Feminism In The Feminist Movement

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As of 2010, women make up 50.8% of the population. According to the Bible, a woman, Eve, was the second human being on planet Earth. Women have been in existence since the beginning of time, just as abundant as men, yet history has shown us just how subordinate females have been treated as early as the first civilizations. Men’s role as hunter compared to a women’s role as gatherer is to many, perhaps, the first divide in the power between men and women, left only to escalate as mankind evolved throughout the centuries. Though the Feminist Movement displays the freedom of speech all Americans have the ability to utilize under the First Amendment, this freedom is a positive overlay shielding the dismal reasoning for this movement; women are…show more content…
Not too long ago, women were seen as completely inferior to men. As shown in Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments, women struggled to live without basic rights we cannot imagine living without today, such as access to education, the ability to own property, and the ability to divorce partners. “He has taken from her all right in property… He has denied her the facilities from obtaining a thorough education… He has so framed the laws of divorce…” (Stanton 8, 10, 14). This piece of writing was one of the first and most popular acts of feminism, even though it was blown off by male society when it was written and released. This extensive list of inequality prominent in daily life for women opens our eyes to how unjust and unfair the divide between men and women truly was during this time. Unfortunately, gender inequality is still prominent in today's society. Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant specifically talk about inequality in the workplace in their article titled Speaking While Female. A study conducted by Yale found that “Male executives that spoke more often than their peers were rewarded with 10 percent higher ratings of competence… when female executives spoke more… punished… with 14 percent lower ratings” (Sandberg, Grant 6). It is ingrained in our society to automatically believe that men are meant to take the lead and that it is backwards for a women to do so, making them seem aggressive when taking on this kind of leadership in the workplace. Though large amounts of progress have been made, it is details such as these that show the divide has not yet been fully closed. One of the most controversial topics regarding gender inequality is the gender pay gap issue. According to the American Association of University Women (AAUW), “...in 2016, women working full time in the United States typically were paid just 80 percent of what men were paid…” (AAUW 1). This statistic

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