The Concept of Gender Discrimination - Essay Example

When reading section 2 of the Gender Imperative book, I was introduced to different new ideas and concepts about gender discrimination and gender violence. In many countries, women are treated like chess objects. The men in these countries act as the chess players, and are responsible for making important decisions, which only benefit them alone. They therefore, manipulate the chess objects, moving them in different directions for their own advantage. Overall, men disregard the contribution of women in important decision-making, and they do not care whether the decisions they make are accepted or not accepted by women. It was a new finding for me to know that women in Ethiopia are living in patriarchal society, where men are the dominant, as they create all laws and policies in politics and economy. Here, women do not have any role in the society. Instead, most receive the treatment similar to that of women slaves in the past. It was shocking to know that Ethiopian women work more than men do, yet they are paid less. The low income of the Ethiopian women has forced them to get involved in other jobs that include low human standards, such as prostitution, in order to get money to provide the basic needs for themselves and their children. Their suffering does not end by them selling their bodies to men; most Ethiopian women are infected with HIV. These findings make me question the effectiveness of the Ethiopian government. It is disturbing that this government has failed to embrace effective strategies to protect women. Another new concept that I learned from the reading was that there are different kinds of violence women suffer during conflicts. Apart from physical attacks, women suffer violence within the contexts of politics, inequality, rape, family, and peacemakers. Suffering from relatives was a new idea that I did not think of. Some women deliver their own member of family to justice if they are involved in corruption. This idea can be connected to our first reading in our first class, where the report explained the way women would define security, compared to men. To women security is the safety of her children and family and being able to provide all the basic needs for survival, while for men security is all about weapons and guns. Thus, it is painful for a woman to surrender one of her relatives, who is supposed to be under her protection and a part of her responsibility. However, if this member was not surrendered then he can affect her safety and safety of her other family members. Therefore, women fight to safeguard their safety. In addition, an interesting point to me was when the author argued that human security should not be based on the interests of the state, but on the interests of the people and their basic needs. It is hard for the government to accomplish this goal, as most governments think of their own interest and try hard to gain more power over other nation, which makes them fail to cover the needs of the people. Nonetheless, this can lead to civil war and other conflicts within the state, as people will fight for their security. When I started the reading of the Gender Imperative section 3, I was shocked by the quote that was included at the introduction when the women who wrote it described the way she was raped and included the name of the man who raped her. While reading what she wrote I felt the pain that she was feeling but still I could not imagine myself in her position, where I am calling for help and no one is responding. This made me think of what kind of society she is living in, and why the government was doing nothing to help her. If I were in her position, whom else would I have asked for help, if my government and my people were ignoring me. The cases of women in Bougainville, Guahan, Afghanistan, and Chechen made a clear explanation of gender discrimination in different societies that mostly have different beliefs and traditions. Indeed, women are used a lot as tool of war, where they are raped and harmed by the military power of their enemies and sometimes by the military of their own country. Such treatment of women makes me believe in the definition of human security that the author provided, which is categories based on four concepts; sustainable environment, survival needs, respect for personal and group identity, and protection from harm (*). If a government is not able to provide these four concepts in their country, and instead focused more on their military power, as they pretend it is for the best of the people and their protection, conflict will increase between different group identities against their government. This might be similar to what happened in Bahrain, where discrimination was between two groups of people, the Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. Both groups fought over their rights and call for the respect of their identity by the government, because the jobs were not divided equally between them, and the Sunni Muslims had more power over the Shia Muslims(*). When reading section 3, I did not learn many new things other than the two study cases in Bougainville and Guaha because I never heard. However, I started to think about many points and questioned the effectiveness of the police and law that call for the freedom of women and equality between gender, which are created by the human rights organization and the united nation. As I mentioned in my QIP, there are many polices and laws that are created to support women and help them to gain more power and a better position in their society, yet we still keep hearing about gender discrimination and how are women treated badly in wars. Nonetheless, this makes me believe that it is impossible for laws to be effective, when there is lack of understanding on how communities, where the laws should apply, are structured and organized. Read More