Women Are Still Treated as Second Class Citizens
Plan: For |Against | |Same jobs, paid less |Able to do any jobs, just not cut-throat | |‘Traditional’ |Can do more jobs than before S&S | |Higher jobs dominated by men |Hard for men to be accepted in women’s jobs too | |‘Old boy network’ |Dangers for women | |‘Glass ceiling’ |Religion | |Just want to be taken seriously |Women saved first on crashes etc | |Exam results |Stay-at home dads | |Not stay-at-home-dads as they can earn more money | | The ‘Old boy Network’? Wrong Frequency For Women. Ladies and Gentlemen; I believe that it is time for change. Change not only to the ‘pecking order’ but to opinions as a whole. Read this with an open mind, as I believe that together in unity we can make women’s voices heard over the noises of vacuum cleaners and screaming children. Is there any reason for women to still be treated as second-class citizens here in the UK?
Do their fingers really have the magic touch for housework and not hard work? Of course not! Everyone knows that women are perceived in this way because of tradition. A tradition that we cannot will not and should not be part of. Just because women used to have to stay at home and look after children, or men did all of the ‘dangerous jobs’ why should that still be the case? Women have undoubtedly proven themselves just as capable, if not more, than men in most jobs, so why is it still so hard for them to break through that ‘glass ceiling’? Many women will have been in the position where a male colleague earns more than them for doing the exact same job. This is unfair treatment and should not be condoned.
A friend of mine called Annabelle is an excellent banker, the best out her level of the company, yet she has been repeatedly rejected from a higher positioned job in the company. Each of these times the positions have been given to a male. A coincidence? I think not. She was more highly qualified than these men, and had worked for the company for longer, so why was she overlooked? Has The ‘Old boy network’ been on the rampage again? Is it because women occupy only 1 in 20 of the ‘top jobs’? Will it really come to her loosing her femininity to get the job she really deserves? Women just want to be taken seriously and to get the respect they deserve, yet is seems that most of the time to reach their goals they have to loose friends, and dress or act like men.
Why is it harder for women to gain the respect of men than the other way around? In a recent survey only 3 out of 50 women said that they would be comfortable being in control of an office or group of men, yet 42 out of 50 men said they would be comfortable being in control of women. Others will argue that women are the ones that are too scared to break out of traditional placements. There are no jobs that only men are allowed to do, it is just that many women won’t go into these jobs, as the dangers are too high, or the hours will not let them see their families often enough. Women are not ‘cut-throat’ enough. They do not want to trample on people on the way to the top, as they do not have that sort of mentality.
Most men will go to any extremes to secure their ‘dream job’. Women can do many more jobs than even 50 years ago. Their rights have improved tremendously, and now cannot be discriminated against. It is extremely hard for men to be accepted into predominantly woman-dominated jobs. It is not something against women, just something that is to be expected if any sex is going into the ‘other sex’s territory’. For example, male nurses are often abused or made fun of because they are not doctors, and women doctors find it hard to be taken seriously by the male doctors. The dangers of some jobs for many women outweigh anything else. Men have the physiques to estrain, resist and persist against tough weather, or heavy objects, ‘it is a biological fact that women are generally weaker than men. ’ In many of the religions now observed in the UK the women are treated worse than the men, yet this is their choice. If they did not agree with it, the women could leave the religion, and be treated as equals in the multi-religion society that is the United Kingdom. There are 20% more ‘stay-at-home-dads’ than 30 years ago. This shows that the women are free to work, and the men can do all of the ‘traditional’ female jobs. Many women are not taken on at the higher jobs because of the worry of maternity leave.
The companies employing them must think of the future and the inevitability that at some point most 30-year-old women will want children. Another main point is that women are saved first, along with children, on sinking ships, or crashes. This means that their lives are put above men’s. The fact that men are not generally the parents who stay at home backs up the argument that men will be more likely to be paid more, whether it is due to a higher position, or a wider range of jobs open to them. Girls have been out–shining boys in the public exams for years now, which shows that they are not only qualified to do the same jobs, but in many cases more qualified.
If you think of any type of job that both men and women do, and think of the ‘high-flyers’ within those jobs you will certainly think of a man. This needs to change. Women will inevitably keep fighting for their rights; ‘we will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail’ when it comes to getting what we deserve. Dr. James Macaroni of Oxford University told us that women get more stressed at work due to the pressure and strain of having to constantly work at the same level, whereas men get breaks within their stress when they get promoted. Do we really want to have women constantly put below men? Should women always stay traditional? So, fellow readers, I ask, why not change the pecking order today? Why wait until it is too late?
