本文主要是一篇论证性别不平等的，文章主要引用2017年全球性别差距世界经济论坛发布的报告来进一步引出美国性别的不平等，从教育、收入、经济等多方面来阐述性别不平等关于个人、社会造成的作用，英语论文范文，从而也进一步提出解决的方法和应对的措施。
I. Introduction
According to the 2017 Global Gender Gap Report published by the World Economic Forum, the United States was ranked 23rd. This placed America far below many European and industrialized countries. The fact is that pay gap between men and women is considerable high. Meanwhile, political participation of women at higher levels of government remains low, despite the important increases of female heads of department under the current administration Commitment to gender equality is evident. Though legislation passed in the 60s and 70s protected women's rights, there remains great activism amongst women's organizations to improve the rights and opportunities for women of all ethnic and racial backgrounds. Therefore, some feminists claim that for women in America, equality is still an illusion. No matter how the gender gap between men and women is, gender equality in America is not like what those feminists said, an illusion, though nowadays in America, gender inequality still comes in different ways. We have to acknowledge that some problems still exist. But the fact is that the American society is making progress in reducing gender inequality.
II. Gender equality in education and inequality job market
Gender equality is no more a question in education. Since 1980, more and more women have been enrolled in institutions of higher education, and the number has exceeded men’s. Today, men in America constitute only 42% of college students. Additionally, women receive a greater number of the honors degrees at many universities. For the Harvard University in 2017, 55% of the women graduated with honors while barely half of the men did so. In 2017, once again roughly 55% of women were awarded honors degrees compared with 51% of men. At Florida Atlantic University, not only did women make up 64% of the graduating class in 2017, they also received 75% of the honors degrees and 79% of the highest honors. According to census figures released in April 2017, among the population age 25 to 29, 36% of women had a bachelor degree or more, compared with 28% of men. (Hsu, 2017) Over the past decades, significant progress has been made with regard to higher education. Women’s school enrollment has increased a lot. From the figures above, we can tell that men and women in America now almost get equal rights to get higher education. The number of women who go to college has already exceeded that of men. To some extent, women are clearly trouncing men when it comes to academics.
As a result, gender inequality in education is less marked among young women in America today. How is gender equality of education in Japan? According to statistics from Wiki Gender of 2017 (Wiki Gender, 2017), in terms of the university (undergraduate) advancement rate, a gap between Japanese men and women still exists: 36.8% for women and 51.3% for men, although statistics showed us that percentage of Japanese women in higher education institutions, including junior and specialized training colleges, exceeds that of men. The gender gap of education in Japan is much wider when compared with America. Japan is a country famous for its Male Chauvinism. It is not surprised to find out that gender inequality still exists in terms of education. However, the Japanese, like the American, are making progress. According to 2017 Global Gender Gap Report, the educational attainment score of Japan is 0.9757, ranked 34th in the world. It means that Japan is getting closer to the equality level (score 1.00 means that the country has reached gender equality) in terms of education. In all, America does much better than Japan in educational gender equality. Even the figures show us problems, through them, we could see progress from both America and Japan as well.
Even though today’s work force has roughly equal number of men and women: 53% men and 47% women, gender inequality is still a problem in job market. As statistics showed, in the job market a woman earns only 80 cents for every dollar a man earns. Despite the huge advances women have made within the education system, in such supposedly merit-based, capitalist society, women cannot get equal pay as men. We can tell that women are still at a disadvantage in the workplace. Obviously, this doesn’t reflect the fact that women are equally qualified for the same pay for the same job as men. Even though women make great strides in workplace, gender inequality persists.
Wage gap is not the only thing that contributes to gender inequality in workplace. Women also face the glass ceiling in workplace. The following data shows some clear differences in occupation by gender: In 2017, 6.3% of the men in the workforce and 19.9% of women worked in an “office and administrative support” position. In “transportation and material moving operations,” 9.5% of men and only 1.9% of women worked these jobs (BLS data). On a more specific note, in 2017, of the Fortune 500 companies CEOs, 96.4% were men and only 3.6% were women. (Wikipedia, 2017) Today in the society, we can hear again and again from different sources that women are treated unequally in the job interview. When it comes to challenging jobs or anything worth great credit, more than often, women are ignored and downsized in the workplace. Also it is hard for women to get promotions in workplace.
The situation is not optimistic in Japan as well. Since the pattern of gender inequality still deeply roots in the Japanese, there are discriminations against women in Japanese job market, which is also reflected by the high gender wage gap, twice as much as the OECD average. Differently, parents in Japan find it hard to combine work and family commitments, psyche. As a result, both female employment rate and fertility rate are very low. According to the Global Gender Gap Report, female part-time workers in Japan accounted for 69.7% of the total part-time workers in 2017. There is a lack of women in supervisory roles (under 10%), and women are underrepresented in management track career positions, where females constitute only 3.5%. Consequently, in Japan, only one in five male employees works less than 40 hours, and only around one in two female employees does the same. Long working hours mean that mothers are responsible for the majority care of children, as fathers’ contributions to childcare are limited. Over two-thirds of Japanese women do not return to work after childbirth.
All these show that a woman’s success in school is hard to translate into success in the workplace and society. This disconnect could be attributed to gender differences and the different treatment each gender receives. We have been brought up in a society that expects girls or women to be demure, not aggressive. They are not expected to ask for a higher starting pay (or more of anything in general). Even so, one would expect that women would work harder than men on the job as they did in academia, and thus reach wage parity at some point in the middle of their career. One of the most commonly reasons given to explain this disparity is pregnancy. Women get pregnant in the middle of their career, they have to take time off and go on maternity leave. In addition, as mothers, women who are working just simply can’t work as many hours as men do. Nevertheless, they are also not thought highly of, when comes to undertaking important tasks like managing a company as a leader and making fatal decisions, because men are usually considered to be more powerful than women.
III. The impact of gender inequality
Through comparing gender inequality between America and Japan, it can be seen that both America and Japan face the challenge from gender inequality, though they have made sound progress in reducing inequality. Both of them should pay attention to this problem, because gender inequality has negative impacts on society and individuals.
To the society, gender inequality is the root of many problems. One of them is that gender inequality will undermine the competitiveness of our society. Because of gender inequality, some people shut the door of opportunities in women’s face. If we continue to do this, our society will waste a lot of talents. As a result, we are less likely to find the most suitable person for a job or a position. The loss of talents will lead to the reducing of competitiveness. The other impact of gender inequality is the reducing in the well-beings of the society. One thing closely related with gender inequality is poverty. As long as gender inequality continues to exist, it is impossible to fully utilize women as part of the labor force contributing to the economic growth of the whole nation. Woman will be still regarded as the one needs help from the society, thus extra resource will be distributed to solve the problems caused by gender inequality. That’s a vicious circle not easy to get rid of. Gender inequality is an obstacle to economic growth, so it is to the well-being of the whole society and nation.
To individuals, gender inequality posts great threat to the human rights of individuals. Because of gender inequality, the victims of it, mostly women, cannot enjoy the same right as other people in the society. Therefore, their rights are not ensured. Furthermore, this kind of inequality will cause hostility between men and women on some occasion, for example, workplace. It will do harm to the cooperation between different parties. For individuals, gender inequality is also a great obstacle to the realization of dreams and value. In some places, gender inequality stops women from getting better education, gender inequality stops women from getting the same job as men, and gender inequality stops women from being promoted in workplace. All these facts reflect that gender inequality is a hinder to personal development.
IV. How to deal with gender inequality
Gender inequality is a problem of the whole country, even worldwide. We should take actions to reduce gender inequality at no time. We can do a lot to reduce gender inequality. First, addressing gender inequality through social protection programs which are designed to increase equity would be an effective way of reducing gender inequality. These programs such as Community childcare to give women greater opportunities to seek employment, can provide women with supports in balancing their job and family. Thus they are less likely to be treated unequally to some extent. Second, the function of NGOs in protecting women from gender inequality should be noted. They are important organizations in supporting women with professional consulting when encountered with problem of gender inequality. Third, we can also rely on modern Information and communication technologies to tackle gender inequality. As digital information and communication technologies have the potential to get women accessed to employment, education, participation, protection, and safety, the natural affinity of women with these new technologies could provide them with a opportunity to reduce social discrimination. If women are provided with modern information and communication technologies, these digital tools will present them an opportunity to fight longstanding inequalities in the workplace and at home.
V. Conclusion
We should see the progress we made in reducing gender inequality. However, now is not the time to be complacent. In reducing gender inequality, America, even the whole world, still got a long, long way to go. We need the courage to acknowledge the fact that what we do now is far from enough to fight with gender inequality. Dealing with gender inequality needs the efforts from all walks of life. A civilized society needs tolerance for difference. To realize this dream, reducing gender inequality will be a good start.
Reference
Hsu, C. (2017). Gender Inequality in the Workplace. Retrieved July 8, 2017, from
Wiki Gender. (2017). Gender Equality in Japan. Retrieved July 8, 2017, from
Wikipedia. (2017). Inequality in the Workplace. Retrieved July 8, 2017, from
Mcgregor, K. (2017). Gender Equality in Japan. Retrieved July 8, 2017, from
C, R. (2017). Gender Inequality: Making Room for Girls. Retrieved July 8, 2017, from
Gaddis, R. (2017). Gender Equality in the United States: The Impossible
Dream? Retrieved July 8, 2017, from
Brummet, Q. (2017). The Effect of Gender Inequality on Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study. Retrieved July 8, 2017, from
World Economic Forum. (2017). The Global Gender Gap Report. Retrieved
July 8, 2017, from
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