The Rules of Gender: A Discussion on Women's roles in Modern Society
Women constitute over half of the global population today. Their contributions socially, economically, culturally, and politically are great yet, their efforts have been recognized at a much lower proportion than those of men. Over the past thirty years, the legal status of the woman has undoubtedly improved but effective equality is far from being realty. Woman are still marginalized in political and public positions, paid less for work of equal value, find themselves victims of poverty and unemployment more often then men, and frequently subject to physical and mental abuse. Today a seat at the boardroom table does not guarantee that a woman will earn as much as her male counterpart. At many companies, the biggest paychecks go to men. That is because men hold more than 90 percent of the so-called line position, with direct responsibly for corporate profits. A company may have female vice presidents in charge of the legal department, corporate communications or human resource!s but a men still is more likely to be chief financial officer. In 1998, the San Francisco Chronicle published and article stating; "The nation's highest paid female corporate executives earn 68 cents to every dollar earned by the highest paid men, accordi
------------------------------------------------------------------------ As noted earlier, sexual roles are passed down from the society to the individual early in an individual development. These roles are reinforced on a continuing basis in all aspects of that person's life. Claire Renzetti writes in her article; "Research, in fact, demonstrates that sex role socialization begins immediately after birth, making it very difficult to determine which, if any, behavioral differences are due to biology and which are the products of social learning." This brings us to the age-old dilemma, genetics verses socialization. Would a woman behave in what we identify as in a feminine manner if she was not given the cultural feedback of her society? This can obviously be asked about men also. This is reminiscent of the chicken and the egg paradox. Given the sexes have physical attributes, which differ from each other, do these physical attributes force the genders to behave in deferent manners which is the starting point for the cultural feedback mechanisms whi! ng to the Catalyst, a New York nonprofit that works to advance women in business." It goes on to state; "That's a wider gap than in the work force as a whole, where woman earned 76 cents for every dollar men made in the first quarter of 1998, according to the labor Department t Statisti
Some common words found in the essay are:
William Shade, Leviticus God, Claire Renzetti, , Catalyst York, Francisco Chronicle, Department Statistic, physical attributes, child rearing, cents dollar, cultural feedback,
Approximate Word count = 905
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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