For the past few weeks, we have been investigating on the changing roles of women in both America and China. Through the lessons, I realized that there isn’t much progress that was made through the years and that the women today are still deemed as second-classed citizens and are still receiving much stereotypes and discrimination.
Personally, as I have mentioned in class, it is pretty much impossible to change the views of the people on the discrimination that they have towards females. It is the traits in-born, such as where they get pregnant. This heavily affects their ability to work and contribute to the company as when they go on maternal leave, the company still has to pay them but yet they are no longer contributing to the company which is wasting the company’s resources. Hence, many companies refuse to employ females with this issue in mind thinking that employing female employees would put the company in the losing end.
Also, I feel that even the female themselves feel this as many refuse to marry or have children after marriage as they know that by getting pregnant or having babies would jeopardize their career as they would be unable to contribute actively during their pregnancy and that they have to take care of their children. Also, many resign after having babies which wastes the company’s time in training them as in the end they leave the company where if they employed a male employee, they would most probably not resign so the investment that they put into the employees would not go to waste.
To me, I believe that the only way to achieve gender equality is to change the whole nurturing process of the children since when their still babies. I feel that root cause of the gender inequality is caused by the fairy tales. I can still remember that the kings always get the bigger seat, the queen the smaller one. Servants are always female. The princesses are always waiting for their prince charming to rescue them from the wicked witch. Also, it is always the mother who takes care of the babies since young and the father works. All these creates a mentality in the kids since young that the male are of a superior being and that female are of a weaker being who needs the protection and help of the male.
By changing all these, hopefully the newer generations would no longer feel what most of us are feeling now, which is that male are of a superior being, and that they would start off in the society on equal footing.
I believe that Hillary Clinton is a strong modern day example that the female are slowly gaining power in the world, namely in the political sphere. However as we argued in class, she is successful mainly because of her husband’s economic power and political influence for being the former First Lady. However, she still is an example that female are able to be on equal footing with males. Also, another example would be the Germany Chancellor, Angela Merkel who with her in power, Germany remained unaffected by the euro zone crisis. This just shows how the female have the power and ability to achieve great feats but it is just the traditional stereotypes that are pretty much overshadowing their achievements.
Examples of successful females such as Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel send us a very strong sign that the female have the ability to do great things. I believe that this is merely the start, where more powerful females will come into the spotlight and do great things. Hillary is a role model to many of the female today, where it shows them just how it is possible for female to climb to great heights and achieve great feats and have great achievements. Hillary has proved to them that it is possible for the female to shine and even overtake males in their field.
However to me, I personally do not think that just by looking at the figures really shows us just how the roles of the female have changed. It is not like “Oh, now there’s 20% of female business women, their role has changed”. This merely shows that there are more female going into the work force but it does not show the change of roles of the female in the society. To me, I feel that the only way to see that the role of the female has changed is when we look at the family structure, of whether the father has the same power as the mother in the family, where they have an equal say in the family.
