I am sure you are all thinking (especially the men), does gender inequality still exist especially since we have policies and laws that protect women from gender discrimination? Girls are allowed the same education as men, women have the same employment opportunities as men, women are paid the same salary as men, women are allowed to vote and contest for political offices in government. What more do these women want? Sadly, gender inequality still exists, there are traces of it everywhere and it is the little things that prick the most.
Last week I overheard a discussion between two friends, a male and a female. The male told the female that he would give his son the freedom to experience life, make decisions, his son would be “street-wise” and his daughter would not have to experience life the way his son would, since girls need to be monitored. It was then I understood the importance of promoting feminist values. Why should daughters be tamed or caged under the pseudo of protection and sons be free to experience life. The son must be street-wise but the daughter “street-foolish”?
In our society today, we train our children differently. Boys are allowed to have sex with more than one girl; boys see themselves as soldiers of a sexual revolution. It is a display of their masculinity and yet we blame girls for the demeaning value of virginity, forgetting it takes two to tango. Virginity should apply to both boys and girls. Girls should be domesticated, they should and must learn how to cook but it is a blessing when a boy cooks. Are girls born with the cooking gene? Cooking is act of preparing what needs to be eaten to nourish a person’s body. We do a great injustice to the male if we only teach the female the act of nourishing oneself.
If a girl is seen going into a hotel at night, she is immediately conceived as a sexual worker and as we all know the society frowns at such people, why is the attention on the supply and not on the demand of sexual services? If men could get pregnant, would abortion be illegal? If a woman leaves her lawful husband to live with another man she is inevitably a prostitute, if a man does this, it does not seem wrong because women are used to the unreasonable excuse that he is a man. Is the rightness and wrongness of actions gender- based?
A woman of a particular age who remains unmarried gradually loses her worth in the society but an unmarried man hasn’t just come around to make his pick. Are men wonderful rewards holding themselves back till women do something to deserve them? If a woman is too strong, she is strident, if a man is too strong, he is a good man. It is acceptable for a woman to depend on a man for everything, but a man would feel deprived of strength and vigor if he depends on a woman for everything. Why should we teach females to shrink themselves and celebrate the male ego?
Men and women are biologically different, the males have testosterone, an average male has a taller seketal structure resulting in heavier and larger bones. The human male physique and genital is different form the human female. Human males also have larger brains than females, however larger here does not mean smarter. IQ tests and aptitude tests show no gender bias in overall intelligence. Therefore the mind is not sex-typed. We should pay attention to the neglected female concerns.
If men would cringe at the thought of graduating with a “spinster of arts” or “spinster of science” degree then gender inequality still exist. We should all dare to be feminists.
With love,
Poison Ivy
