Gender and equality are two words that are not synonymous with one another. On the other hand, gender and inequality are two words that we hear together all too often. Through this blog, I want to analyze the ways that men and women are treated differently from one another. It is a common assumption that women are always the ones that are not equal to men. While this is true in many situations, there are times that women are superior to men. The situations I want to exploreare big ticket items like the job market and media portrayal as well as less exposed items like emotions and family relationships. However, before we delve into that I want to first look at how the idea of sex vs. gender and how gender roles develop at a young age.
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One of the biggest misconceptions is that sex and gender are one and the same. However, this is far from the truth. Sex is our anatomy or genitalia that determines if we are male or female. Gender is social and cultural attributes that contribute to our personality and image. It is societal norms and pressures that lead young people to automatically correlate their sex and gender as if they were one and the same.
Sex and gender are often meshed together because of gender roles and gender stereotypes. At a young age, most girls are dressed in pink and are given dolls or Barbie’s as toys. At the same young age, most boys are dressed in blue and are given trucks and Star Wars as toys. Before children are at an age when they can make decisions for themselves, gender is forced onto them based on their sex. While the color of clothing a child is dressed in or the toys they are given seem like trivial matters, they contribute to the greater issue at hand. Once young children recognize that they are a boy or girl they relate to the media and societal portrayal of their gender. Therefore, girls will see women on television as submissive, weak, and inferior. Meanwhile, boys will see men on television as strong, aggressive, and dominating. These personality traits are then embodied by boys and girls when they are young. As a young girl, my friends and I played hopscotch and did the monkey bars on the playground. On the other hand, young boys would play kickball and basketball, often coming in from recess drenched in sweat from their competitive endeavors. Our society as a whole needs to realize that children pick up societal cues and those cues are reflected in their actions based on their gender.
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These societal cues often come from parents. Studies have proven that parents are more likely to encourage their daughters to be safe while they encourage their sons to not be scared. Why should girls be scared? Why is that the boys should go down the fireman’s pole on a playground while the girls take the slide? Why do parents worry more about girls? These are questions for which I do not have answers. If I were to think positively, I could say parents care more about the health and safety of their daughters. However, I do not feel as though this is case. I believe parents care equally for all of their children. Yet, I also believe that parents do this because the media and society has ingrained in us that girls are weak and cannot handle as much as boys.
Another idea I want to address, is the reason that this concept is called gender inequality instead of sexual inequality. It is gender inequality because men and women are unequal based on the social and cultural stereotypes surrounding them, not their anatomy itself.
Gender inequality is an issue that has been faced for a long time and will continue to be faced for a long time. It takes decades to make small steps and slow improvements. These changes take so long because gender differences are instilled in us at such a young age. Once an idea is ingrained in us, it is hard to change. Gender inequality comes from individual discrimination and institutional discrimination. Since it is both individual and institutional, it will take laws from the government but it will also take open-minded individuals.
There is no simple solution to this issue, but the more we talk about it the more potential we have to create a change. However, changes will only come if both genders come together. As strong as we are as women and as strong as the feminist movement is right now, women cannot do this alone. The men still hold majority of the political and economic power in this country. In the meantime, I will continue to explore the ways in which gender inequality still affect our everyday lives.