An exploration of sex and gender in American society

Sunday, July 22, 2012

The Future of Inequality

Our last unit for class is a lot about the future of inequality. After all of the readings and discussions we have had, I truly feel that is almost no hope for TOTAL equality for men and women. I do feel that there will definitely be progress, but I don't truly think that, at least in my lifetime, there will be real equality. I know that progress has been made, actually quite a bit of it, which gives me hope. I found a blog dedicated to the idea of the progress of equality for women. It talks a lot about Hilary Clinton and her beliefs on the issue. She explained that a lot of progress has been made, which actually gave me a lot of hope. In the blog it said,

She pointed to several other signs of progress:
  • Women are the majority of students in law schools
  • Women are the majority of students in college
  • Women were the majority of voters in 2004
  • The U.S. House of Representatives has a woman speaker (Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.)
  • Harvard University has a female president
I think that all of those things are a very big deal, but when compared to many other countries in the world, it is almost nothing. Other places have had female presidents, women have been able to vote for much longer, and women have more control over their bodies. Again, I think all of these things show progress, but we are still far behind and I think we will be for a long time. In the long run, I think all of these things are somewhat insignificant compared to what they could be. I'm  not saying the points aren't important, but at this time in history, it should be much more than just small statistics. 
The day we have a woman elected president, women are allowed total control over their bodies, and are paid equally for the same job as men, they will be equal. I believe that until then, nothing that happens really matters, it is just progress, but progress does not mean equality.  This class really opened my eyes and made really want equality, but also made me a little more negative than I had been. It feels like there is almost nothing that can be done because the equality is so deeply rooted that only time can change it. I feel that with as much time that has already gone by with so little changes, it will take even longer to see real equality. Like I said, I don't expect to see any real changes within my life. 

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