Gender Discrimination Samples for Students †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Gender Discrimination. Answer: Transcript Gender discrimination is a concept that throws light on the fact that men and women are not equal. This inequality expands to the arenas of their roles, responsibilities, abilities, rights and duties etc. Traditional gender roles are explicitly defined and extremely prevalent in our society today. These discriminations have been existing in our culture since a long time and have been continuing to have an adverse impact on our society since time immemorial. In our existing societal set up, it has been noticed that women are expected to fulfill roles specializing in the domestic sphere whereas mens roles are tied strictly to public sphere. This has led to drastically different lifestyles of women and men in the society and often women find themselves at a grave disadvantage in the society. According to UNDPs gender inequality index Egypt ranked 111th out of 148 countries in all (United Nations development program, 2016). The overall calculated score of Egypts inequality index is 0.59 while the perfect score would be 1.0. This is evidence enough to determine the high level of inequality faced by the women of the country. Gender inequality can be seen in different spheres of life specifically education, political participation, work opportunities and even their reproductive health. It has been noticed that most women fail to complete their secondary education. In fact, the literacy rates alone show a discrepancy among young adults with 93.2% male being perfectly literate in comparison to 86.5% women. The scenario is much worse for elders of the house and only 15% of household heads were literate as per the Human development report in 2006 (Ali, 2014). In terms of unemployment, working women are not just unappreciated but rather they are looked down upon. As of 2012, only 24.2% of the total workforce in the country were women. The change is becoming slowly evident especially in the upper middle class but they still have a long way to go. Only 13.4% women between the ages of 15 and 29 are either working or actively seeking jobs. One of the most disturbing elements of gender discrimination is gender based violence. Sexual harassment, domestic violence and sexual violence is increasing day by day. This causes both physical as well as mental trauma in the victim and has been a major cause behind lack of confidence and fear among women. Most incidents are not even reported. Despite that a recent UN survey shows that 99.3% of the women have face sexual harassment of some sort in their lives. These facts are deeply disturbing and the impact that such incidences have on a women are highly underrated. A lot of women have been able to recall their sexual harassment incidents even years after their occurrence. This only goes to show how deeply it impacts women. Sexual violence cases are barely reported because of the immense social stigma attached to the issue. Most rape victims are not even bothered to bring to the authorities while some are immediately prosecuted before they can even complain or recover from the incidence. More often than not women rape is followed by honor killing and it prevents women from seeking help on the matter. Despite increasing awareness of the issue, it has been reported that over 20000 women are raped annually and this number is catastrophic. Domestic violence is another such issue which is barely ever brought to notice. The number of reported and unreported cases of wives being beaten by their husbands and violence practiced on women by their current or previous husbands has been increasing by the day. The men practice this violence under the shadow of their misinformed Islamic culture. The worst that the women go through is female genital mutilation or female circumcision (Gallagher, 2016). This includes the procedure of removing female genitalia. This practice of FGM is surprisingly common in Egypt with an estimated 90-97% of women having gone through a similar procedure in their lifespans. To conclude, I wish to state that gender discrimination is growing at an unnerving rate. This hampers the growth of the society in which we live. More than that, it has been increasing cases of depression and suicide among women (Kira, 2015). In this era of globalization, increasing technology and awareness, the beginning has to be made with treating our women well and giving them the respect that they deserve. Gender discrimination must be addressed actively and the basis of which should be formed at school level. The younger generation must gain awareness and take active responsibility to tackle the issue from its roots. References United Nations, 2016, Human development reports, https://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII, retrieved on 3 November, 2017. Kira, Ibrahim A., et al. "Are the Negative Mental Health Effects of Gender Discrimination (GD) Salient across Cultures? Does Self-Esteem Mediate These Effects: GD as a Continuous Traumatic Stress and the Pathways to Its Negative Dynamics?"Psychology6.01 (2015): 93. Ali, Jala, et al. "Gender gap in basic education in Egypt." (2014). Gallagher, Carolyn A., and Raymond Arthur Smith. "Issue Brief: Discrimination and Women/Gender Issues." (2016).