Everybody's Issue

The theory of political, economic, and social equality of the sexes; this is the definition of gender equality. It is 2015 and America still has an enormous problem with gender equality. Women and men are placed in unrealistic and unfair gender stereotypes, and there is still not equal pay among the sexes. We need to stop this. We should think of gender as a spectrum not two different opposing ideals (Watson).  Once we have true gender equality both sexes will be able to express themselves as they truly are. We will be set free from the cages that social media and ourselves put on each other. Women and men will be fully rewarded for their hard work and will provide a better life for themselves and their family. Like Edmund Burke once said, “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” So ask yourselves; “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”(qtd. by Watson). It is our job to end gender inequality. Even though some people think that it is not problematic, this problem is very real and consequential in our society .
     Economically men and women are treated very differently in the workplace. For example the Workplace Gender Equality Agency did a study in May 2015 and discovered that in the time span of a week men make on average $284.20 more than women in their department (Gender pay gap statistics ). This is a 17.9% pay gap between men and women (Gender pay gap statistics ). Nobody wants to give up $300 a week so why do we expect  women to do that? Obviously there is a huge gap weekly but how about yearly? To calculate the amount of money men make compared to women we created a equal pay day. Equal pay day represents the amount of time after a year it takes a woman to make the same amount of money men make that year. Equal pay day was 65 days after the new year(Gender pay gap statistics ). This means that it took women an average of 1 year and 65 days to make the same amount of money a man makes in 1 year. Not only do women make less money per year, but they make less money per dollar. On average men make 1 dollar for every 77 cents a woman makes (Gender pay gap statistics ). It is obvious that America and the rest of the world has gender inequality. Remember that when a baby girl is born they are already set up to fail. Women have less of a chance for promotions and make less money than men just because of their gender. It is obvious that there is gender inequality in the workplace. And that this mostly affects women, so naturally men don’t  care. But men should care because gender equality affects them as well. On a social level both sexes have to deal with untrue gender stereotypes.
Harsh and unrealistic stereotypes of both sexes have serious consequences. People might say that there are more important things to care about, but gender inequality is everybody's issue. Because to date I have seen men's roles as a father’s be less valued by society. Even though they are essential to growing up (Watson). We all need to care about social equality because young men suffering from mental illness, don’t think that they are able to for help because it makes them less of a man or unmanly. In fact, suicide is the leading killer of men in the UK, ages 20-49 eclipsing car accidents, cancer, and coronary heart disease (Watson). Men have been made insecure and fragile by their distorted sense of what male success consists of. If we stop gender stereotypes for men, than gender stereotypes for women will naturally go away. If men don’t have to be aggressive and insensitive,  women won’t have to be submissive and emotional. Both men and women should be proud to be strong, and be proud to be weak. We will be able to live in a society where women can become the next great engineers, and men can be amazing nurses or caregivers. We will create a society where women won’t be seen as objects, but as humans. Men won’t have to be strong constantly and won’t have to bear all responsibility of providing for a family. If we no longer have social inequality,  life will be better for both sexes.  We will finally be living in a World that our grandparents imagined, our parents tried for, and we deserve.
So how can we affect change in our society?  We can start by educating. Most kids and adults don’t realize that we have a gender equality problem. The best way to affect change is be the change. Once kids and adults know the problem at hand, we will be able to organize plans and find solutions. But one other step to this is necessary,  we need everybody to help. In 1997 Hillary clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about gender equality. What stuck out to me the most is that less than 30% of the audience was male (Watson). So how do we expect to affect change when only half of the population feels welcome to participate in the conversation. So men this is your chance to help your future daughters, and sisters to become liberated from inequality. It will also help your sons be vulnerable and human too. Once everybody is included in  the conversation, there will be no telling what we will be able to accomplish. If we do nothing it will take 75 years until women can expect to be paid the same amount for the same work (Watson). If we do nothing, men will be held to unfair standards that don't truly let them be who they are.We don’t have the option to do nothing because millions of people are suffering from gender discrimination everyday.  We need to have gender equality to unify the World and make it a better place. A world where we are all proud to live in. A world where we want to raise our kids. A world with gender equality.