Blog Post #9 - Gender Inequality

What I've learned about gender inequality and social construction of gender this week has been somewhat surprising. It has been said that our society does not exactly take gender inequality seriously.  I agree in some aspects.  Here in the U.S., gender inequality isn't so much of a problem, since women and men have pretty much the same rights.  Of course, there is still some inequality (such as different salaries, or gender specific jobs) but in my opinion, none of these inequalities actually invade's either genders' rights.  

Unfortunately that is not the case in other societies.  In my Gender Inequality   Assignment, I interviewed two women from different cultures:  Brazil and Pakistan.  My findings from these interviews weren't exactly surprising, since I expected there to be greater inequality (for religious reasons in Pakistan and for economic reasons in Brazil), however hearing about those things from someone who lived gender discrimination  and had basic rights actually stripped away from them...  was, for lack of better word, shocking.  Many sociologists agree that gender inequality is still a serious problem today, but that it is disappearing.  I agree i parts.  I think that gender discrimination is disappearing in more developed societies, and it may be getting better in less developed ones (Brazil has its first female president), however I don't think that less fortunate classes of these less developed countries can see a difference.  In my opinion, that happens because gender inequality never comes alone.  There isn't a society who discriminates just for the sake of doing such.  Gender discrimination comes with other problems, such as social and economic background, cultural background, and (more evidently) religious background.  Less developed societies are weaker social and economically, and therefore depend on labor intensive work.  For that reason, women may be considered less useful.  That is how a larger difference between men and women appeared in the first place.  When humans were hunters and gatherers, both men and women had similar roles, and therefore similar importance within society.  Once we started settling down, owning land, and becoming an agricultural society, labor intensive jobs (that could only be performed by men) became more important, and women's roles were reduced.  One can see that difference in indigenous hunter-gatherers societies.  

I agree with sociologists when they say that gender inequality is not a big problem in developed societies anymore.  In the U.S. both men and women have the same rights.  In may developed Europeans societies, both men and women have similar rights.  But if we stop and think, The U.S. and most European societies are economically stable, and although mostly christian, such societies do not censor free, critical thinking.  Less developed societies, such as Latin American, African and many Muslim societies, are not as fortunate.  These societies have history of being economically handicapped, and most of these societies rely on religion for social, cultural and political purposes.  For that reason, critical thinking is censored, and it becomes much easier to follow gender discrimination.  As previously stated there is a development being seen in these societies from outside, however, a poor percentage of such societies cannot tell the difference.  As I said before, gender inequality is becoming less of a problem in well developed societies, however in less developed ones the issue is moving forward slowly, mainly because, as previously mentioned, gender inequality never comes alone.  Rather, it comes with deeper underlying issues, such as religion, culture, social and economic background.