Education Of Girls example essay topic

In the history of the human race, men and women have rarely gotten along with each other. Since the dawn of time, the sexes have been fighting against each other with no end in sight. For a long time, men have ruled the world, but recently, that has started to change. More and more women are in the work force, government, and the military. However, men and women are still different, but this does not mean they can't be equal. Political cleavage was the topic of the group presentation.

We made up a fictional country with numerous problems based on different cleavages such as geographical, political, ethnic and regional, class and gender. The country is divided in north and south, north being the poorer part of the country but having the most important environmental resources such as the oil reserves. The south consists of the richer population who exploit the people from the north for their cheap labor. The country is in a state of emergency and needs to settle all the issues in various fields. Gender is one of the main cleavages which need to be focused on. The women of this country especially in the north have constantly been harassed and looked down upon.

Many rich men from the south have taken advantage of them, overworked them, and left them alone to take care of large families with little or no income. In the real world there are many countries that deal with the gender issues. Such as the countries which have endless supply of cheap, young, female labor, act as the cornerstone of successful export-oriented industrialization in East and South-East Asia. The share of women in the manufacturing sector often exceeded the percentage of men involved in Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. The increasing employment of women in the manufacturing sector has been confined to a limited range of export-oriented, labor-intensive industries. Within these industries women have been bunched into menial dead-end jobs that are ill-paid, repetitive and have poor career prospects.

A vast majority of women in Muslim countries have suffered discrimination for a long period of time. In countries like Afghanistan women are deprived the right to education, and quality health care. They are not even allowed to work and ordered to remain in their houses. They are controlled mostly by their husbands and cannot do anything that relates to politics or government. Women cannot wear make-up or brightly colored clothing, nor are they allowed to do anything recreational. They cannot leave their houses alone unless accompanied by a male member of the family.

When a woman does go against these cultural and religious laws, the usual consequence is a beating or stoning, which sometimes results in deaths. In China, many people live on the farm, and strong hands are needed in the fields; therefore, the Chinese favor sons over daughters. Sons take care of their parents in their old age, while daughters leave their homes when they marry and became part of the husband's family. Some parents sell the baby girls when they need the money; these girls are often brought up as household servants or as prostitutes. At other times, baby girls are drowned at birth. Women in China are still considered inferior to men.

A woman is expected to obey her father as a child, her husband as a woman, and her son in her old age. Before China was liberated by Mao's revolution in 1949, many women and children were sold by families that were starving. And even when families were not forced by poverty to sell a daughter, marriage was essentially a business transaction between families, with the woman having no choice in the matter. In revolutionary China, all of society was mobilized to struggle against the oppression of women and for the first time in history, the masses of Chinese women were able to raise their heads and smash all the traditions which had kept them in virtual slavery. But after Mao's death in 1976, socialism was overthrown.

Capitalism took control over the country which lead to the most barbaric treatment of women as private property and slaves. The constitution of India grants women equal rights with men, but strong patriarchal traditions persist, with women's lives shaped by customs that are centuries old. In most Indian families, a daughter is viewed as a liability, and she is conditioned to believe that she is inferior to men. Sons are idolized and celebrated. India has the largest population of illiterate working women. Parents have several incentives for not educating their daughters.

Foremost is the view that education of girls brings no returns to parents and that their future roles, being mainly reproductive and perhaps including agricultural labor, require no formal education. As more and more boys are engaged in education, girls are increasingly replacing their brothers on the farm while carrying on their usual responsibilities in housework. Women work roughly twice as many hours as men. Their work is rarely recognized. Women and girls are subjected to physical and sexual abuse as punishment or as culturally justified assaults. Similarly, in Africa women have always been active in agriculture, trade, and other economic pursuits, but a majority of them are in the informal labor force.

Most African women, face a variety of legal, economic and social restrictions. Indeed some laws still treat them as minors. It is often more difficult for women to gain access to information and technology and various other resources. Women end up working twice as long as men, 15 to 18 hours a day, but often earn only one tenth as much.

With such workloads, women often age prematurely. Lack of resources put enormous restrictions on the ability of women to maintain their own health and nutrition as well as that of their children. As a result, women are less well equipped than men to take advantage of the better income-earning opportunities that have emerged in Africa. Although it is evident that the overall status of women in the Third world and developing countries is poor it is not the same with the women in North America.

Women in America and Canada enjoy more freedom than any other women in the world. Until recently most women in these countries were considered inferior and deprived of many rights that were easily available to men. It took many years of struggle by strong women to bring equality between women and men by ensuring women's equal access, and equal opportunities in, political and public life including the right to vote and to stand for election, as well as education, health and employment. Therefore, even though the revolt for equality between men and women has become a major issue in every part of the world there are still many women whose voices are unheard and suppressed. There is no difference in color or race when it comes to problems faced by women all over the world.

They all deal with the same issues each and every day in a hope that some day the male dominated world would change its outlook towards them. In many countries women have gained equal rights through the constitution of their countries such as the United Stated, Canada, India, countries in Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, China and parts of Africa. However there are many countries in the Middle East that still treat their women as a weaker and inferior sex. Each person is created equal in the eyes of God regardless of their color, race, class or sex. These are all manmade boundaries that we all need to overcome in order to build a better future for our children.