Essay on Gender Equality

Question: Write about the Essay on Gender Equality. Answer: The structure under which females are treated at par with their male counterparts in every aspect is known as gender equality (Correa-Fernandes et al., 2015). The concept of gender equality has been a major concern in the global economy. The acceptance of the third gender into the community and providing them equal opportunity can be termed as gender equality too. Along with modernization and globalization, the participation of women in the economic activity rose sharply. They started becoming more independent and wanted equal treatment in the social, cultural and economic aspects of their life both within their domestic and working domain (Sen Mukherjee, 2014). This essay tries to construct a brief argument on the existence of present day gender equality within the global economy. Gender equality is necessary for the smooth functioning of a nation but statistical data reveals the existence of inequality and biasness among the gender groups in the world and is measured by the tool of Gender Inequality Index(GII) (www.hdr.undp.org, 2015). According to the human development report published by UNDP it can be stated that inequality still persists and the depth of inequality is quite large in some countries. Earlier data from the year 2008 suggests that the country ranking 1st in GII index has 17.4% inequality and the country with the highest degree of biasness has 81.4% inequality. According to the report of 2015, the country named Slovenia ranks first in the GII with an inequality of around 1.6% only. Saudi Arabia ranks 56th in the inequality index with existence of 28.4% inequality. Yemen is the country showing the highest degree of gender inequality. The inequality in Yemen is around 74.4% (www.hdr.undp.org, 2015). The argument that can be put forward with this data is that there is existence of Gender Inequality within the Global economy. People strive towards attaining equality in the society with respect to the gender group but end up creating discrimination between them. The stages where any women and people belonging to the third gender usually face discrimination are in their families, work groups and in between the peer groups. Gender inequality within the family takes in the form of male child receiving the maximum attention, in the work place they are offered better salaries (Sen Mukherjee, 2014). The reason behind the existence of three different gender group is purly biological and depends on the ways in which genes mutation. It is not in any peoples hand to choose their gender but still they discriminate based on this criterion. A recent issue of gender inequality at work place shows that females are paid less and given lower ratings even if they perform better than the male workers. According to the news published on the Fortune in 2015 it has been observed that the top-level company named Microsoft Corpo ration faced legal issues in this regard. Katie Moussouris, a loyal employee of Microsoft filed the case in the Seattle Federal Court against this discrimination of wages based on the gender of employee (www.fortune.com, 2015). Data also suggests that out of every 4 person from LGBT community 3 person are tortured in their workplace. Even the calculation of GII contains two-gender group, male and female, whereas the third group are assumed non-existing. All these fact clearly indicates the presence of inequality. The above scenario can be wrapped up by stating that facts suggest there has been an improvement in terms of reduction in disparity. The minimum level of inequality existing in the world decreased from 17.4% to 1.6%. The global economy is trying to overcome the problem of biasness through different policies and awareness programs. Recently people of LGBT community are getting vocal regarding their acceptance in the society and workplace and establishment of their rights, as their existence is normal like the existence of the other two groups. If each individual person changes their views on gender discrimination and accept humans as equal, then it can be expected that gender equality is going to be established in future. References: Correa-Fernandes, M., Dumas, B. K., Jones, C., Mbarika, V., Ong'oa, I. M. (2015). Gender and Development: A Literature Review. Gender Inequality Index (GII) | Human Development Reports. (2015). Hdr.undp.org. Retrieved 13 January 2017, from https://hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-inequality-index-gii Rao, L. (2015). Fortune.com. Retrieved 13 January 2017, from https://fortune.com/2015/09/16/microsoft-gender-discrimination-suit/ Sen, G., Mukherjee, A. (2014). No empowerment without rights, No rights without politics: Gender-equality, MDGs and the post-2015 development agenda.Journal of Human Development and Capabilities,15(2-3), 188-202.