Establishment of Gender Equality: Advantages for Both Genders

Introduction

Nowadays, while the development of society has increased people’s awareness their value, they know who they are and what they deserve, unfairness still exists. Inequality may come from race and background but it is not all. The most important thing which should be mentioned in equality is gender equality. However, one noticeable fact is that although almost people know about it, it does not mean that them understand the real meaning under this word. The concept of equality does not imply that men and women are the same (UNFPA, 2005) or that their roles or needs are identical. Gender equality is human right, both males and females having the same right in opportunities, treatments, responsibilities, social status, and they are free to develop their personal ability (International Labor Organization 2007, p. 48). It is not hard to find slogan “Acting for gender equality” in articles and social media, but action speaks louder than word. It should become a worldwide campaign that needs everybody join hands and make it true. Fortunately, although almost victims of inequality are women (Gender Equality and Equity, 2000), a large number of men and organizations are willing to fight for this campaign. This paper, with the purpose to raise awareness of people about gender equality will discuss the importance of gender equality as well as find the specific strategies and solutions to spread gender equality.

Worldwide Status of Gender Equality

Women and girls represent half of the world’s population, yet it is not surprising that in many countries gender norms create disadvantage for them. According to Sustainable Development Goals, 143 countries ensure equality between males and females in their Constitutions in 2014, another 52 have yet to make this important commitment. Although gender equality by definition is belief that both genders should have equal rights and opportunities, almost women are treated unfairly in many fields of economics, politics and societies. In fact, numerous girls cannot approach education because some of common reasons such as poverty and child marriage. As a result, many girls do not attend school, and every year nearly 15 million girls under 18 year olds are married (Sustainable Development Goals, 2016).

Although in recent years the number of women participating labor market has increased, barriers to gender equality in jobs have remained. A study by Haralambos and Holborn (2008, p. 123) shows that female workers accounted for 79% in social work and 73% in teaching while 71% of sales managers and 76 % people working in in transport were male. Women are seen as having few chances in jobs that involve science, technology, engineering and math. They are assigned to unpaid works such as housewife and childcare. An estimated the number of this workload workloads cost about $ 10,000 million in global per year, and this figure was bigger than the sum of GDP of India, Japan and Brazil (Bich Diep, 2017). It is not only unequal working in kind of jobs, women also have not achieved equality of pay. A research of Harvard graduates in US pointed out that average earnings in 2005 for women were $ 90,000 while that for men were $ 162,500. In full-time jobs, average wages were $112,500 for women but $187,000 for men (cited in Gaag, 2014). Gender inequality does not only exist in aspects of life; the positions of women seem to be not appreciated in politics. According Peters (2015), women just hold about 25 percent of parliamentary seats in almost countries and many of them manage on social sectors. He claims that “Even when elected, women are seldom appointed to significant legislative committees or awarded the most prestigious ministerial posts”. All of the above, it can be said that gender equality in women is one of the most serious problems nowadays.

On the other hand, gender equality is also an issue of the men. In many cultures, men are considered as “breadwinner”, it means that they have to be “tough”. This attitude put burden on men in responsibility for their family. In addition, in some circumstances people did not mention to men right in gender equality, they assert that all the victims of gender inequality are women. However, the percentage of man suicides in Europe are four times higher that of women with more than 43 000 European men killing themselves every year and mental health services for men are less than women (Whitley, 2017). He also criticized that The European Parliament Committee for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality ignored men’s right in the report in February 2017. In specific, this report calls equality for females to receive benefits and excludes to male’s right, it is not true with the content of gender equality. Therefore, gender equality is a social issue, both men and women need ensure that they are equal right in every aspect.

Reasons Why There Should Be Fight for Gender Equality

In the Declaration of Independence of almost countries, equality right is always mentioned. It means that equality is a human’s right, no one can dispossess this privilege of other. Among these rights is gender equality. To accelerate the development of economy, polity and society, it is necessary to ensure gender equality. There is no doubt that gender equality brings numerous benefits for individual and community.

With women, gender equality is a revolution that rescues more than half of people in over the world. According to Rahman (2017), there has been incorporated between gender equality in women and sustainable development goals of UN. Firstly, Gender equality will help tackle poverty. Women account for 70% of “ultra-poor” people, so putting the end of poverty depends mainly on them. Therefore, if women and man are equal in work choices and earning capacity, the percentage of poverty will decrease. Another development goal of gender equality is that helping people graduate out of hunger. In many agriculture countries, women make up a large percentage of agriculture labor. If women farmers have the right to make decisions about using land agriculture as men do, they can support about 90 to 130 million people. In fact, women consist of more than 60% of the world’s illiterate population, but this problem can solve by implementation gender equality (Shields, 2014).

Not only bringing profits for women, gender equality also gives many advantages for men. Shields (2014) said that males will not withstand the burden of being breadwinner and can empress what they feel without worrying about looking down on of other people. Besides, gender equality drops domestic violence rate when males care about women’s rights and respect them. It can be said that gender equality is the base of civilized society. “Without gender equality, no nation will see the full capacity of its economy or education. No nation can operate at its fullest when half of its population has no voice and no rights” (Shields, 2014)

Suggestions to Make Gender Equality A Reality

Gender equality cannot be achieved if people just say and don’t fight for it. Gender equality is not only a short space of time; it is a long campaign which need to be done as soon as possible. The first step to achieve gender equality is raising awareness for men. It is necessary for men to be educated to think and behave properly to women. Some small actions such as man making rude comments about women and harassment in public transports or social media promote disrespect with women, it can trigger for a numerous of serious violation women’s right (Soloranta, 2015). Moreover, both men and boys need to be included in the movement for gender equality. Gender equality will be meaningless if it come from one side. Males should stand up to fight for women and for their benefits.

Another way to develop gender equality is using social media. According to Herman (2015), Mlambo-Ngcuka and the UN Women team used social media like a tool to tackle gender inequality. As the result, #HeForShe campaign succeed when it attracts 150,000 Twitter followers, over 260,000 Facebook likes and endorsements of a large number of men in the world. Mlambo-Ngcuka said, “By the time I went to work at UN Women, I was very clear that technology was going to be part and parcel of what I’m going to use to reach out to both men and women in the world, for them to be part of trying to solve the problems” (Herman 2015).

Finally, to promote gender equality in the most complete way, it is necessary to empower for women in economy. Joshi (2016) claims that it will take over another decade to bridge the gender gap. In this context, High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment will make some plan to solve this problem. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon states that “The empowerment of the world’s women is a global imperative” (Joshi, 2016).

Conclusion

Base on analyses in above, the research illustrates the unequal problems that exist between males and females in many fields like economy, politic and society. In fact, gender equality has created advantages for both genders. It resolves issues that involve poverty, hunger and illiterate population, and it also changes out date attitudes. However, to make equality a real is more difficult than saying. Therefore, it is vital to require specific solutions and plans to achieve gender equality. Three main actions are then proposed from the research to help maintain gender equality, namely changing men attitude, propaganda by social media and empowerment for women. It is strongly believed that gender equality will soon become reality.