A Woman’s Fight For Equality

Women have been fighting for their rights for years, in order to receive the same privileges that men get handed to them. In 1920, women finally won the suffrage battle and were allowed to vote. According to History.com, “it took activists and reformers nearly a hundred years to win that fight, and the campaign was not easy” (History Channel, 2013, para. 1). Women decided that they didn’t want to continue living believing that the only “true” woman was a submissive wife who cleaned and cooked repetitively, which wasn’t at all constitutional. A group of abolitionist activists gathered in New York to discuss women’s rights. They agreed that according to the Declaration of Independence, “men and women were created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The fact that men were allowed to have a say in their country’s government and political changes and women were excluded from those choices as if their opinions weren’t valid or valuable enough.

According to Women’s History in America, “In the 1960s, a traditional middle-class girl in Western culture tended to learn from her mother’s example of cooking, cleaning and caring for children while the men either went to school or worked. Middle Eastern culture is still, in most ways, like this towards the inequality of women. In 1870, an estimated one-fifth of resident college and university students were women. By 1900, the proportion had increased to more than one third” (WIC, 1994, para. 9). Normally, women would follow what their mothers taught them, and their mothers would pass on what their mothers taught them, and liberalism and radical voices and opinions were unheard of. If a girl watches her mother care for her children and takes care of the house while growing up, she expected her job would be similar once she was a wife.

Women have a lot to worry about more than men when it comes to their safety, especially when it comes to walking down the street, being alone, or at night. Louis Melling (2011) shares in her article, “Hey Baby: Enduring Street Harassment”, “I first remember it happening when I was around 14. Guys driving by would sometimes call stuff out the window of their cars. Sometimes they slowed down. I was afraid. I didn’t know if they would take no for an answer. I didn’t know if I could run faster than they could. I knew bad things happened” (para. 3). Fourteen years old is far too young to experience feelings of anxiety regarding harassment. Sexual harassment does not necessarily have to be performed through physical actions; it can be expressed through words, gestures and even expressions, and the repercussions, whether mental or physical, can last a lifetime.

Although precautions should be made for safety purposes and keeping in mind that it could happen everywhere and to anybody is important, it doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to be afraid every day. According to RAINN (2009), “Every 2 minutes, somebody in the United States is sexually assaulted. Every year, there are about 207,754 victims of sexual assault. 54% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police. 97% of rapists never spend a day in jail” (p. 1). In order to create a world where we are free and able to be ourselves, we need to put an end to the mentality that it is okay to disrespect somebody for any purpose. Often, people would debate that rape is blamed solely on women, and they were “asking for it” because of the way they were dressing. If we blame rape and sexual harassment on men who “can’t control their hormones”, we are viewing men as animals who don’t have self-control of themselves and can’t control their actions, and that isn’t fair. Equality is not just equal rights to the side that one feels comfortable defending, it’s about being equal and fair even to the opposing side. Women don’t deserve to be called at or whistled at while walking down the street, regardless of what they may be wearing. Just because it is ninety degrees outside and a woman decides to dress in an outfit that may show more skin than usual doesn’t mean she is in any way “asking for sex” or “asking” for men to call out at her. Instead of teaching daughters not to dress provocatively, we need to teach our sons to not only respect women and their bodies but their own as well. 

Nowadays, people are growing more and more gender-sensitive, and more people are stepping up to share how they feel and voicing their opinion. Years ago, women’s opinions (such as Sonia Sotomayor) regarding political issues weren’t even taken into account to America. Over time, women realized it wasn’t fair that men had more privileges, and they decided to fight for their equality and as the years passed, citizens were able to accept women’s rights and embrace them in a matter that was well mannered and respectable.

All in all, regardless of somebody is a woman, man, African American, Chinese, veteran or disabled, at the end of the day, they are nothing more or less than a human being. And human beings have the freedom to live, love and enjoy life, and while they do, the last thing any woman or man should be worried about when stepping out of the house in the morning is whether or not they will come home without being harassed or put in an uncomfortable situation. In order to overcome the ongoing battle of reaching equality, we must view both women and men as equal bodies built with a distinctive purpose, to live, love, and be loved.

References

Melling, L. (25 March 2011). American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved from http://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/hey-baby-enduring-street-harassment

RAINN. (2009). Statics. Retrieved from http://www.rainn.org/statistics

History Channel. (2013). The fight for women's suffrage. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/the-fight-for-womens-suffrage.

WIC. (1994). Women’s history in America. Women’s International Center. Retrieved from http://www.wic.org/misc/history.htm