Gender Equality in 2016?
In today’s society there have been claims where some say that we have reached a point where we live in a time frame where there is equally gender equality. You may ask yourself well, what is gender equality? Gender equality is when women and men have the same rights and opportunities in all parts of society this includes economic participation, decision making and equal pay for equal work which leads to women and men equally valued and favored at the same level with this in mind both men and women should receive the same treatment and should not be discriminated against their gender. Society claims to have this equality for everyone but in reality there is still a lot of discrimination going on especially towards the women. An example where we could see the unequally treatment towards women is in a workplace area. In some professions we can see the gender gap more than in others. There are some serious issues women face in the workplace area some examples of this are; the harassment the bullying the stereotypes and the competitiveness. This should not be happening not in this era where people talk about “equality”.
A form of this discrimination is not only seen in us humans but it is also seen in the robotic world. For example online on the page http://signwavingmannequins.net/ they are promoting the sign waving mannequins they consider this more effective than a normal arrow sign person. When it comes to the effectiveness of a business it might help increase more revenue for the business and that is totally understandable. But what attracted my attention from this website is the comparison of the cost of each waving mannequin. As I navigated the website I came across to the mannequins and as I kept searching as if I was going to purchase a mannequin I saw they have female mannequins and male mannequins which until now it seems reasonable right? We’ve seen male and female mannequins all the time throughout our daily whereabouts. As I see these gender mannequins in retail stores or elsewhere displaying clothes accessories and such other items I had never stopped to think how much one of these mannequins would cost. In my head I would assume that the mannequins would cost about the same price for each one. I would not even stop to think about the gender of the mannequin. So when I saw http://signwavingmannequins.net/ and the price of each mannequin based on their gender it surprised me. According to this website the female mannequins range into the prices of $389-$599 dollars and the male mannequins are range from $1040-$1070 dollars. So why is there such a big price difference they are both mannequins that are made out of the same thing and are the same thing their only difference is their gender. Could the gender role be an influence even in the mannequin world? As a male mannequin should the mannequin be making more money too? I thought the un equalness of equal pay for equal work only happened to us humans.
I personally can relate to the stereotypes of gender inequality. My workplace environment consists of more males than females they always say that where I work at is no place for a woman. Why? Can it be because my job consists of driving a big truck around. I get stereotyped constantly by men and everyone because they look at this tiny person driving this big truck throughout the city they think that because I am a woman I wouldn’t be able to move the truck and when they see me driving they sometimes makes funny jokes. Each time I pull up to fill my gas tank they always say “how much are you putting on it sir” they say this because they yet have not seen that it is a woman that drove into the gas station. So when they see me they get embarrassed and immediately apologize because they assumed that it was a male driving. I believe that being able to drive does not have anything to do with our gender. But it has been stereotyped that women cannot do the same things as men. In some things we can be equal and in some other things we cannot compete with one another. So why do they keep limiting our growth based on our gender? Yes, sometimes we have a problem balancing our homes and our work but us women can provide the same results. So when are the traditional roles going to be over? Shouldn’t we rise to the top together our gender should have nothing to do with our limitations.
