What I Think Gender equality Truly Means

If you search up the meaning of equality, it comes up with the definition: ‘the state in which access to rights or opportunities is unaffected by gender’. What’s funny to me is that opportunities and rights are different for all genders. It is not just female and male we are talking about… we are all humans so why are we not treated equally?

In my opinion, equality is when the gender of someone does not effect the chances or opportunities that person gets in life. Lets say in one scenario, a man and woman both have the same qualifications and ability to do well and they both sign up to go for an interview for the job and the person examining the forms sees one of them is a woman and rejects her instantly because he/she thought she would not do well (based on her gender). This is gender inequality. If you think they are up to par with the expectations, they should be both allowed to try out for the interview with the same opportunities and the interviewer and accept or reject the person based on their attitude and intelligence but never their gender. This is gender equality.

You must be thinking, why is this scenario based on a woman getting rejected? Is it only woman who are judged on their gender? My answer to this is absolutely not. Every gender can be treated and judged unfairly. Even if it is a man who is studying to be a nurse, which is stereotypically a woman’s job, he should be never be told that he should be a doctor instead or his ability must never be judged solely on the fact he is a man.

Once again you might be thinking, so are adults the only people you are judged based on their gender? Once again, my response is no, absolutely not. For example, let us take a scenario where a teacher asks his/her class, “ I need two strong boys to lift these boxes for me”. You may or may have not experienced this but I can tell you I have. This is a covered act of gender inequality. If the teacher asked, “I need two strong people to lift these boxes for me”, it would have been fair. This teacher is essentially suggesting that only boys/ men are strong( which is certainly not true) and girls/woman are weak. This not only makes the woman feel weak in many situation, it also sets expectations to males that they have to be strong. This is gender inequality.

There are many other examples of gender inequality in society today such as:

• Wage gap
• Sexual harassment (many men and woman are scared to walk alone outside)
• etc..

These are the mere few i can think of right now but there are millions of people around the world who are suffering from gender inequality.

Fortunately, recently there are many positive responses toward gender equality which make people optimistic about a fair world in the future.

In simple words, gender inequality is a threatening problem which causes unfair treatment in society between different genders and many people are facing consequences just due to their gender identity.

However, by teaching people what gender equality means, there are also reasons to trust in the future of gender inequality being stopped. Then, hopefully, people can live in fairness no matter what gender they are.

So next time you meet someone for the first time, never let gender be part of your judgement!