Gender Discrimination 1

Weaknesses of the solutions proposed by Feminist Majority Foundation Organization:

Gender Discrimination

Kyaw Lin Han

ESL 115 M

May 8, 2012

Gender Discrimination 2

Strengths and weakness of Feminist Majority Foundation’s solutions

Gender Discrimination

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) (2011) reported that a group of six women

accused Walmart, the world largest supermarket chain, for paying less salary than men and

skipping them about promotions and discounts. Those women are aware of their rights and those

women rights do not come with mild evolution. Women rights evolved gradually from ancient

Greece to Today’s world on the cost of many lives and sacrifices. From no legal personhood, no

right to property and no political rights, it came all the way to access to political rights, birth

control and reproductive rights, property rights, education rights and so on. Although there are

many years of hard work in fight for women rights, gender discrimination is still happening

around the globe. (See chart below.) According to publicola (2010), an average salary of a

woman is 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. (para. 2). Not only in pay gap, woman get

second class treatment in politics, employment benefits, work environment, work load and being

traded as a “commodity” (Abrejo, Shaikh & Rizvi, 2009, p. 15). In order to solve the problem,

many governments and organizations come up with solutions to gender discrimination. One of

the well-known organizations is Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF). The mission of the

organization is to empower women economically, socially, and politically. With many years of

researches and experiences, although it provides several solutions to solve the problem, some

solutions might have flaws. Therefore this paper discusses the weaknesses of several solutions

provided by FMF to solve gender discrimination around the world, including working with

government and stopping gender discrimination in campuses, and offers several improvements

for each. Additionally, FMF should consider a new solution, stopping sex-selective abortion.

Gender Discrimination 3

Work with male dominated government

FMF had put in effort to work with government to fight for gender discrimination. The

organization’s current battle for equality is to post laws that favor feminism. According to FMF

(n.d), these actions include asking US leaders to stop Abstinence Only Programs and Telling the

President to reverse the HHS (Health and Human Services) decision on switching Plan B, drug to

prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex or birth control failure (planbonestep.com, n.d.), to

behind-the-counter status (CNN, n.d.) . They have also urged public to sign many petitions to

President and Congress to stop gender discrimination. Government is the most powerful

institution and laws are effective and forceful to solve the problem. Through public policy

development, FMF steps towards its aim of stopping gender discrimination.

Although FMF works hard to push government to pass feminism policies, there are still

many problems with this solution. One main problem is that most government positions are filled

with men and they might not be feminists. According to Center for American Women and

Gender Discrimination 4

Politics (2012), women hold far less percentage in government positions not only in present day

but also in the past. The current feminism opportunities and gender equalities regulations are the

result of years long fighting and campaigning. However, the growth rate of female positions in

government is disappointing with compare to the rate of campaigning. Even with the current

equality rules in place, without drastic change to the political systems, men will continue to

dominate. Only women will have the motivation to make these changes.

Singapore government leaders are traditional thinkers. Even policies are in place, women

cannot join politics easily because of two significant reasons which are culture and degree of

political democracy. Lyons (2005) supports that in Singapore, PAP (People Action Party)

support for traditional sex roles and continued gender discrimination in policy making (p. 249).

PAP deploys the traditional thoughts about women into people around the political system. For

example, thoughts such as women are not suitable for politic, women are not tough to lead large

population of people and so on. According to Lyons (2005), PAP members think suitable women

in politics are simply “can’t be found” and emphasizing that a better skills and qualifications are

not a focus for a political position. Therefore government leaders themselves are the reflections

Gender Discrimination 5

of traditional thinker and they did not even try to accept gender equality and they blamed the

society tradition and culture (Lyons, 2005). Secondly, the degree of political democracy also

keeps women away from political systems. Hussin Mutalib (2000) claims that Singapore’s model

of ‘inclusionary corporatism’ by which he means that the PAP plays ‘an interventionist, centrally

coordinated and paternalistic role in many sectors of society’ (as cited in Lyons, 2005, p. 237). It

means that PAP is like a parent of its own citizens and they are centrally organized to protect the

citizens and control society thinking. As the opposition party to PAP is weak, no strong

opposition is going to argue for gender equality. PAP has control over all political activities

including local council governance and cadre training, appointing executives and technical

managers within the bureaucracy and non-government fields (Lyons, 2005). Even though women

are given voting rights, the final decision is depended on only the ruling party. Therefore the

chances of women entering politics also depend on the degree of democracy of a country.

Now policies for women to join politics are in place and women can join Japan

government. Only women know and understand about women and only women government can

help feminism effectively. According to Takao (2005), in 1999 the government passed the Basic

Law of a Gender Equal Society for the first time. The law is an exemplar of gender equal society

and is the government support to promote equal gender opportunity and treatment in society (p.

149). Although woman’s right to vote and participate in public events are achieved, their

political representation is substantially low. If women want to bring some change, they have to

participate in the process of making it. Takao (2005) states that few countries have made changes

to their electoral systems in order to increase the women’s representation in government.

Therefore, the right move for the organization is that urging women to take government positions

instead of asking the public to sign the partition to change the current policy. If the government

Gender Discrimination 6

is a traditional thinker, women can change the culture of the government or the party by only

joining the government. According to Lyons (2005), the increasing representation of women in

Singapore parliament will not only change social attitudes about women MPs (Member of

Parliaments) but also encourage other women to join political system (p.246). It will both benefit

the feminist society and encourage more women to join politics. Therefore FMF should

campaign and encourage women to join politics instead of writing partitions to the government

to change the current policy.

Indirect gender discrimination

Gender discrimination starts from school so FMF claims that they should start by raising

awareness in schools by educating girls about women right and gender discrimination. Women

were ban from school in earlier days. Women became to realize their potential to impact the

country, they fought for their opportunities and then Title IX, that allowed women to get

education, is legalized. “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded

from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any

education program or activity receiving

Federal financial assistance.” Because of

Title IX, women had a chance to get higher

education. Now women graduating rate is

higher than men. According to National

Center for Educational Statistics (NCES,

2000), between 1979 and 2005, the percentage of master’s degrees earned by women increased

from 49% to 59%; during the same time period, the percentage of doctoral degrees awarded rose

Gender Discrimination 7

from 30% to 49% (as cited in Easterly and Ricard, 2011, p. 63). Therefore the situation of gender

discrimination in education is improved as compared to early days.

Although law is established to protect females, there are still some unconscious gender

discriminations happening in campus. The flaw of the organization’s solution is that the campus

itself still has gender discrimination. MIT noted in 1999 that “the campus was slow to recognize

other, more subtle forms of discrimination; it did not look like what we thought discrimination

looked like” (as cited in Easterly and Ricard, 2011, p.64). Easterly and Ricard (2011) argue that

recommendation letters written for women contain two times “doubt raisers” than those for men.

Recommendation letters for women are likely to focus on personal life and teaching but not on

research and skills. Therefore, women are ended up being assigned more teaching hours than

men. Women are usually lack of time to do research which is vital for publication and “building

their reputation”. According to NCES, in 1997 16% of female faculty at degree-granting

institutions had attained the rank of professor, a number that by 2005 had decreased to 15% (as

cited in Easterly and Ricard, 2011, p.63). Although more women are getting higher degrees,

women professors or faculty leave institutions because of those reasons (indirect gender

discrimination) given above.

Title IX is not well suited for current society as It was created in 1972. Therefore, today,

some of its policies are outdated. According to Walters and McNeely (2010), those areas include

compensation, pregnancy and care of dependents, sexual harassment and the work environment

(p 323-324). Women tend to get less pay for more teaching hours than their male counterpart.

(Walters and McNeely, 2010) Although there are policies for pregnant women such as tenure

clock, it is not easy to apply for one. Actually there are not many schools that allow pregnant

women to take maternal leave without being penalized. Carr, Szalacha, Barnett, Caswell, and

Gender Discrimination 8

Inui (n.d.) state that in one study, for example, 70 percent of female faculty in academic

medicine reported gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment (as cited in Walters &

McNeely, 2010, p. 324). Women faculty have limited lab access, equipment, fund, office space,

more teaching hours and mentoring hours, etc. These situations clearly states current Title IX has

room for improvement. Title IX is mainly describing situations between student and student or

student and staff. These situations are merely not enough for current society so Title IX is needed

to be adjusted.

Updating the current law is the most desire solution for gender discrimination. Gender

inequalities in schools are still in existence. More and more female are highly educated. It is a

lost that universities could not keep them. Law enforcements are required for female faculty to

get confidence in joining higher education. Walters and McNeely (2010) claim that creating

gender equality atmosphere in academic work place should be the goal of enforcing Title IX (p.

329). With laws that are properly adjusted in compliance with current society, women will get

equal chances to present their talents in schools and get equal benefits. If more female faculty

and admin are hired, they will protect feminism and make campus female friendly. They will

effectively reduce indirectly or directly discrimination against female in campus.

Stop sex-selective abortion

The root of gender discrimination exists at birth of a child which is called gendercide or

sex-selective abortion. FMF should pay attention to the issue as it is also gender discrimination

and it leads to many severe consequences. In some countries, cultures, policies and tradition

make people want male infant than female. Nowadays, people take advantage of technology in

such a way that they can know the sex of the unborn child. Abrejo, Shaikh and Rizvi (2009)

report that if these babies are identified as female, the lives of these unborn girls end in abortion.

Gender Discrimination 9

(Introduction, para. 1). The Economist (2010) reports that in China the imbalance between the

sexes was 108 boys to 100 girls for the generation born in the late 1980s; for the generation of

the early 2000s, it was 124 to 100. In some Chinese provinces the ratio is an unprecedented 130

to 100 (The dearth and death of little sisters section, para. 1). Therefore, the gender

discrimination is practiced even at birth so the organization should look into it.

Gender imbalance creates many problems and most of them are connected to gender

discrimination. Abrejo, Shaikh and Rizvi (2009) agree that “This ‘endangered sex’ or ‘missing

girls phenomenon’ is one of the worst forms of gender inequality affecting certain societies” (p.

10). The lack of women population is the main reason behind sex trafficking. Human trafficking

is not easy to solve as it relates to large numbers of people, resources, countries and corporations.

Hvistendahl (2010) agrees that human trafficking was changing the society of unbalanced sex

population countries (Suining county, China section, para. 4). It created a black market that trade

bride for money. The U.S. Department of State lists the lack of women in Asia is one of the main

causes of sex trafficking in Asia. Some of those trafficked women are sold for marriage. Others

become prostitutes (Hvistendahl, 2010, Suining county, China section, para. 4). In conclusion,

sex-selective abortion causes complex problem so the organization should consider how to stop

gendercide.

Another serious problem is that crime rate become higher in places with higher male

population. “One line of speculation centers on testosterone, which occurs in high levels among

young unmarried men. While testosterone does not directly cause violence in a young man, it can

elevate existing aggressive tendencies, serving as a "facilitative effect" that predicts whether he

will resort to violence.” (Hvistendahl, 2010, Suining county, China section, para. 5). Single male

is highly likely to become violent. For example, in China with millions of male unmarried, there

Gender Discrimination 10

are many crimes caused by unmarried male because of the biology reason and the enormous

population of unmarried. (Hvistendahl, 2010, Suining county, China section, para. 5). Therefore

sex-selective abortion not only just kills female infants but also results in serious problems other

than gender discrimination. The organization should add stopping gendercide to its solutions.

Ways to stopping gendercide has many solutions. The gendercide is caused by policy

(one child policy of China and lack of proper abortion law, male only inheritance law), tradition

(Dowry system in India), gender inequality (less benefits for females in all aspects) and early

revealing of unborn sex using medical technology. The most effective solution will be posting

proper abortion law. According to Abrejo, Shaikh, & Rizvi, (2009) the solutions is not only

passing proper laws that label sex-selective abortion as an extreme, serious offence, and to sue

those asking it as well as providers. (p. 15). Taking legal actions against those who are

responsible for gendercide not only will make mothers to rethink their decisions but also will

make hospitals and companies to contribute to the society and less advertisement for abortion

and ultrasound. Another way of stopping gendercide will be raising awareness of public about

sex-selective abortion. If more people aware of gendercide consequences, people will stop

practicing it. For example, parents of a mother will stop a mother from sex-selective abortion.

Society will help in prosecuting people who involves in gendercide. One organization called

Population Research Institute (n.d.) practice these solutions to fight gendercide. Therefore FMF

should consider them too.

Conclusion

As stated above, this paper has discussed the weaknesses and improvements of several

solutions provided by FMF to solve gender discrimination around the world, including working

with government and stopping gender discrimination in campuses. Furthermore, FMF should add

Gender Discrimination 11

a new solution that is stopping sex-selective abortion. Many serious problems are found to be

associated with gender discrimination. These include unequal employment treatment (salary,

benefit, etc.), unequal social status, sex selective abortion, gender population unbalances, human

trafficking and higher crime rate. Gender discrimination has gone underground and it has

become unconscious in many cases in today. With the rising gender discrimination, it will affect

the society of both women and men. Women will never have equal social status as men in terms

of salary, employment benefits, etc. If the sex selective abortion is uncontrolled and become

overly unbalance, the society pattern will change and there will be news about women trafficking

every day around the world. All the females will not have free and easy daily lives and they will

be fear of being kidnapped all time. Males won’t find a life partner and the reproduction of

human will become less and less and finally it will lead to the end of human world. A public

approach is to educate people around about gender discrimination, discriminative actions and

how serious the problem is. Therefore everyone is responsible for fighting gender discrimination.

Gender Discrimination 12

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of sex-selective abortions in South Asia. European Journal Of Contraception &

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dollar/

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