Word Count:1478
ZHERUI HUANG
ENGLISH 1A
PROFESSOR JORDAN HAYES
2014/06/27
RESEARCH PAPER
Women Can Hold Up Half the Sky
Caroline Elkins, a New York Times reviewer, says this of Little Bee:Like Little Bee, Sarah is a survivor. But the lessons of the past are not enough to steer either woman to safety. Instead, in a world full of turpitude and injustice, it is their bold, impulsive choices that challenge the inevitability of despair, transforming a political novel into an affecting story of human triumph.
According to Elkins, her review clarifies that woman is living insecurely in the world: Although Sarah and Little Bee, two women who are lucky that survive in the Nigerian oil war, there are so many women who are not so fortunately to live in the world. However, she does not emphasize enough how significant that human rights are to women. The lack of human rights for women mostly brings the gender inequality to women, meanwhile, women always have lower social status than men in some undeveloped countries such as Nigeria and India.
Nowadays, the world is busy working on the gender equality problem. Without the gender equality, this world is not harmonious. However, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), “No society treats its women as well as men.” In general, women always have lower social status comparing with men so that women are definitely living tougher than men, with women are usually more vulnerable than men on physical condition. In India and Nigeria, two undeveloped countries in the world, women are usually seem as instruments of birthing babies. Although women also take responsibility of earning money for household, they are still considered as “useless” in these two societies. As a result, there is no human rights and gender equality for most of Indian and Nigerian women. However, human rights and gender equality are two important issues that suppose to exist in this world and keep the world in balance since they both belong to every human being in the world.
Living in the U.S, women and men are basically equal due to the fact that America is a country mostly working on the freedom of the people in this country. However, in some other countries, such as India and Nigeria, women are not so fortunate as American since their countries are busying working on economic problems rather than gender problems. As a result, women in India have lower status than men because of their less application than men have. Women in India are suffering unfair treatment such as little schooling. According to the Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD), “only 54 percent of Indian women are literate as compared to 76 percent of men.” In India, migration is required in Rajasthan, a state in western India, because men need to go abroad to earn incomes for families. Meanwhile, women are commonly left behind to care and provide for the entire household, this situation consequences a 30 percent lower average wage of women to men in India. Since men mostly work and earn the money in India, women have only few application such as marrying at young age and birthing babies. Because of the simple application, women typically are the last member of a household to eat and the last to receive medical attention. Also, due to the fact that women ae not able to have even equal social status as men in India, female infanticide exists in India and this cruel behavior leads a consequence that for every 1,000 males living in Rajasthan there were only 922 women in Rajasthan, 2001. “Having sons is economically advantageous to families due to cultural institutions; these institutions serve to drastically devalue the roles women play in the traditional society” (FSD).
India is a country that women can hardly live happily in, however, India is not the only one country that treat bad to human rights of women. Nigeria, a developing country in Africa, has the same gender discrimination problem as India. In this country, women are always considered as the second class people behind men in society for a very long time. Same period in Nigeria, women do not have their own rights and voice at all, most men see the Nigerian woman as a gateway to child bearing, sexual satisfaction and orgasm. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(UDHR), it says “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination”(Article 7). But the truth is, while suffering the helplessness in their motherland, women are not under any protections of the law in this country. According to the Women In Oil Corporation (WIO), “Nigerian employment laws do not favor or protect women at all with most unable to get a job if married and laws on maternity rights are not enforced. Unlike the US and most developed countries, the Nigerian system does not offer systemic help for women in business loans, training, education or even household maintenance.” As it is shown, women in Nigeria are like instruments more then whole human beings.
Being a Nigerian or Indian, it might be reasonable to seem women in these two countries as some tools of birthing babies or satisfying their sexual wishes. People in there recognize women as the people are designed to contribute all they have into their society without asking any paybacks. So women are having lower social status than men is definitely a matter of course. However, human rights are the things that born for letting those gender discrimination extinct. Living in the U.S, a country with one of the most public freedom in the world, it is so hard to allow those gender inequality things happening in this world. As Thomas Jefferson first used the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, “All men (human beings) are created equal”, no one should have lower status in any times. It is incomprehensible to see a person as the second class behind others because of gender or something is impossible to change at all. Moreover, without women, men are not able to birth babies so far, if keep letting female infanticide happen in Nigeria and India, no one will be able to carry on the family line in these two countries in the future, and Nigerian and Indian are going disappearing until they are extinct because of gender discrimination. It is allowable to differ different genders’ responsibilities due to people are not having the same physic condition, yet seeing women and men as two totally different groups of people is the thing that never suppose to be allowed in this world.
India and Nigeria these two countries typically show the most miserable women in the world--they are poor, lack of human rights, and live the toughest lives all around the world. According to the World Developing Report, women have 52 percent of female labor force participation rates in 2009 while men labor force participation rates is 78 percent for the whole world, and this number of women labor is increasing each year. It is impossible to say women can not work as efficient as men, to extend it, women should have the same social status as men in some countries such as India and Nigeria which can not provide the social status and protections to women’s human rights. Due to the globalization, all the countries in this world are getting a whole organization. And because of this trend, taking gender equality this problem on becomes more and more important.
Like Adam and Eve, women and men are designed for each other. Human has different genders because each gender has its reason to exist and stay. Both Male and female are as significant as each other. Without men, this world will become powerless; but without women, human being is going extinct. For me, gender discrimination is ridiculous, women are not suppose to live behind men. And people should not seem women as the second class people in the society because it is impossible to define which finger to you is useless. It is the time to stand up for keeping women as equal as men, every human being was born for equal. And for sure, women can and ought to take the responsibility of holding up half of the sky.
Work Cited
Gender Equity Issues in India, FSD: Foundation For Sustainable Development http://www.fsdinternational.org/country/india/weissues, Web, June 27, 2014
GENDER EQUALITY IN NIGERIA, WIO: Women in Oil. http://www.dukwe.com/wio/genderequality.php Web, June 27, 2014
UDHR: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ Web, June 27, 2014
UNDP: United Nations Development Programme. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home.html Web, June 27, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment