What is the #MeToo Movement?

The hashtag MeToo movement is a female populist movement of the early twenty-first century. It originated as a hashtag label on a popular social media platform, Twitter. The #MeToo quickly rose in popularity following wide usage of it to address the issues that women have faced in relation to workplace sexual harassment.

Wide usage of the hashtag movement eventually led to the emboldenment of women in sharing their sexual harassment stories. Women became more courageous and confident in telling others about how they have been harassed, knowing for a fact that they are not alone in the predicament that they were facing. More women began sharing their stories online in hopes of encouraging others to press on in the face of adveristies.

Why is sexual harassment in the workforce particularly bad?

Sexual harassment in the workforce is particularly detrimental in the sense that it impedes the progress of a company. Companies can be impaired economically, when lawsuits are filed and employees have to miss work to attend court hearings as the suspect of sexual harassment. The namesake and reputation of companies would also potentially be at risk if a company is accused of encouraging a culture of sexual harassment in its workforce. Companies are profit-driven, and having a bad representation would be extrememly detriemental to companies through the loss of potential investors and customers.

Hence, many companies tend to do their utmost in silencing cases of sexual harassment in their companies. This can mean silencing the victims into submission by brute force or by bribing them monetarily to prevent them from reporting the case.

Often in times, sexual harassment occurs in the form of a male superior and a female sub-ordinate. The female is often lured into sexual advances by the male predator through supposed benefits to female once she concedes to the male’s requests. Some females who are desperate to advance in their career would inevitably succumb to their male superior’s generous offers. Such was the case of Harvey Weinstein, who had allegedly misused his powers as a reknowned Oscar Award winning film producer to sexually advance Hollywood star actressess such as Angelina Jolie, and model Cara Delevinge.

What are the advantages that the MeToo movement has brought about?

The MeToo movement has been effective as it has resulted in more people coming forward to share their sexual assault stories. Before the MeToo movement, sexual assault was a rarely discussed topic, and it was often regarded as “taboo” to speak about it. This was partly due to the fact that before the MeToo people, people’s awareness of such issues were generally less significant, and there were negligably zero avenues dedicated to tackling such issues of sexual harassment. There also lacked a public sphere for people to discuss these problems openly.

The MeToo movement is a stepping stone that women of the twenty-first century has taken to advance gender equality in the workforce. MeToo originated with a group of women who wanted to spread the important yet crucial message: that women were not just sexual objects of men to be used for their own pleasure. It sends across the vital message that women should be treated with dignity and respect, and that they had the absolute say with regards to their own body. It also apprises men that sexual mistreatment of women would not be a situation treated light-heartedly, and that dire consequences would have to be faced if one was to cross the line.

Who is most served by mainstream feminism?

Feminism, by definition, is supposed to be inclusive of everyone, regardless of race, language, gender or religion. However, in status quo, the MeToo movement is increasingly protrayed as a problem that only white, heterosexual cisgendered women face. The hard reality is that racism and discrimination still exists in the treatment of whether someone is deemed appropriate to be treated as a victim. In such cases, blacks, gays, homosexuals etcetera would obviously be at a disadvantage when they are also in the line with white privileged women, waiting to be granted their rights.

Many deplore and critisize the innate flaw of the MeToo movement, which is often scaled more to benefit the rich white population of women. This is especially evident as statistics have shown that the amount of news coverage that a white women would gain regarding the violation of her rights is disproportionately higher than that of a black women.

Groups of marginalised women felt that the movement had not spoke for them enough and that the feminist movement lacked inclusivity. It did not care about the impacts and the different ways that racism has shaped their lives as women of colour.

An anoymous interview by Middle Ground, a NGO aimed at increasing public awareness

Has the MeToo movement brought about more harm than good?

Although it is undeniable that the MeToo movement has indeed brought about much progress in advancing greater gender equality between the sexes, there are still many harms that are inherent to the movement itself. In every movement, there would inevitably exist people who would benefit from the movement, and others who would be on the losing end.

Men are now afraid to be in the same room with a younger colleague alone as they are afraid of being accused and having their namesake slandered and defamed. This poses a great hindrance to companies as it is necessary for companies to have private meetings to discuss proposals and come up with business strategies etc. Others are apprehensive to have dinner with a female colleague one on one. As a result, some may chose to have only the same sex or only males on their businss research team. This is to reduce the possibility of themselves being accused of being sexual predators, as the new media so often protrays men to be. In the long-term, this may eventually lead to companies only hiring males as they would no longer have to deal with complains of assaults in their companies. Is this neccessarily what women want?

Netflix film crew were reportedly banned from “looking at anyone for longer than five seconds, no lingering hugs, no flirting and no asking for a colleague’s phone number.” in the #metoo crackdown. Netflix’s new anti-harassment training in the wake of the meetoo movement has greatly disrupted production on it’s House of Cards show.

A commentary on the MeToo movement by The Independent magazine

Interaction between workers are innately crucial for progress to be made. The above extract however, shows that we instead coming up with reasons to build walls and barriers between the sexes and limit basic interaction just so that there will be lesser opportunities for potential inappropriate behaviour.

~post by Charlotte 🙂

Iceland is currently ranked the first country in gender equality.
Iceland’s accomplishment and progress can be attributed to women and men sharing power with each other as decision-makers and gradually having more men supporting the give and take of gender equality. It is the initiatives which Icelanders take to treat everybody equally despite of gender disparities. This mindfulness of gender equality reaps happiness
in the country, as everybody has mutual respect for one another.

This is a result of the collective actions of female rights defenders and campaigns. Women taking power and defying the stereotype of inferiority, and the understanding that all human rights should be valued and respected regardless of gender.

All these are measures which Iceland had taken in order to become the top country for gender equality. It not only shows the collectivism of Iceland, but also acts as an inspiration for other countries to work towards equality of status and power.

Citation

Marinósdóttir, M., Erlingsdóttir, R., Equality Unit, Ministry of Welfare, Equality Unit, & Ministry of Welfare. (n.d.). This is why Iceland ranks first for gender equality. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/why-iceland-ranks-first-gender-equality/

~YiQin

To start off, gender inequality is not constricted to one geographical location only. It exists in most areas of society, and is still happening today. To further understand the impacts of gender inequality on society, we shall look into four case studies; Iceland, USA, Singapore and Pakistan.

To answer this question, we have to first understand what the original definition of feminism was. Historically, feminism refers to:

“The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.”

UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson

However, over the years, the definition and public perception of feminism has underwent multiple alterations. To genuinely understand how the definition and meaning of the word “feminism” has changed along the years, a crucial aspect of this is to analyse the stages of feminism. Looking at the multiple waves of feminism would enable us to understand how it has truly grown and changed along the years.

First Wave Feminism

First wave feminism occurred from the nineteen century to the early twentieth century (1848-1920) . This time period saw the process of women redeeming most of the rudimentary legal rights that we are able to enjoy today. Gaining political equality between the genders was the key objective of first wave feminism. A key defining event of First Wave Feminism is women gaining suffrage and the right to vote. First Wave Feminism also brought about a greater discussions of the role of women in marriage, and the amount of power that a men is entitled to have over his wife after marriage. Through first wave feminism, the ideology that men are more superior than women in marriage has been somewhat abolished. It came to public perception that men no longer had the legal authority and power to wield power over their wives. This lead to women having a greater say in the household than before. In this wave, significant effort has been put into eradicating the perception that men were innately superior and more important than women. This is also evident through the the legalisation of women’s involvement in politics. The fact that their vote is now registered as a verified ballot shows how women’s vote has been increasingly regarded. The change in society’s perception of women has also grew in their capabilities to not only be keepers and house wives. The sphere in which women are not able to involve themselves in has expanded to include previously male-dominated aspects, such as politics and law-making.

Second Wave Feminism

Second wave feminism started from 1960 and lasted till 1980. This wave of feminism focused on increasing women’s human rights in issues such as family, workplace and reproductive rights. In the aspect of family, domestic violence and marital rape was addressed. Laws were implemented to make the rape of women by their husbands illegal. Reproductive rights of women referred to making abortion legal and accessible to women regardless of race, religion or sexual position. This also included increasing women’s accessibility to sexual reproduction knowledge, and making female genitalia mutation (FGM) illegal.

Third Wave Feminism

This wave of feminism started in 1980. It focused on increasing the rights of women in the workplace, and implementing policies against workplace sexual harassment. This wave of feminism also worked towards increasing the number of women in positions of power and authority. This included having more women wielding positions in the government and also having more women in company’s board of directors.

Through analysing the waves of feminism, this has allowed us to better understand the dynamic nature the complex issue of feminism. The definition of feminism has been constantly evolving and changing, and its definition has constantly expanded to include a greater number of aspects.

~by Charlotte 🙂

Women are often seen today, to be paid less than men, despite having to carry out the same work duties and do the same work load. Women in the past, are often deprived of their right to work and would usually stay at home to do household chores while men will go out and work. Even though women, today, have caught up with men in terms of education, the problem arises when young adults try to balance work and family, resulting in women, having to put more time into these household activities as compared to men. This is a great disadvantage to women in the workplace.

An example of gender inequality can be seen from how there are only 23 out of 239 VC-backed unicorn companies across the world which have female founders. Furthermore, in every 100 men who are promoted to manager level, only 79 women are promoted. This difference highlights how gender inequality is prevalent in our society today.
As shown on the graph above, males have a higher annual income than women in every aspect despite receiving the same level of education attainment. This states the unfair treatment of women in the workplace.

The mental health effects of sexual assault and rape can have jarring results on women’s stability and livelihoods. Women who have experienced sexual or physical abuse at the hands of their partners are likely to have an abortion, almost twice as likely to have depression and, in some regions, 1.5 times more likely to acquire HIV compared with women who have not experienced partner violence.

The prevalence of sexual assault and violence against women is deep and systemic, making it one of the most important examples of gender inequality. Worldwide, around 120 million girls, a number which represents slightly more than one in 10, have experienced forced intercourse or another forced sexual act in their lifetime. The graphs above state the abuse females suffer as compared to men. Even in developed countries like United States, females tend to receive higher harassment than males.

Even from a span of 1996 to 2014, the proportion of members of parliament who are female to male did not increase. Females in the government only increase from a mere 29 percent to 31 percent while males still remain 2 times higher than females. There is growing evidence that women in positions of leadership and political decision-making improve the systems in which they work.

Almost 750 million women and girls in the world alive today, get married before their eighteenth birthday. Those who suffer from child marriage often experience early pregnancy which is a key factor in the premature end of education as they need to take care of their children and thus, becoming housewives. As mothers and wives, girls become socially isolated and are at an increased risk for domestic violence. Child marriage is one the most devastating examples of gender inequality, as it limits women’s opportunities and their ability to reach their full individual potential.

Gender equality in education

There are some barriers to education. One of the most major barriers is poverty. Poverty hinders many from having the right to have access to education and this results in a repeated cycle of poverty. In the past, if one could only afford to send one of their children to school, it would have most likely been the boy as many women and girls around the world are forced to spend many hours in a day doing household chores, fetching water and caring for relatives while the boys attended school.

For example, according to the Global Education Monitoring report, in all regions except sub-Saharan Africa, children from rich families, girls and boys, get to attend all levels of basic education. However, girls from poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Northern Africa and Western and Southern Asia, are less likely than their male peers to attend school and this lack of participation increases at higher education levels.

Less than 40 percent of countries offer girls and boys equal access to education and only 39 percent of countries have equal proportions of the sexes enrolled in secondary education. As shown on the first graph above, males have a higher annual income than women in every aspect despite receiving the same level of education attainment. From the second graph, it shows the percentages of each gender receiving education. Males outweigh females. The number of illiteracy for females are also much higher compared to females. It is stated that there are approximately 774 million illiterate adults in the world and two-thirds of them are women. There are approximately 123 million illiterate youths and 61 percent of them are girls. Women’s share in the illiterate population has not budged in 20 years. These facts not only affect women but their children as well. A child born to a mother with the ability to read is 50 percent more likely to survive past age five.

There are 4 major examples of gender inequality from the female perspective. Those include: 1)Education 2)child marriage 3)representation of females in government and workforce 4)violence against woman, sexual assault and rape, and lastly, 5)workplace.

Women have been subjected to such struggles since the early years. Although countries prosper and continue to develop, gender inequalities for females are still present in current society.

Borgen, C. (2019, April 23). 10 Important Examples of Gender Inequality Happening Today. Retrieved from https://borgenproject.org/examples-of-gender-inequality/