In the modern world, women have become a very important part of the social, economic and political life in addition to the strong family positions that a woman holds in the society. This has been attributed to the efforts put towards the recognition of the women, their important activities and the great role they play in all aspects of the society. This began in the 1970s in the west, and soon became worldwide phenomena. The modern woman can therefore be recognized within her own society and beyond (Keber, 1998).
Despite these achievements, I myself as a woman have undergone through various challenges and endured various problems in my entire career and social life. Since my childhood, I have witnessed various scenes in which a woman, and sometimes myself, has been exposed to some sort of challenges in one way or the other, merely because of the gender being recognized as a weak part of the society.
As a child within my neighborhood, there were various occasions in which I witnessed woman being mistreated by their men folk in one way or the other. For example, I remember one day while I was still a kid, probably four year old, when I witnessed a neighbor, probably twenty nine year old, being beaten mercilessly by the husband while the entire village just kept off the scene.
Although by then I could not understand why this was happening, I heard people say that the woman had become very notorious, always coming home late, as late as seven o’clock, from her place of work. I could not reflect or connect the situation since most of my neighbors usually returned home very late, and my father, as well as the man battering his wife was not an exception. That day, during our supper, my parents realized that I was not concentrating in our family discussions, and thus confronted me, demanding to know why.
My response shocked them, or so I thought. This is because I challenged them asking why the neighbor had to be beaten mercilessly because of coming home late, yet the man, my father and mother, usually returned home late. According to my suggestion then, each of all these people should be punished just like the neighbors wife.
During my school days, there are several cases of female child maltreatments which we had to go through, mainly due to the fact that we could not realize that we had some rights to fight for. For instance, we women children had to clean the class room each and every day, arrange the furniture and even do the same to our teachers rooms, while all this time our classmates, the boys, were supposed to be playing soccer ‘in order to strengthen their masculine skills’.
Although these young men, the lads, were just as innocent as we were, the teachers had the mentality that women were merely objects of use in the society. They believed that they were teachi8ng women to be home makers, while men to be professionals. I once confronted the class teacher, asking why this was so, while all this time I used to see women athletes, soccer stars and in all other fields that men participated in the television. The teacher, surprisingly a lady, just warned me of interrupting the school system (Keber, 1998).
I attribute this to the mentality held by the society at the time that women were doomed from participating in some activities recognized as men dominated, and which often were of very high economic, social and political advantage to the participants. Although these vices are no longer are seen in the modern school systems, there are still some varying degrees of female child maltreatment. For instance, it is known, in the modern world of science and technology that women are just as bright or smart as men, but normally perform somewhat less successfully in technology, education and other field due to the biological based problems they go through in their development stages (Keber, 1998). For example, some female students are known to have very serious menstrual periods, including excessive pain, and often falling into few days of apparent sickness. In this case, the system expects these students to perform just the sane as men folk who are biologically advantaged in that they never undergo any pain or hormonal changes unless when under illnesses or medication.
The education system provides the same exammm9ination, same reading and revising periods and the same criteria for qualifying for degrees, certificates and other honors which determine our careers. The resultant is that women perform poorly due to the physiological and psychological effects of these, and thus become few in the qualification lists. In turn, the number of women in some professional and career becomes very weak, as men tend to dominate, not due to their stronger gender, brain or other form of stringy, but due to unequal categorization of gender in our own societies.
I myself am a victim of this effect. During my high school and college days, I normally received very painful menses, which almost always affected my performance in academics and other activities. During the exams, especially most of my final papers, I normally experienced a period of moral demoralization, normally berceuse I knew I could perform better than even most of my male classmates, but which I failed because of my biologic al problems. This happens in more than five times during my high school and more than seven times in my college days (Keber, 1998).
At the work place, gender discrimination is a norm, even in the current world where persons are expected to be judge by their qualifications and abilities to perform their duties. For instance, I work in a university as a lecturer (senior tutor). In the college, I have observed that people, especially men, that women are in the university to take simple courses, tech simple units and even try as much as possible to avoid mathematics and science based subjects. Although this is somewhat apparent in most cases, I do not believe that we women cannot just perform as better, but I attribute this to the fact that history, traditions and culture of our universities are deeply rooted on the early notions that women should not pursue some careers. I do not blame out men folk for this, rather I do place the blame on we women ourselves because we tend to believe in theories, postulates and other notions which tend to shun our own existence in oe societies, yet we have the ability, the strength and the metal capacity to change this, and equalize our representation in the society with that of our men (Keber, 1998).
In addition to the discrimination on gender, racism has been another vice that has led to undermining women in our own societies. Despite the current trend and the steps taken so far to achieve a system of no racial discrimination, we the people believe that women, especially those from the weaker and minority groups in the society are quite weak, and unable to perform crucial duties that our men folk can perform. For instance, women from the black communities and other minority ethnic groups are the most persons maltreated in the American societies today. There are cases of some organizations shunning way ideas to employ black women due to traditional notions that these women cannot hold some executive positions in organizations, despite the fact that authorities have shown that women actually do perform, regardless of their gender or racial background (Keber, 1998).
In conclusion, I believe that our society has taken some positive steps towards achieving goals of a discrimination-free society. However, there are several initiatives which need be taken to address the issues of gender and racial discriminations. I believe the role of the government and other authorities are very mi8nimal in these initiatives, rather we the people are the ones to ensure that these vices are out done once and for all. This is because some discrimination against women and races are merely family or organization matters and those to outdo this is we the people.
References
Keber, L. K. (1998). Separate spheres, female world, woman’s place: the rhetoric of women history. The Journal of American History. New York, NY: Organization of American Historians.
