Introduction To Gender Equality

Gender Equality

Gender equality – a brief introduction
Human rights are for all human beings, men as well as women. This means that women are entitled to the same human rights as men. However, all over the world women have historically often been discriminated against in many ways, due to the fact that they are born as female and not male. Even though there have been some improvements, unfortunately, this kind of discrimination still exist in our societies. When trying to explain gender equality, it is good to start with a definition of the words sex and gender:
Sex: Biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women.
Gender: Socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society considers

A Reference Material. Applying RBA in the Project Cycle, p.11.
Inequality for Women
“Women and men are not created equal. They each have their God given strengths, focused on their responsibilities for procreation and family viability. Those differences are not easily dismissed… however those differences do not condone gender discrimination in society, and certainly not in the workplace.” (Malkin, 2005)
Women mostly have unequal access to health services and education, face glass ceiling at work place. Social customs that force or encourage girls into early child bearing and teenage marriages have dangerous and direct consequences for their health. There are much high levels of brutality and violence against women almost in all nations around the world. This could be among their families where it is treated a normal custom. Violence, in the span of armed conflict, is used to humiliate the rivals and also to undermine resistance and

More than seventy percent of poor in the world are women, while the number of females living in poverty has significantly and disproportionately increased as compared with men. Women also have unequal access to major economic resources like credit, capital, land and labor. Restricted opportunities for career advancement and employment are available for women. These limitations restrict the capabilities of women to improve their monetary and economic scenario. (Zinn, 2005)

Women are not represented appropriately at all levels of governments’ decision making in community, but specifically at national and regional levels. The legal system in most of the countries discriminates particularly against women in the fields of inheritance, family law, land ownership, property, criminal law and citizenship. The prosecution of cases, in most of the countries, involving violence against women is difficult and complex.
The discrimination specifically against girls and women- including economic discrimination, gender-based violence, harmful conventional practices and reproductive health inequities- remains the most persistent and pervasive form of inequality. Moreover, girls and women bear extra hardship during, as well as, after conflict and different humanitarian emergencies.

Gender Equality- An Established Human