feminism - a false equality?
...the number of females compared to males working within politics is completely outnumbered. Where education is concerned a patriarchy also still exists. Even though there is a significant number more female than male teachers in schools there is a far greater number of academics which are male. Or possibly the male academics are just more recognized and praised by society then the female ones. Within the workplace there is evidence to prove that males outnumber females where higher job positions are concerned and males are still being paid more than females for performing the same occupations. “Since the Equal Pay Act was signed in 1963, the wage gap has been closing at a very slow rate. In 1963, women who worked full-time, year-round made 59 cents on average for every dollar earned by men. In 2002, women earned 77 cents to the dollar. That means that the wage gap has narrowed by a less than half a cent per year! Over the past 40 years, the real median earnings of women have fallen short by an estimated $523,000 -- more than half a million dollars.” (National Committee on Pay Equity, 2004) “Over the past quarter-century in America and other western societies, the change in the condition of women is unmistakable. Beginning with the decline of the birth rate by half, moving onto legalization of abortion, quadrupling of the percentage of babies born to unmarried women, doubling of the divorce rate, doubling of the percentage of married women in the paid labor force, and the mushrooming of day-care centers. These changes do amount to greater sexual equality but are by no means a foregone conclusion.” (Westhues, 1988). Even though there are more women in the workforce they do not have equal pay. Physical stature and strength are by now irrelevant to most jobs, in any of which a single, childless woman can and should be treated more or less the same as if she were a man. Apparently, so far as the sexual feelings between men and women are controlled, we can should be able to work along side one another on an equal basis. No special treatment is called for, nor should it be instilled where evaluation of work, fringe benefits or career path are concerned. However this is how society appears to be now there are still many cases of sexual harassment and discrimination within the workplace especially for young naïve women. I know this still happens as I myself have experienced it firsthand on a number of occasions. This is another example of the false equality and liberation, which we live. Liberal feminism was the main theme in most early feminism, in particular what is known as the “the first wave” of the women’s movement. The first major feminist text was The Vindication of the Rights of Women, written by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1972. The dominating ideology throughout this text was that “women should be entitled to the same rights and privileges as men on the grounds that they are “human beings”. Two things she was talking about in particular were the right to vote and access to education. These two topics are examples of feminist victories as women in today’s society still have the right to vote and the right to education and there are approximately equal numbers of females to males in schools and other Educational Institutions. In those two areas women have achieved two of the main ideals of first wave feminists. (Heywood, 2003, pg. 252). “Second wave” feminism was more focused on the unhappiness many women feel as they are confined to a life of domestic slavery as they are stereotyped as wanting a domestic existence to achieve security. However the second wave feminists believed this was just a myth to stop women from entering the workforce and politics and aimed to overthrow this way of thinking. Even though society has made some documented progress in this area this type of myth still very readily exists in western society. It is documented that there are more women in the workforce, it is still no where near equal to the number of men who dominate the workforce. Some oppressed women still feel as though they are condemned to a life of domestication, as they have had no educational training. This however is more common in an older generation of forty something women, where as the younger generation of women are more educated, showing some sort of progress where this issue is concerned. Even though women have now been given wider access to the public sphere of life, little has been done to change the private sector of life, many of the old stereotypes of a woman’s duties in the home still stand strong. (Heywood, 2003, pg. 253). “While women represent 50 per cent of the world population, they perform nearly two thirds of all working hours, receive one-tenth of world income and own less than 1 per cent of world property.” One may argue that this quote sums up the ideals of socialist feminism. They believe that the problem lies in the social and economic structure and only a social revolution could possibly begin to offer women any sort of possible chance at true liberation. The introduction of capitalism was the patriarchy’s feat in ceasing female land ownership as it was based on male private property ownership. This was named “the world historical defeat of the female sex”. (Heywood, 2003, pg. 255). Essentially fathers were only allowed by law to pass their private property onto their sons. This is can be seen as a great progress in today’s society as daughters and sons are usually left equal land rights in their parents wills. More and more females are achieving private land ownership, but again not nearly as frequently as men are. The UK socialist feminist, Juliet Mitchell suggested that one quarter of a woman’s main social function consists of being a sex object. (Heywood, 2003, pg. 257). This was stated in 1972 and one could very well say that in this area society has taken a step backwards. Women are now more than ever exploited as sexual objects within primarily the media. However as the media is all around us and consists of every type of communication it is impossible to escape these images. Examples of this could be drawn from places such as music videos of woman such as Britney Spears who wear sexually demeaning clothes and perform sexually explicate dance moves and the worst thing is that her music is supposed to be for young girls. This is hardly setting a good example. Her other primary m...