Nur Dini Binte Mohamed Eunos, 405

GENDER
TOPICS TESTED:
1. Gender roles
2. Feminism
3. Equality
GENDER EQUALITY
Essential questions:
Is gender equality still prevalent in all parts of the world?
Is gender equality still relevant in todays society?

Importance of Gender Equality

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of
reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.
- Kofi Annan

first and foremost, a human right

Women entitled to live in dignity and in freedom from want and from fear

Empowering women - indispensable tool for advancing development and reducing

poverty
Empowered women contribute to the health and productivity of whole families
and communities and to improved prospects for the next generation.
The importance of gender equality is underscored by its inclusion as one of the
eight Millennium Development Goals

Gender equality is acknowledged as being a key to achieving the other seven

goals
GENDER INEQUALITY
Definition of gender inequality:

unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals based on their gender

arises from:
differences in socially constructed gender roles
biologically through chromosomes, brain structure, and hormonal differences.

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Gender discrimination against women:
Study after study confirms that even when you control for variables like profession,
education, hours worked, age, marital status, and children, men still are compensated
substantially more - even in professions, like nursing, dominated by women. No wonder
there's a gender gap.
- Dee Dee Myers

Human rights of women throughout Middle East and North Africa are systematically
denied by each of the countries in the region
Despite the diversity of their political systems
Governments routinely suppress civil society
Restricting freedom of press, expressions and assembly
Adversely affect both men and women
But women are subject to a host of additional gender-specific human rights
violations
Family, penal and citizenship laws throughout the region relegate the women to a
subordinate status compared to their male counterparts
Impacts:
Legal discrimination undermines womens full personhood and equal
participation in society
Puts women at an increased risk for violence
Family matters:
In countries as diverse as Iran, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia
Governed by religion-based personal status codes
Many of these laws treat women essentially as legal minors under the eternal
guardianship of their male family members
Family decision-making is thought to be the exclusive domain of men, who enjoy
by default the legal status of head of the household
These notions are supported by family courts in the region that often reinforce
the primacy of male decision-making power
Extreme examples of gender inequality:
1. Forbidden from driving
o Saudi Arabia: women arent allowed to drive, or even ride bikes, and men
arent allowed to drive women theyre not closely related to.
o Dilemma: how to get 367,000 girls to school on buses that can only be
driven by men.
o If no men are allowed to come in contact with schoolgirls, and women
arent allowed to drive, who will be driving the school buses?
o MOE is currently recruiting Al-Ameen/ trustworthy men for this initiative.
o Counter: Saudi Arabias religious police infamously broke the trust of 15
girls parents in 2002 when a girls school was on fire.
o police forbade them from leaving the building,
o in some cases, beat them to keep them from leaving b/c the girls heads
werent properly veiled.
o girls all died in the fire.
2. Clothing requirements
o 2001: militant group called Lashkar-e-Jabar demanded that:
o 1. Muslim women in Kashmir wear burqas or risk being attacked
Burqas = head to toe garments that cover their clothes
Men threw acid in the faces of two women for not covering up in
public
o Hindu and Sikh women dress so as to identify themselves

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o 2. Hindu women should wear a bindi (the traditional colored dot) on their
foreheads
o 3. Sikh women should cover their heads with saffron-colored cloth
3. Right to divorce
o Many countries: wives can divorce their spouses easily (often
instantaneously through oral repudiation)
o Middle East: wives access to divorce is often extremely limited
o frequently confront near insurmountable legal and financial obstacles
Lebanon: battered women cannot file for divorce on the basis of
abuse w/o the testimony of an eyewitness
A medical certificate from a doctor documenting physical abuse is
simply not good enough
Although women in Egypt can now legally initiate a divorce without
cause
they must agree to renounce all rights to the couples finances &
repay their dowries.
Essentially, they have to buy their freedom
Israel: man must grant his wife a get, a Jewish divorce writ that can
only be given by a man to his wife never the other way around.
4. Access to Education
o many areas of Afghanistan: girls often taken out of school when they hit
puberty
o Why?
Cultural beliefs: reluctance to send girls and boys to the same
school after third grade
perceived and real security threats related to girls walking to
school and attending classes all contribute
slowing down the enrollment of girls in schools
lack of female teachers, who are fundamental in a country where
girls cannot be taught by a man after a certain age
o While progress has been made since the fall of the Taliban
o women are still struggling to see their rights fulfilled
o Low literacy rates among young Afghan women: 18% of women between
15 and 24 can read
o total number of children enrolled in primary schools is increasing
tremendously but % of female students is not.
5. Female infanticide
o Chinas one child policy has heightened the disdain for female infants
abortion, neglect, abandonment, and infanticide have been known
to occur to female infants
o India: Similarly, no. of girls born and surviving is significantly less
compared with no. of boys
due to the disproportionate numbers of female fetuses being
aborted
baby girls deliberately neglected and left to die.
normal ratio of births should be 950 girls for every 1000 boys
however in some regions the number is as low as 300

Yet discrimination against women and girls - including gender-based violence, economic
discrimination,reproductive health inequities, and harmful traditional practices - remains the
most pervasive and persistent form of inequality. Women and girls bear enormous hardship
during and after humanitarian emergencies, especially armed conflicts. For more than 30
years, the Fund has been in the forefront of advocating for women, promoting legal and
policy reforms and gender-sensitive data collection, and supporting projects that improve
women's health and expand their choices in life.

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FA QUESTION: Gender equality is a myth. Do you agree?
We dream of a world where gender does not matter. We hope for a world where everybody
receives the same opportunities, with no one being denied access to political, economic and
social rights or deprived of them because of their sex. Unfortunately, this Utopia where men
and women enjoy full equality is an idealistic notion and we wake up to the cold, harsh reality
that gender discrimination does occur. Gender violence is still prevalent in countries like
Afghanistan and recently, a hot topic is (Taliban girl). Thus, achieving full gender equality in a
meaningful and realistic sense is a challenge due to the notions of masculinity and feminity as
well as traditional stereotypes about gender roles.

Achieving gender equality is difficult and thus might be seen as a myth to some due to the
complexity of the issue. Historically, females have been typecast as inferior and
submissive. Traditional gender roles stem from this where men are supposed to be dominant
and women are so inferior that they are not considered human beings. For example, in Middle
Eastern countries, in which a male chauvinistic society presides, gender-based violence is still
inflicted on women. Women are abused and raped as they are seen as weak and not worthy of
respect. To travel to another country, women in Afghanistan have to get a written slip of
permission from their husbands or any male relative. As illustrated in the example above,
cultural factors underpin social norms. Thus, gender inequality is a difficult issue to address
because it involves the institutionalised nature of womens disadvantage. Changing the
cultural, traditional and religious beliefs that typecast women as the inferior sex is a rather
large hurdle to tackle.

However, some countries are close to attaining full gender equality, demonstrating how
gender inequality is a challenge that is possible to overcome.

FEMINISM:
Definition:

Describes the political, cultural and economic movement aimed at establishing equal
rights and legal protection
Involves political, cultural and sociological theories as philosophies are concerned
with issues of gender differences
NOT trying to make women more powerful than men, just on par with men (LINK TO
GENDER EQUALITY)

GENDER ROLES
Essential Questions:
If social expectations and pressure are necessary facts of life and are acknowledged to be
unhealthy, what are healthy ways to counter such pressure?

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Why is there a need to learn how to learn with these social roles and a gendered world? Could
raising children be one such way of learning to deal with social roles and a gendered world?
Does dual gender parenting erode a persons sense of self and personal identity?
Could dual gender parenting be empowering?
Should children be socialised into gender roles at an early age?
Advantages and disadvantages of a single-sex school?
Corporate entities:
To what extent are toy companies such as Mattel responsible for promoting and perpetuating
unhealthy stereotypes?
Should corporate entities that target children be encouraged to be more responsive to social
concerns?