Essay Sample about Gender Inequality

Dear Marjorie Johnson,

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I am here amidst a group of multi-ethnic companions, feeling as important as the other members of the group, and I can't help but look back at how life was for you. Having been born as an African-American was never a choice for you but your entire life was a constant reminder that this was a pervasive form of inferiority and a prima facie presentation of an outcast. Born in 1870, the society was never a fan of the girl-child or the women, as they were considered a weaker gender, socially, mentally and psychologically. Women were confined within their homesteads, and tied to the housewife chores or bearing children, seeing them grow up, and offering their services to their men unconditionally. Those were the dark ages when a woman's voice was no more than a meaningless chatter or a nagging and unacceptable out-of-place attitude. No laws were formulated for the welfare of these women, no privileges granted to them by the society, and all that was expected from them was a nativity and blind conformity to the societal ways, or as the community put it, "submissiveness and subordination."

The leadership positions were automatically preserved for the men, who were considered morally, physically and intellectually superior as compared to the socially feeble women. This marginalization of power automatically translated to the over-emphasis on the welfare of the male while the female was left out of the 'important and crucial' decisions. Domestic violence or rater battering was the go-to correctional measures for the men who believed a change in behavior and attitude had to be complemented with physical assaults. With such an anti-female conditioned society, you and your kind had to blend with these stipulations. Women could only possess a higher voice when addressing their children, and therefore, to compensate for their overly emphasized inferiority, they bore children as frequently as they could, to enable them to feel a bit more significant within the society.

There was no single attribute to the women's lives that was not dictated by the communities and societies they existed within. These stipulations included their mode of dressing, eating habits, sexuality, and public conduct among many other aspects of life. If it was on the dressing, they had to put on long dresses and corsets, and there was no exception. The society had for long robbed these women of their autonomy and stepped on their throat, limiting their free expression of thoughts, opinions, and suggestions. It was one thing to be born a woman, but being an African-American? You most definitely had another thing coming. As if the societal barriers and mistreatment was not enough, you had to face rejection from your fellow women, just because your skin had a little bit more melanin content that they did.

In the world we exist within today, it might seem quite simple for a woman to get their voices heard, and their opinions considered, but to the women in the late 19th and early 20th century, the society had erected so many barriers that made it impossible for their voices to have an impact. Financial stability was another factor that dragged the awakening of women. The First World War claimed the lives of many husbands and left the responsibilities of raising their families to their wives. Other instances of deadbeat dads also transferred this responsibility of raising families to the women. With no place to work and no tactics to go about life, many of these women stumbled into chronic forms of poverty and had to struggle through the day, to see to it that their children had something to put in their stomachs. Women had for long exited within conditioned societies that tied them to the domestic chores or raising their families through motherhood rather than financially. The pre-parental exposures as caregivers made education not as significant in the lives of girls as they would even have the time to attend school. However, this newly acquired responsibility must have been the wake-up call they needed to get out of their miserable comfort-zones and face the world as men did.

The women had to get unattractive jobs in companies and industries, and the wages they received was only sufficient enough to maintain them within the poverty level. Many of these women had to live by the government's welfare funding, a situation that often prompted the society to call them out of name. Everyone was so quick to judge them as pathetic excuses for laziness, and some merely put it as welfare mothers. For a society that had for so long tied the hands of women behind their backs, it was quite brutal for them to start throwing stones at them while they tried all they could to gain their rightful position in society. Education presented a useful platform for the women to rise from the ashes the society had buried them in, and they gradually won positions in workplaces and leadership. Their financial status was no longer an equation within the men in their lives as many of them attained economic independence and supported their families as both mothers and providers.

The world today reaps on the confidence and courage of these women to go against all the odds and overcome the stereotype the society had implanted in the minds of people. The nineteenth amendment was the first step towards the full realization of the incredible potential the women possess, after the inclusion of women in the voting processes. The years that followed saw the women from valid voters, and individuals capable of choosing their leaders, to be leaders themselves. Take an instance of the former senator Hillary Clinton. She took the role of leadership and beat the men that were on her way, and she successfully contended in the 2016 election. For a woman of the 19th century, this reality was never even part of their imagination. Women are dominating the 21st-century world, the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Mitchell Obama, and the list is endless. It is therefore certain that women have fully attained their social citizenship, and are part of the decisions that affect them within the society.