We must fight for gender equality

I have seen this issue happening in my own life. I’m the type of person who always likes to do new things and get out of my comfort zone. I like to play softball and I first started when I was in middle school. But I didn’t actually play softball there; it was baseball mixed with the boys. Some of them were telling me to get off the team – “You’re going to make us lose the game,” they’d say – and I told them no I wouldn’t. In our first game, it was my turn to bat and there was one person on first base and another one on second and I hit a home run. Then the boys who were telling me, “Oh, get off the team,” were now like, “Oh, you’re good.” We didn’t win, but the final score was that the other team had 4 points and we had 3. I first showed myself and then showed them that I can do whatever I set out to do no matter what others say.  

The society that we are living in now is becoming a judgmental society with its criticism of women, making them feel less equal, simply for the fact that they are women and shouldn’t do certain things. However, society is wrong about this because women have the capacity to do things the same or even better than men, and women deserve the opportunity to do it without being judged by society because they are capable of doing things that men do.

Since before the 19th century, women have been treated less equally and not given the right to do certain things. In the 19th century, women could not even go to school. It wasn’t until the end of that century when the number of women who attended schools was increasing, and at that time they had no right to vote. They simply had to do the things society told them to do, such as maintaining a home. Today in some places women have a little more rights and independence in what they do. Even though it is not like in the past, it doesn’t mean that they don’t still receive judgments and discrimination on what they do. In the USA, discrimination happens against women in a lot of places like in school with the girls playing sports; clothing; also women who are in jobs that mostly men do, such as science and engineering. Also, there are still some places where women don’t have a lot of rights and they just depend on the men economically because they are not paid equally. Women are more in charge of their home – cleaning, cooking – in places like Yemen, Honduras, Egypt, etc.

In an NBC news story by Elizabeth Chuck, she notes, “In certain STEM subsets, the proportion of women reporting discrimination was even higher: 78 percent of those who work in majority-male workplaces reported gender discrimination, followed by 74 percent of those working in computer jobs.” Half of the women in STEM have experienced gender discrimination at work, study finds (nbcnews.com) In this you can read how women have been treated less equally and have been discriminated at work because people think that they are not able to do the things simply for the fact that they are women. Sometimes women can do things much better than men, but they still treat women less equally because they think women are weak. This makes women feel like their work is not valuable, and it makes women go after promotions and high-paying jobs less often because they think they’re less qualified. However, we are strong enough and we can do whatever we propose to ourselves. 

The majority of the people say, “Oh no, they are not strong enough to do vehicle mechanism,” because the majority of the time they have just seen men doing it. What we have to do is start encouraging women to do things that mostly men are presumed to do, like vehicle technicians, engineering, science, etc. In reality, women are so smart and capable enough to do the same things that men do. Furthermore, society just has to stop making women feel hopeless and making them feel that they are not able to do what they want to do. Together we are stronger, and “women power” can stop the people who say that we are not capable of doing the same type of things that men do.  

Women should not be treated with less respect because they are women and society thinks that they are weaker than men because everything that a woman proposes to do she can do. For example, women won the right to vote, the right to serve alongside men in the military, the right to be paid equally, etc. We should allow everyone to do what they like and not make them feel that they can’t be able to do what they want and feel hopeless because of their gender. Everyone should be treated the same no matter their sexual gender, ethnicity, or skin color. Everyone deserves an opportunity to do what they want without being judged. Society has to start giving women the same opportunities and rights as men. And, they have to start this from the moment they are born because that is when they start growing and learning. What we want is to make everyone feel valuable, and never feel less equal. Women will then feel motivated to go after things that are typically for men.