SOC 120 Week 5 Final Assignment: Women Equality

Women Equality

SOC 120: Introduction to Ethics and Social Responsibility

Women equality has come alone way since the 1850’s. Women have had it worst historically and it seems to be tested daily. In today society most women still experience inequality toward men. This paper will examine equality in: Workplace, Voting, and Sexual Harassment. It will also show how deontology plays a part in these acts.

Workplace

For many years women wanted to have the same equal rights as men in the workplace.

Women wanted to have equal pay and hold position the same as men. Women don’t want to feel like they must follow, they all just want a chance to be treated the same as men. Women have made great strides I the workplace. The issue of equal pay is still a hot topic. The US census bureau reports that women earn 80 percent of what men are paid. There is not a problem with female achievement, women have caught up with men in terms of education. In fact, in the united states and a few other countries women now actually surpass men in the educational achievement.

It is known that women and men can have the same position, but the men are the one who receive more pay even if the women have everything they have to hold that position. Most women are not aware that they are being shorthanded by their jobs. Equality pay improved in the US since 1979 when women earned about 62 percent as much as men.

Lily Ledbetter was discriminated against equal rights and pay. Ledbetter was one of the first female supervisors at a good year plant in Gadsden Alabama, and worked there for close to two decades. She faces sexual harassment at the plant and was told by her boss that he didn’t think a woman should be working there. Her co-workers bragged about their overtime pay, but Goodyear did not allow its employees to discuss their pay, and Ledbetter did not know she was the subject of discrimination until she received an anonymous note revealing the salaries of three of the male managers. After she filed a complaint with the EEOC, her case went to trial, and the jury awarded her back-pay and approximately $3.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages for the extreme nature of the pay discrimination to which she had been subjected. (Lily

Ledbetter fair pay, 2009)

Ledbetter could make a law called, The Lily Ledbetter law and it was signed by Barack Obama on January 29, 2009. This law would give the chance to sue their employers for unequal pay. Ledbetter won’t be able to benefit from her own law, but she was happy that other women would be protected by her law. In 2010, American women earned 81 percent of what male counterparts earned. (BLS 2010; DOL 2011)

The great depression of 2007-2010 affected men and women in different ways. Men lost more jobs than women. One in five women are working part time because they cannot find full time work while at the start of recession less than one in ten women were the overall unemployment rate for women is lower than men and they are also less likely to be amount the long term unemployed.

Voting

August 26 is women equality day. Which commemorates the 96th anniversary of the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote.

Voting is an opportunity anybody in the united states can have, but women did not have this opportunity in the early era. Two of the most important women worked to prove women deserved the right to vote.

Lydia Taft was the first women who was able to vote in America. Taft voted in 3 town hall meeting. Lydia husband and son died during an important vote concerning the town financial support of the French and Indian war. During that time only, free holders and her husband Josiah estate was valued one at the largest in that town. Her husband death opened the door for Lydia step into American history of women suffrage. (Mac Lean, M 2007-2014).

Given the key role to vote the townspeople vote to allow Lydia, the widow of Josiah Taft to vote I the meeting on October 20, 1756. Her historic vote would precede the constitutional amendment for women suffrage by 164 years. (Lydia Taft-New England first woman voter, 2018).

Another important woman was Susan B. Anthony. Susan B. Anthony was a pioneer crusader for the women suffrage movement in the Unites States and (1892-1900) of the national American women suffrage association. Her work help paves the way for the nineteenth amendment (1920) to the constitution giving women the right to vote. (Susan B. Anthony)

Susan B. Anthony was the first US women to vote in the presidential election. Susan work influence her that women needed to vote if they were influence public affairs. While Susan and some of the women were on tour for the women suffrage including 3 of her sister they were all arrested for voting in Rochester in 1872. During the year of 1877 she was able to gather a petition for women rights to vote that made 26 states with 10,000 signatures, but he congress didn’t take them seriously. Anthony was inspired to fight for women rights while she was campaigning against alcohol. She denied the chance to speak at a temperance convention because she was a woman. Anthony realize that no one would take women in politics seriously unless they had the right to vote.

Anthony dies on March 13, 1906. When Anthony dies women still did not have the right to vote. 14 years after her death the 19th amendment to the US constitution, giving women the right to vote, was passed. (Susan B. Anthony, 2018)

Both women acted and fought to make sure the they were heard, and women would have the same equal rights as men and be able to vote.

Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is a very serious matter and not to be played with and should always be taken seriously. Sexual harassment has affected women all over the world for many years, whether it was on a job, at school, or in the streets it’s still not right. The finding from FRA ground breaking survey of 42,000 women throughout the EU show that up to 39 million women in the EU experience sexual harassment in the 12 months prior to the survey. More than half of the women in the EU have experience sexual harassment, sexual harassment is more commonly experience by women with a university degree and those in the highest occupational group. 75 percent of women in the top management category have experience sexual harassment, compared with 41 percent of those who have never been in paid work. Stereotypes about appropriate gender roles, and women exposure to risk of sexual harassment in different setting, continue to have negative impact on the lives of all women irrespective of education or salary.

Sexual harassment has increased a lot over the years and has been viewed as one of the strictest form of violence against women in the work place and has become a problem in the global economy where the work force is mostly young women (karega, 2002). Sexual harassment is harassment in a work place or other professional or social situation involving the making of unwanted sexual advances. Sexual harassment can occur when supervision retain the check in cared of female workers, forcing them to go to the supervision to retrieve it, at which point the supervision can request that the women remain behind after work (Karega,2002,23-25). Sexual harassment and other violence against women is perpetrated by employers, women unequal position of power and need for income virtually guarantee their silence. Sexual harassment is increasingly viewed as one of the most rigorous form of violence against women in the work place and it particularly a problem in the new global economy where the work force is comprised largely of young women (Karega,2002).

The practice of sexual harassment supports the institutionalization of gender equality in all its forms even those women who manage to avoid firsthand experience with it are negatively impact by it practices (MacKinnon, 1979). Many women have no other resource but to handle their sexual harassment problem by quitting or changing jobs. Sexual harassment sustains the gender gap in pay. Too often the decision to hire or promote a woman depends upon the degree to which she appear capable of provoking resisting or simply surviving sexual harassment. Even though the sexual harassment law was made to protect women it can now also protect men.

Conclusion, women had it worse than men, but women could fix majority of their problems. Women knew that what men were doing were wrong, but in their eyes what they were doing was right. After doing all the research on women equality in the workplace, voting, and sexual harassment, if anything else happen the women would know how to handle the situation because women have been through so much to get where they are today.

Reference

Lydia Chapin-Taft New England first women voter (2018) Retrieve From:

Newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/mysterious-death-henry-Sherburn

Susan B. Anthony (2018) Retrieve From: History.com/topics/women-history/Susan-b-Anthony

MacLean, M (2007-2014). American first legal women voter. History of American women

Retrieve From: http://www.womenhistory.blog.com/2008/09/Lydia–chapin–taft.html

Lily Ledbetter fair pay act (2009) Retrieve From: nwlc.org.resource. lilly. lily-Ledbetter-fair-pay-act

Karega, R. G.M. (2002) Violence against women in the work play in Kenya, International Labor rights, funds, Washington D.C.

MacKinnon, C (1979) The sexual harassment of working women, Newhaven: Yale University Press