Morton !

Alina Morton

Writing for College Section 3

Mr. Smith

29 March 2018

The Missing 20%

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION

Hillary Clinton once plead, “To all the little girls watching, never doubt that you

are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world.”

Though empowering and extremely insightful, it’s hard for women to see their potential

when a wall of inequality stands in their way. Women have fought long and hard, hoisting

each other on their backs to climb and overcome the wall of inequality presented in front

of them. A recent statistic from the American Association of University Women finds

that, “In 2015, women working full time in the United States typically were paid just 80

percent of what men were paid, a gap of 20 percent” (AAUW). It’s 2018, and women are

still searching for the missing 20%. The wall is still there and the problem still stands:

Women need equality.

Though the ‘inequality wall’ is a somewhat satirical, light-hearted metaphor, the

burden of inequality cannot be summed up in a concise analogy. Those with the privilege

and the ability to live in ignorance have no idea what women are subjected to. So how is

our gender biased society affecting women? The answer can be found in the wage gap,

gender roles, and oppressive laws.

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SECTION 2: THE WAGE GAP

Women are in desperate need of equal pay and job opportunities. Women are still

subjected to the sexist wage gap, which offers women less pay in comparison to their

male counterpart. A commonly used expression is that women make 70 cents to every

man’s dollar, but the expression does not take into account the fact that the severity of the

gap depends on the job. When discussing pay inequity, Kevin Miller, a journalist from the

AAUW, writes:

“Claudia Goldin, a labor economist at Harvard, has crunched the numbers

and found that the gap persists for identical jobs, even after controlling for

hours, education, race and age. Female doctors and surgeons, for example,

earn 71 percent of what their male colleagues make, while female

financial specialists are paid just 66 percent as much as comparable

men.”

The gender pay gap affects all jobs, but the size of it correlates solely with the type of job

the person has. Though minimum wage jobs report to have the smallest gap, so do higher

paying jobs, leaving everything gray in-between. The gap’s rigor is extremely random

and has no real system, the only system it does have is unequally paying women.

Something women and the economy have in common: They both do not benefit

from this systemic pay discrimination. Each year without equal pay costs the U.S

economy trillions of dollars. So if people fail to empathize with the wage inequality
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women face, maybe seeing how it affects their economy will ruffle some feathers. In an

article from the Institute For Women’s Policy, the author writes,

At the wage gap’s slow pace of progression, women are estimated to receive equal

pay by the year 2059. Women of color, however, will have to wait another hundred years

or so. Miller writes: “Among full-time workers in 2015, Hispanic and Latina, African

American, American Indian, and Native Hawaiian and other native women had lower

median annual earnings compared with non-Hispanic white and Asian American women”

(Miller, Kevin). Though women will receive pay discrimination no matter what, women

of color are unfortunately impacted the most by it. In this instance, racism and sexism go

hand-in-hand, further oppressing minority groups in order to establish white, male

supremacy. Though all females are oppressed, white women have more of a privilege

than women of color. In a society driven by sexism, racism, homophobia, and

xenophobia, it’s no wonder a person belonging to two minority groups would suffer more

discrimination in comparison to a person only belonging to one. It’s an injustice that can

make a woman of color’s life insufferable. Race should not be a deciding factor in

someone’s pay, and that goes without saying.

SECTION 3: GENDER ROLES

Gender roles plague and control a woman’s daily life. Gender roles are the

stereotypes and roles that men and women are often pressured to adhere and conform to,

and though both males and females suffer from these stereotypes, women are clearly

subjected to the worst of them. Women are often supposed to appear feminine, domestic
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in nature, and disinterested in math and science. They are comparatively weaker to males,

and are more likely to be treated as property rather than being treated as an actual human

being. Though gender roles can be manifested into something as simple as suffering

through the redundant “you hit like a girl!” insult, there are many cases where it is more

lethal. Chandra-Mouli writes:

“For girls, HIV/AIDS, complications associated with early pregnancy,

childbearing and unsafe abortions, infectious diseases, unintentional

injuries, and suicide account for significant mortality [1]. Girls are also

more likely than boys to be subjected to harmful traditional practices such

as child marriage that have long-standing consequences for their health.

Girls are less likely to complete secondary school or have secure

employment and are more likely to be exposed to intimate partner

violence and sexual abuse.”

The consequences of these gender roles put many women at risk, especially in

places where healthcare clinics like Planned Parenthood are inaccessible or in states that

do not have the proper laws to protect girls against child marriage. As a society nobody,

regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation, escapes the claws of

stereotypes unscathed. There is no injustice more prevalent than the other, but women

have suffered under the hand of these gender roles for far too long. There is a much

needed call for change, and women are crying for it.
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Though society strongly enforces gender roles and stereotypes, it is often the

parents who have the strongest impact. This is because they often enforce the ideals and

beliefs that they themselves grew up with. Shereen Yunus Khan and Shahida Sajjad, the

authors of Parental Behavior to Discipline Their Children on the Basis of Gender Roles,

write:

“Family like other social institutions is gendered and governed by the

value of acquiescent along the gender parameters, and the members have

to conform to its norms and values by behaving accordingly. Parents,

having different gendered personal attributes, play a fundamental role in

developing gender differentiation in the society. Gender-role

socialization’s intensity is determined by norms prevailing in our social

setup.”

Parents shape their child/children’s perspective on gender roles and norms from

an early age through their family setting. From there, the child adapts these views and

molds into them. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it could be potentially harmful should

the belief of the parents overshadow what is morally correct. Considering many current

parents were raised during a less-progressive era and were forced to witness and conform

to many stereotypical attitudes themselves, it can be assumed that many will raise their

children in that very same environment. Venkatraman proves this theory, stating:

“Gender norms and attitudes, shaped in early childhood and adolescence,

become entrenched over time (We distinguish “norms” as widely shared

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social expectations from “attitudes,” which reflect individual beliefs

related to gender equality). For example,

As a child enters into adolescence, their peers now have a huge impact on a their

perspective and how they might perceive gendered norms and roles. Because their social

networks have begun to expand beyond their family, the perspectives and beliefs of peers

is now a big factor in the way an adolescent begins to perceive their role in society, and

what they are ‘supposed to do.’ Venkatraman writes, “While these changes and

developments can create major opportunities for girls and boys, they also expose them to

new risks. The behaviors that they adopt and the social context in which they live can set

trajectories for their health and well-being as adults” (Venkatraman). These roles are

learned, not inherited. The way society views gender roles needs to change in order to not

poorly affect our youth and the generations to come.

SECTION 4: OPPRESSIVE LAWS

The amount of oppressing laws against women is striking. This comes as no surprise,

seeing as how past and current societies prefer to control women rather than value them.

It would be assumed that, as civilization progresses, laws would ultimately become more

just and protect our women from the constant maltreatment they face. However, that is

unfortunately not the case. The most notable injustice would be the defunding of Planned

Parenthood. Many conservatives (men in particular) believe in running Planned

Parenthood dry for the sole purpose of furthering their pro-life agenda, but what these

conservatives fail to realize is that defunding Planned Parenthood not only strips women
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of their right to choose what happens to their body, but it also takes away basic healthcare

privileges from low-income women. When arguing for Planned Parenthood, Bryce

Covert and Mike Konczal, authors of Born, Not Free, write,

“What terrorists like Dear and Republicans in Congress want is basically

the same: to shut down Planned Parenthood and deny women access to

abortions. If they got their wish, it would serve only to make poor women

poorer and increase the number of unintended pregnancies” (Covert).

Though given the false title of only being an abortion clinic, Planned Parenthood

provides contraception, Pap smears and other cancer screenings, STD testing, pregnancy

services, vaccinations, LGBT services, and much more. They provide general healthcare

at affordable prices, which services low-income women specifically. Covert and Konczal

write,

“Shutting down Planned Parenthood wouldn't just affect access to

abortion, of course. The group provides many other services to low-

income women. Poor women are more likely to have sex without birth

control—and access to affordable contraception would shrink further

without the existence of Planned Parenthood. Among 491 counties with

Planned Parenthood clinics, 103 have no other place where low-income

patients can obtain affordable contraception” (Covert).

It is clear that the only people who benefit from the defunding of Planned Parenthood are

those who fear abortions and a woman’s right to choose. The needs of women are once
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again pushed back so that Conservatives can maintain their power and hold over they

minority.

As if the sexual harassment women constantly face wasn’t enough, there are no laws

preventing a rapist from gaining legal custody of their biological child. If a woman is raped and

becomes pregnant, the sexual assailant can gain custody of the child, regardless of their crime.

Breeanna Hare and Lisa Rose, co-authors of the CNN article “Where Rapists Can Gain Parental

Rights”, write,

“Seven states don't have any laws preventing a rapist from claiming parental

rights, but that's not to say that these states are oblivious to the issue. Maryland,

for one, has been working for years to pass a law that would allow a rape victim

to terminate her attacker's parental rights” (Hare).

The laws vary from state to state, and for the most part, parental rights can be terminated if there

is substantial proof that the child was conceived through sexual assault. However, sexual assault

isn’t easily proven. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, majority of sexual assaults

aren’t even able to make it to persecution. If sexual assault cases hardly make it to persecution,

one would wonder how it’s even possible for a woman to gain proof of her rape. Hare and Rose

write,

“Between 2005 and 2010, just 36% of the nearly 300,000 annual average rape or

sexual assault victimizations were reported to police, the bureau reports. Even

when you look at both reported and unreported rapes during that time period,

roughly 12% of victimizations resulted in arrests” (Hare).

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The process of building a case against a rapist is tiresome, long, and suffers from the

possibility of not even resulting in an arrest. A woman only has a 12% chance of making an

arrest, a 12% chance of building a case to prove her assault, and a 12% chance of preventing her

assaulter from gaining custody of their child. With those odds, women who have been assaulted

are not safe.

It is impossible for a woman to feel fully comfortable in her body, especially with laws

that prevent her from doing so. A woman’s body is constantly sexualized but then presumed

offensive when that same body is exposed. A woman is disallowed from going topless in many

public areas because her breasts are considered genitalia, yet a man can proudly walk around

shirtless, unable to suffer from the same stigmatized double standard that women must unfairly

endure. Debra L. Logan, a journalist for the Law & Psychological Review,

“Considering that “breasts are the most visible sexualized anatomical feature on a

woman,” it follows that breasts are a woman’s primary source of objectification

and the most noticeable sign of her femininity. That women live our breasts

actively, as sites of desire, sensitivity, and pleasure, is profoundly

underthematized in our cultural imaginary. What is thematized instead,

obsessively, is the role of breasts in animating male desire” (Logan).

Women are shamed for their breasts because they are subjected to being seen as genitalia

designed specifically a man’s pleasure, rather than being seen as an organ which functions only

for the purpose of lactation to feed an infant. The double standard is crystalline when it comes to

common laws such as public nudity. A woman could be removed or even jailed for fully

exposing her crbreasts in public, whereas a man who is shirtless would be incapable of facing the
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same objectification. A woman’s body is hyper-sexualized and shamed purely because of male

desire, and that objectified association must come to an end.

SECTION 5: CONCLUSION

To conclude, women have fought long and hard for equality. They have suffered

mercilessly through the wage gap, gender roles, and oppressive laws, and are tired of the

unfairness still handed to them by our cruel society. The affect that this inequality has is

burdening, not only to our women but to our economy. It is clear that the oppression

women face has nothing to do with societal growth, but everything to do with modern

sexism that has yet to change. Women have stood through the harassment, the

objectification, the unfair stereotypes, the inequity of pay, the laws that keep up silent, but

we will not be silent any longer. On behalf of women everywhere, give us our missing

20%.

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Works Cited

Chandra-Mouli, Venkatraman. “Implications of the Global Early Adolescent Study's

Formative Research Findings for Action and for Research.” Journal of Adolescent

Health. Volume 61.Issue 4 , S5 - S9. Accessed 3 Nov. 2017.

Compton, Michele. "The Gender PAY GAP." Women in Business, vol. 59, no. 6, Nov/

Dec2007, p. 32. EBSCOhost. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.

Covert, Bryce and Mike Konzcal. "Born, Not Free." Nation, vol. 302, no. 2/3,

11 Jan. 2016, p. 8. EBSCOhost. Accessed 3 Nov. 2017.

Hare, Breeanna, and Lisa Rose. “Where Rapists Can Gain Parental Rights.” CNN, Cable

News Network, 17 Nov. 2016,

www.cnn.com/2016/11/17/health/parental-rights-rapists-explainer/index.html.

Accessed 3 Nov. 2017.

Hillman, Betty Luther. "The Clothes I Wear Help Me to Know My Own Power."

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, June 2013, pp. 155-185.

EBSCOhost. Accessed 3 Nov. 2017.

Khan, Shereen Yunus and Shahida Sajjad. "Parental Behavior to Discipline Their

Children on the Basis of Gender Roles." New Horizons (1992-4399), vol. 11, no.

1, Jan. 2017, pp. 29-39. EBSCOhost. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.

Lipman, Michele. “Let’s Expose The Gender Pay Gap.” The New York Times. 13 Aug.

2015.https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/opinion/lets-expose-the-gender-pay-

gap.html Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.

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Logan, Debra L. "Exposing Nipples as Political Speech." Law & Psychology Review, vol.

41, 2016/2017, pp. 173-190. EBSCOhost. Accessed 9 Oct. 2017.

Miller, Kevin. “The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap (Spring 2017).” AAUW:

Empowering Women Since 1881, Mar. 2017. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.