Gender Discrimination In Canada

In a male dominated society, it is challenging for a woman’s voice to be perceived, and easy for gender inequality to thrive. Women have come a long way from what they were and how they were treated, both in society and under the law, but the discrimination is still significant globally, even in places such as Canada. Under the law, all humans are the same, regardless of one’s gender, race, or background, but in society women still do not get the respect they deserve. No matter what the law or the Supreme Court of Canada states, women are still accustomed to gender discrimination in the places they work and deal with it against their coworkers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t just end there, because a majority of women faces gender discrimination

Although many may argue that sexual harassment has nothing to do with gender, but solely with an individual, the Supreme Court of Canada states the contrary. Under Canadian law, it is stated that sexual harassment falls under gender discrimination. The reason for this being that women are mainly the only ones subjected to this disrespect, some females are told to keep quiet instead of punishing the immoral, and due to the fact that women are held accountable for the crime. To start off, sexual harassment is a form of gender discrimination because women are more exposed to sexual exploitation than men. According to a survey conducted by Canadian Business, “nearly half of all women aged 35-54 (47%) reported being harassed” (What Canadians say about workplace sexual harassment), while only 9% of young men were harassed at work. This proves that this is gender discrimination because the gap between the numbers makes it evident that women are not treated with the same respect as men. This brings me to my next point, which is that when women are harassed by men, they are told by society and others to keep quiet and not speak up for themselves. For instance, a former undergraduate at Brock University in Ontario “was asked to keep quiet about a report that found her professor gave her alcohol and tried to force himself on her” (Sawa, Brock University tells student to keep quiet about sexual harassment finding).This is clearly gender discrimination, because in a way, this is siding with the male professor and not giving the female student the right to speak up. Nonetheless, gender discrimination is faced by women in forms of sexual harassment because when they speak up, about what is happening, they are somehow held accountable for the outcome. For example, a woman named Diana Janzen was continuously harassed and taunted with gender-based insults, at work by one of her male coworkers,