Feminism: An Examination of Gender Issues and Perceptions

In the United States of America, sexism has been very prominent for many years. Currently, both men and women can work, vote and even become the president if they so choose, but it was not always this way. Feminism first became a serious movement in 1848. On July 19th, 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, the first feminist convention was held. This convention, which lasted until July 20th 1884, was the first cry to end the sexism that plagued America. The convention began with Elizabeth Cady Stanton saying “We are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the consent of the governed—to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love.

” Many of these issues have now been solved, but some still believe that there is not gender equality.

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Many feminists believe that women still face many unfair problems such as the gender wage gap, and the very small amount of female politicians.

The gender wage gap is a very polarized issue as of late. Many people believe that society is sexist and that women only make 80 cents for every dollar a man makes. This however, is false. According to the AAUW a know feminist organization, the gender pay gap “refers to the median annual pay of all women who work full time and year-round, compared to the pay of a similar cohort of men.

” This however does not take into account several factors that cause this gap. Firstly, more men have college degrees for high paying jobs. In 2009, the US department of labor released a paper stating that the 23 cent wage gap can be almost entirely explained by choices that men and women make during their lives.

A study by Georgetown University shows the top five best and worst paying college majors and the percentage of men and women majoring in those fields. The highest paying college major is Petroleum Engineering 87% male. The second is Pharmaceutical Sciences 48% male. The third is Mathematics and Computer Sciences 67% male. The fourth is Aerospace Engineering 88% male. The fifth is Chemical engineering 72% male. As you can see four out of five of the highest paying college majors are dominated by men. This means that the majority of women are choosing to not be educated in high paying college majors, thus making it very hard to get a job in one of those fields without a degree. The lowest paying college major is Counseling and Psychology 74% female. The second is Early Childhood Education 97% female. The third is Theology and Religious Vocations 44% female. The fourth is Human Services and Community Organization 81% female. The fifth is Social Work 88% female. As you can see four out of five of the lowest paying college majors have a majority of women. This means that the majority of women choose to be educated in a low paying profession condemning them to make less money then the majority of men. Another study by the AAUW shows that if life choices such as education are factored in the wage gap shrinks to 6.6 cents. This small 6.6 cent gap can be explained by other factors such as the fact that men are more likely to work extended hours without notice and women tend to take more vacation days than men. As a closing point the main point of business is money, so if companies could get away with paying women less, why wouldn’t they hire only women?

The majority of people that have a problem with feminism want gender equality, but don’t like the way that feminism goes about it. Many people believe that feminism will go too far and eventually attempt to put women's rights above that of men’s. Many see feminism as hypocritical. If feminists wanted equality, why don’t they call themselves equalists? There have been many times feminists said something that was incredibly hateful.“The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men.” - Sharon Stone. This is just one of the many public figures who has said something discriminatory towards men. Lately more and more women run for president. The most recent case of this was in 2016 when Hillary Clinton tried and failed to win the Presidency. A lot of people said that Hillary lost because she was a women, but many others believe she only got as far as she did because she was a women. When Hillary ran for president all around the country citizens could be heard screaming cries of “we need a female leader” and “Elect women”. The problem lies in the hypocrisy of these statements. If politicians shouldn’t be held back by their gender, then neither should they be bolstered of it. Either way, no one should be elected because they are or aren't female.

Feminism started as the abused voicing their injustices, in a time of great oppression. Now most feminists just want to feel like a victim. Intelligence in the United States is no longer based off of education or a degree anymore, but off of how many different victim groups you belong to. I am not aloud to speak about oppression, because I am a straight white male. This means anything I say you can just discount as irrelevant, because I do not belong to any victim groups. I am aware that women face many problems that most men do not face such as rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment, but the way feminism goes about fixing these issues is wrong. Blaming the entirety of men for the actions of just a few is not right. In more than just a few instances, feminism has gone too far.