IDEA OF PROGRESS, Gender Equality

Synthèse Anglais IDEA OF PROGRESS

INTRODUCTION :

I’m going to present the notion of Idea of progress. We can defined the idea of progress as an improvement, a development or a change. Is an advance in the social, scientific or technical domain. This idea contribute to make some changes in our society and to improve the flaws of nowadays. The purpose is to make the world a better place. In this notion we got a great representation of progress, the gender equality. This example fit perfectly the idea of progress. Gender equality is the research of equality in rights and opportunities for women. Gender equality is the belief that everyone should be equal and should receive the same treatment and not be discriminated because of the fact that we’re not born with the same sex. We’re going to see what progress has been made towards gender equality since the 20th century?

We first gonna talk about changing laws. In the 19th 20th century women were considered inferior than men, they had much less right than men, and their place was at home in the kitchen. For men, women were unable to think, and they were much less intellectual/smart than men were.  All the intellectual domain were occupied by men, like political or scientific domain. But in Great Britain things started to change with the movement of the suffragettes. The suffragettes were women who started to fight for their right in a patriarchal society. In the trailer of the movie “Suffragette”, we see that they do a lot of things, they demonstrate and they used strength. They were determinate to have the right to vote. The movie shows the reality of the struggle that English women were confronted to. Men hit them, but women believed in their right and continues to fight for their future. After a long fight they got the right to vote in 1918 in Great Britain. Others country followed the movement like USA and Australia in 1920 and much later France in 1944. Women also fought for other right like equal pay. It all started in a ford factory, working women wanted to work in better conditions and then they started to ask for equal pay. Rita O’Grady in the movie “Made in Dagenham” was the leader of this struggle. They demonstrate and they also stopped their work for showing that they were as much important as men in the economy and the society. They also talked to the minister of employment and after this discussion they obtain not exactly equal pay but a raise of 92% in the 70’s. Women obtained a lot of rights since the 20th century. In 1893 New Zealand gave the vote to women, it was the first country in the world. After that 192 countries followed. In 1963, American women obtained equal pay and 62 countries followed. We have nowadays, 97 countries who have more women than men in their university. A lot of progress has been made. But it still 15 million child brides every year. 62 million girls still out of school, some countries denied the right of education for girls, like for example the Pakistan where girls are shot for going to school. We can talk about Malala, who was shot in her head because she’s for the right of education for girls. Because of discrimination women’s average earnings are still only 78% of men’s average earnings.

Nowadays we have to give to women the same opportunities as men, in all areas. Our society have to go out of all the stereotypes, like “soccer is for boys” “boxing is for men, you have a beautiful face you will ruined your beauty” “women can be stronger as men”, all of that makes women uncomfortable, they can bloom in the sport they loved because people still have this stereotypes in their mind. In sport as we can see in “A boost for women in sport”, women are discriminated. They’re not equal to men, they don’t receive the same treatment as men, because “no matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organism is not cut out to sustain certain shocks” they said. Women have much less media coverage than men for the same sport. For example in America, 40% of sportspeople are women and only 6-8% of the total media coverage is devoted for them. Some people say that “women’s sport isn’t interesting enough”. There is also a difference in the scholarships, male athletes get $179 million more than women, each years. It still a glass ceiling in all the carrier that women try to do. A glass ceiling is a metaphor, she’s used to represent the barrier that stops women’s carrier from rising beyond a certain level in hierarchy.  However there should be no disparity anywhere and in any domain, nor in sports, nor in the workplace, nor at school and finally nor in life.

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