Gender Inequality: To What Extent Does It Still Exist Today

1246 Words3 Pages

Gender Inequality: To What Extent Does it Still Exist Today?

Throughout history, women's roles in society have been different than those of men's. Women’s jobs were generally connected to their traditional roles of caring for the home, raising children, making clothes, and cooking food, while men were the breadwinners in the families. Women had been brought up to become mothers (as well as nurturers) while men were brought up to become entrepreneurs and businessmen. It was not until the 1950s that women began to protest and fight for equal rights. Since then, many have claimed that the disparities between women and men have drastically decreased, almost to the point that it is minimalistic. However, in today's society, although we would like to believe that women receive the same treatments that men do, that is not the case. Gender inequality is still evident in today's society. Women's voices are continuously being unheard. They fall victims to social stigmas, are stereotypically represented in advertisements, and are mistreated in professions that are generally dominated by men.
In an advanced society like that of Japan's, gender inequality is still evident. In October of 2012, a panel of eight leading women experts called on Chief Margareta Wahlstrm to “exert pressure for gender equality in disaster risk reduction” (Matsuoka 978). Since Japan experiences many earthquakes and tsunamis a year, having an efficient disaster risk reduction plan is extremely important. However, women's voices are unheard when it comes to discussing policies or making decisions related to the plan. The former Governor of Chiba Prefecture in Japan, Akiko Domoto had expressed that “a lot of actual work is being done by women, but [they are not] integ...

... middle of paper ...

...n can be quite different from the way men are treated in this profession.
In conclusion, to some extent, gender inequality is still quite evident in our society today. Although people may like to believe that discrimination and inequities based on gender do not exist anymore, the reality is, they do. Evidence from different parts of the world (in this case, Japan and Vietnam) show that women are treated differently simply because of their gender. Even right at home in the United States, surveys show that women are mistreated in professions (in this case, the legal profession) where males generally dominate. Gender inequality, although a long debated issue, has not changed as much as we might think it has. It is inherently evident in the society that we live in. Thus, to
Chou 5 better our society, we need to minimize this gender inequity-slowly, one step at a time.

Open Document