The Gender Issue: Why this issue still poses enormous problems in the American and European societies at the dawn of 2010

Résumé du document

For centuries, numerous demonstrations by feminist movements have accompanied women's emancipation. Their profoundly inegalitarian status has dramatically changed. Women broke into all sectors of public life. However, we still notice today a lot of inequalities in the American society. Whether in the workplace, in politics or in everyday life, regarding domestic and educational tasks, women are struggling to achieve parity. Male and female identity seems to be increasingly taken into account today. However, relations between men and women seem to have changed over the years. What are these new relations today, and why do differences between men and women still persist, making gender one of the most important issues in the American society?

Extraits

[...] One has seen it through the concept of habits or stereotypes. However, societies change, so does culture, and that leads to a reconfiguration of the status of man and woman. Thus, American culture gradually moved away from the domination of men in favor of parity, or even asexual domination. But can we really consider that this place is undifferentiated compared to men's? Not exactly, and the road is still long to get to the indifferentiation of the two genders (not to mention a possible equality!). [...]

[...] Inequalities persist and are thus still a major society problem. Posible bibliography Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium (Dilemmas in World Politics) by V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan (Paperback - July 14, 2009) Education, Equality and Human Rights: Issues of Gender, -Race-, Sexuality, Disability and Social Class by Mike Cole (Kindle Edition - Mar 2009) - Kindle Book Women, Gender and Disaster: Global Issues and Initiatives by Elaine Enarson and P. G. [...]

[...] Thus, after 90 years of voting, women are still under-represented as elected representatives in the political arena. The world of politics, industry and the senior civil service are areas where women have difficulties to find a place. This is less a lack of women's professional skills which handicap them in their promotion than the internalization by men as by women of the gendered nature of certain qualities. Self-control, love of competition and power, authority, qualities historically associated with masculinity and its attributes: the army, tools, strength, danger or risk. [...]

[...] Women did not want to be housewives; their former dream to be housewives with a big house was gone. They wanted something more, they wanted to work. Even though women remain today largely responsible for domestic and family tasks, we observed that the contrary working wife and a househusband) can also be true. This is the case of MP Dunleavey, a journalist for The New York Times. She talks about her situation as a beadwinner in her article, breadwinner rethinks Gender Roles.” After having her son, her husband and herself decided that she will continue her job and he will quit his, to take care of the baby. [...]

[...] Some men act like women, like some women, although born as women, show in their behavior the characteristics of a man. But a woman remains a woman in her anatomy, even if she may have a behavior and roles that are usually and stereotypically destined to a man (knowledge in cars, etc). Also, when a woman makes a man's job or vice versa, stereotypes continue to advance. Work is then engine of gendered behaviors. Indeed, as the Radical lesbian movement showed in 1970, in Woman Identified Woman, any woman who dares to be equal as men and who dare to challenge his prerogatives, who was successful and independent was called a lesbian. [...]