Federico Boyles Filipino

09126892708
Political Studies Department

Female Forward: Gender Equality and Political Participation

It is well-acknowledged that gender inequalities exist around the globe. Proof has
swelled and also mounted that the downgrading and mistreatment of the essential
needs, demands, positions, functions and roles, and potential of women were the
crucial considerations limiting their advancement in health, self-esteem, honor, value
and respect in the society in which they belong. From the very dawn of humanity,
women were branded as subordinates, hapless, intellectually poorer, and even
deliberately labeled as witches who use incantations from evil spirits. Further, people
also believed that womens roles were mothers and wives and are better suited in child
bearing and homemaking rather than involvement in the public arena like business,
higher education and politics. These realities placed women in an inferior situation and
eventually have adapted themselves to these placements and felt as if their adaptation
were their true nature.
But who would have thought that the young Margaret H. Thatcher who was born
in a small town and a daughter of a grocery store owner able to hold office and was
tagged as the Iron Lady and the first woman Prime Minister of United Kingdom? Who
would believe that Angela Merkel became the first woman in 2005 to hold the position of
Chancellor in Germany and is known today as the most powerful woman in the world?
Is it not Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma-the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 led
the nonviolent movement for human rights and the successful restoration of democracy
in Burma? In addition, is it not because of the campaign of the strong and determined
woman suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt that women now in the United States of
America are enjoying the freedom to vote and later be elected to any government
position they wanted? Therefore, nothing is impossible if women believe and assert
their rights.
We come now to question the traditional claim of idea that women are by nature
sentimental and frivolous and that they are naturally suited to be subordinate
companions of men. Examples mentioned above are forms of responses that women
are naturally rational and also capable of doing things what men believed only exclusive
to them. We are all created equal and therefore all of us are entitled to equal treatment
and have equal rights.
All inequalities that existed among citizens were just the result of an imperfect
social environment perpetuated and cultured the people. That is why we need to
deconstruct things that are wrongfully constructed in the society. We need to center the
decentered (referring to women) in order to achieve gender equality. Women and men
live different lives and have different careers but do not mean that women are only
confined on those roles and jobs tag for women alone. In addition, gender equality
means that men and women have equal footing in all walks of life and society must give
equal opportunities both of them; because differences in some ways dont mean that
one should be treated superior over the other. Womens rights are also human rights
and one of the ways of letting the world know about it is the idea that women need
other women to support each other regardless of their religion, race, ethnic origin,
class, and culture. Womens group all over the world must show the spirit of unity out of
diversity for all of them shared the same struggle of gender power relations operating in
different disguises in the society. They must show full strength, unity and cooperation
and not their isolated presence.
Moreover, gender equality not only means improving womens education and the
creation of a more egalitarian social structures that could correct inequalities, but on the
other hand, this means that one must understand and analyze the concept of politics
and power not in the locus of its operation but by nature as a process. Women did not
just enter into the national arena because they were always there since the beginning.
Their considered private struggles were not only counted and valued because of the
conventional notion that politics only occurs in the public realm. And so we need to
create complete political, social, and economic equality between women and men:
equality in education, labor protection, military participation, and reproductive rights.
Women should have the rights to choose whether to have children, as well as how
many to have and when, as against to the conventional idea that women dont have the
right to refuse because its their duty by nature and they are more treated as state
property rather than state citizen.
Finally, women must also be given the equal chance to become the engines of
change in their communities and for the nation as a whole. This maybe in the form of
political representations in all government posts- to vote and right to be voted, to petition
the government for redress of grievances, to form unions and lobby for their interests
without discrimination and with the assurance that their articulated demands will be
heard . Politics and decision making must not only be a male zone but should be
inclusive in nature- giving chances to all potential players, men or women.
In effect, if all these things will be realized, then real women empowerment is
attain. States must learn that to be blind to gender inequalities and do nothing
intentional to address them - leads to missed opportunities to enhance the lives and
potential of women as also prime movers and productive citizens. That can be
considered a poor stewardship. As Nira Yuval-Davis put in the introduction of her book
entitled Gender and Nation, If the woman does not want to be Mother, nation is on its
way to die. We must therefore construct and supply the right social environmental
conditions in socializing the young and in re-educating the old, all men and women
could become equal-because they could all become, in principle the same.