“Damn! You’re so hot, so cute and must be smart too!” are the exact words I heard muttered last Friday while volunteering at a hospital after a 20 something and moderately large man asked me if I was a nurse. Throughout the time I was helping him, he continued to make disrespectful remarks. As soon as I helped this man with what he needed, I speed walked out of the room hot-faced, feeling scared and very disrespected and unsafe. Ask any woman/girl above the age of 12, and they will have had a similar experience. It is situations like this that show that women really do need to be respected more in our world. Although women do not usually earn as much as men in most societies, that is due in large measure to lifestyle and natural inclinations that they have selected for themselves. However, women do deserve much more respect.
To start, the $0.33 wage gap, according to an American Enterprise Institute promotional video, is simply due to lifestyle choices and natural inclinations that women have selected for themselves. It is clear that they are correct after examining these natural inclinations and lifestyle choices. Many women do choose to have children. Factoring in maternity leave and just leave due to choice, women generally take around 6 months per child before returning to the workforce. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s world factbook, women in the US have three children on average. This is only a year and a half, but just imagine all of the other factors. According to Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University professor, men do tend to work harder after they have children whereas women tend to work less after they have children. Obviously, those who work harder will get paid more. She says that women psychologically do not like competition as much as men and therefore do not compete as hard for promotions. Because women have this temporal flexibility they do not value income growth as much as men and therefore, they do not receive this income growth.
Although women do not need as much change in terms of pay, they need lots of change in the respect that they receive. According to Emma Watson in her “Gender Equality is Your Issue Too” speech, 15.5 million girls will be married as children in the next 16 years. This means that 15.5 million girls will not be given the respect to marry when their minds are completely developed and they are capable of making their own choices. She also says that rural African girls will not get a secondary education until 2086. In fact, according to the World Bank, 31 million girls are not in school just today. Not only are girls denied their own choices for education and marriage, they are disrespected from the moment they are born in some countries. For example, in India, people would abort their own babies if they found out they were going to have a girl. This became so widespread, that the male to female ratio was off and scanning for gender had to be made illegal. How fair do you think it is for girls to be disrespected that much? To be disrespected even before they enter this world? It is much better in the US, however, many women are still disrespected here. They are almost always talked down to, objectified, and have lower expectations to be met than their male counterparts. Here, for example, men show off how many girls they have “gotten with.” If a girl did that, she would be labeled as a slut and seen as less than other girls. It is for these reasons that women are not given the same deserved respect than men receive.
In conclusion, feminism is a valid and important cause. Women do need and deserve the same respect as men. However, using the wage gap as a measure for inequality is wrong for the reason that it can be logically explained. The world needs change, and it needs it now, for I do not ever want my daughters and granddaughters to feel the way I did at the hospital last Friday.
