice and making my wishes heard, not letting others speak and decide what is best for me. This course teaches on how it was and is through several readings and with each reading I was able to have that “click” moment where I connected with the topic and it made it more real to me. Feminism is not just a word anymore it now has meaning to me.

The history of women’s rights shows how the federal government has failed to protect the bodily integrity of women and has shown how women have been denied the right to their own body. I found that through the beginning of United States history, women’s bodies were being treated horribly. As early as 1800 B.C. the Hammurabi Code states that the earliest recorded legal system in the west defines women’s bodies as men’s property and defines rape as a property problem. Meaning women were supposed to follow the status quo men had set in the 1800s.

Wal-Mart has been accused of discriminating against women. Women had been denied training and promotion opportunities that are offered to men. In addition women are underpaid. That is, men are paid more than women. According to Hoover’s handbook of American business, “in June 2001 a group of six current and former female Wal-Mart employees filed a sex discrimination lawsuit (seeking to represent up to 500,000 current and former Wal-Mart workers) against the company.”(Hoover’s Handbook, pg.907) The suit was filed because Wal- Mart failed to provide equal employment for women. In fact, there are over 70 percent of women working at Wal-Mart, but only a small amount of those women are managers. So, men are

“It’s not the profession that has the glass ceiling, someone has put it there” (Brower 162). Men need to change their attitudes and actions towards women in the workplace. They need to abandon believing that they are superior to women. Most men truly believe that a woman is simply not capable of doing as well of a job, or better, than a man can do. Therefore, they become extremely unsupportive of women and fail to recognize their accomplishments. They decline to give women raises, higher executive positions, more responsibility and overall respect. Many men have very subtle and low-key ways of showing their discrimination. These men know that it is unlawful to discriminate against women, so they do it ways that can have no reprimanding consequences. They will go out to lunch, dinner or drinks with the guys, claiming that it is just a time for male bonding. But the truth of the matter is that most business relationships develop over these “bonding times” therefore, leaving the female employees out of the equation (Brower 160). Other men are not so subtle. Male bosses often deliberately overlook a female employee for a promotion by making bogus credentials that only a male would be able to fulfill (Brower 162). Men aren’t planning to become pregnant and take maternity leave as often as a woman does. My mother has come into contact with both types of men. She has been scanned

“The wage gap has narrowed by more than one-third since 1960”(Hegewisch, 2010) and “the share of companies with female CEOs increased more than six-fold” (Warner, 2014) since 1997. As well as the truth that men and women’s earnings differ for many other reasons besides the presence of sexism. “Discrimination in labor market, in education/retiring programs, unequal societal norms at home and the constrained decisions men and women make about work and home issues” (Hegewisch, 2010) are also factors that can contribute to the unequal treatment of man and women in the workplace. Yet even with most of these variables removed women are still being paid less than men, sexually harassed in the workplace and hold very little managerial positions.