Jornal do Agrupamento

​Discrimination is a way of making a distinction or treat someone unfairly. Women have been considered to be less capable than men and for years they have fought. Despite great accomplishments made by the international women’s rights movement over many years, girls are still married as children or trafficked into forced labor and sex slavery. They are refused access to education and political participation.

Does a woman have a right to control family size, to equality of treatment in the workplace, to equality of access to military assignments? In the ancient, classical and medieval world, women were considered equivalent of slaves; they were obliged to stay home at all times and all jobs (outside the house) were closed to them. In the NOW Statement of Purpose of 1966, the “fullest human potentials of women” were developed and almost two decades after, in 1981 with the United Nations Convention on rights of women happened the elimination of prejudice in public education and of child marriage and was given them full political, divorce and payment rights. The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark are considered the top three countries with more gender equality and already taken steps to reduce the gender inequality in their societies.

Although these changes keep happening, in many countries women are still unable to purchase their own property, vote or even wear what they want as in Mauritania or Mali, and in Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan female genital mutilation still occurs. One of the biggest issues of the gender inequality is the gender wage gap, still persisting almost five decades after the equal pay act was passed in 1963 with, on average, women earning about 80% as much as men. There are just a handful of jobs in which women earn slightly more than men, compared to hundreds of occupations in which they make less, for instance salespersons, real estate brokers or financial advisors.

As for the above reasons, children are still being influenced to divide behaviours for girls and boys as they are given gender-specific toys and are distinguished by the colour of their clothes or even the colour of walls of their rooms. When they enter in school they feel the social pressure to follow certain paths trough out their studies. This happens because when companies want to hire they don’t respect gender quotas for example security guards, caregivers, electricians. Fights have been taken in order to reformulate some job names that are considered sexist; the terms ‘fireman’ or ‘barman’ have been replaced by firefighter and bartender and author now taken on a female form – authoress.

Although these changes seem small, they make huge differences in the lives of youngsters and the recognition of women in underrepresented labour markets. Throughout our lives, we see and feel this problem, and it isn’t going to stop if we don’t act, girls keep listening: “You can have ambition, but not too much, you should aim to be successful but not too successful otherwise you will threaten men”, therefore what is important is following the right ambitions as strong efforts brings to effective results.