Are Men and Women Equal?

6 Comments January 30, 2006 1915 Views

« Next Fil-American Idol? Byahe Tayo! »

The matter of equality between women and men has however became an obsolete and even taboo subject. This issue is now part of the social conversations, listed among subjects like “Corruption” or “Global Warming” or “Money doesn’t bring happiness”? and so on. The subject has been debated so frequently throughout the passing years, that now it is only a matter of principle, serving as subject of conversation among the ones who feel like uttering their opinions. That’s pretty much of what I’m going to do next.

First of all, I find it imperative to emphasize the characteristics that make women and men so different. It’s more than obvious that by nature’s default, women and men were given different features. In fact, people are having their own particularities that make each individual unique. Only known facts so far, but what I need to say is that these natural differences can’t be allowed to be the reason of social discrimination. For example, it’s normal for a woman not to be wanted as a carpenter, as women have less physical strength.
But if the woman not only that she proves the opposite, but she also proves to be talented for the job, I can’t see any reason for her not to become a carpenter. This kind of discriminations can’t be allowed when it comes to natural differences between men and women.

And if the education system has become more and more efficient, providing women the opportunity to learn and specialize in many fields, statistics still say that the number of excellent specialists is smaller for women than for men. But we must ask ourselves why this is happening? Could women be less native gifted? Or could it be the social pressure that doesn’t allow them to express themselves? Or may the statistics research have been made by the men who do not wish to lose their supremacy? It’s difficult to answer. And even if women have better scores when it comes to school, men are always ranked better and have a higher prestige. For example, a male engineer is often more appreciated than a female engineer. This is happening because people are guided by stereotype thinking when judging men and women. It’s true that stereotype thinking will always be present and will always make the mass of people an easy target for manipulation, but when it comes to the relation men and women, this way of thinking does nothing but putting the image of women in society in dark shadow. This is obviously wrong!

So, work is still discriminating for the two sexes, even if the discrimination is not an official one. For example, if the level of women’s working activity has increased since 1970, they are still the victims of unemployment, of bad jobs, more than men are anyway. These inequalities are also present in the private life, as women are the victims of a pervert social progress. For example, even if women are more and more independent in their couple life, there are more and more single and divorced women due to that. Why? Well, there are many reasons. One of them could be the fact that working women don’t have time for a successful private life. Another reason could be the fact that some men feel intimidated by some women’s qualities and can’t stand being inferior to them. At the same time there is a fragile compatibility between motherhood and career and the family policies that exist encourage women to give up working for a domestic way of living. This way, women find themselves forced to give up their independence.

But even a family life without having children means compromise to women. It’s natural for the women who have a full-time job not to have the strength to do all that housewives do. The woman’s duties at home are more numerous than the men’s, but at the same time, the equality between women and men force them to work the same time and way at their jobs. This situation is due to the fact that there are still a lot of men who think in the terms of the patriarchate system.

There are also men who treat women socially right, but this situation isn’t quite the happiest, as they somehow forget their manners or act thinking something like: “If we’re equal and we do our own laundry, why should I hold her coat or open the door for her?!!? This is also an abnormal situation. While in the first case the problem was that women were equal to men only when it came to work, in the second one the issue is about the equality that takes away women’s right of being respected as women.

In conclusion, what the feminist movements have achieved is not all good. It’s obvious that they didn’t only establish the normal equality between the sexes, but also the abnormal one; the one that gives women a lot of issues to solve.

taken from Softpedia.com