Helle everybody ! Today, i’m going to talk about gender equality.
Historically, women, as Bebel quotes, “were the first human beings to be enslaved”. Women were then dominated by the world of men.
Gender studies provide examples where the evolution of women’s rights alternates between phases of massive upheaval (May 68) and stagnation (where we have been since then) even though gender equality policies try to catalyze the expected changes. Between the right to exercise a profession without the husband’s authorization (1965) and the law for a real equality between men and women (2014), the road to an egalitarian society seems long. This is because the stakes (political, economic, socio-cultural, etc.) are so great that we still need time.
Moreover, numerous sociological and psychological studies show that inequalities persist and that the egalitarian laws and/or policies put in place by our institutions are insufficient to fight against inequalities. Taking the example of the gendered division of labor, it is expressed today not only by inequalities in terms of work and consequently in access to work, but also in the exercise of work itself. In fact, “reproductive” work has compartmentalized women inside the home, depending on men’s “productive” work outside the home as a source of subsidy for the needs of the whole family, thus creating a hierarchy of the system between the dominant masculine and the dominated feminine. This is because the society in which we live is the configuration of a binary “dominant versus dominated” organization, with the superior position for men and inferior for women.
Today, being a woman (in retrospect with being a woman 100 years ago) is at the same time being more “free”, having more rights and having more possibilities to evolve, but at the same time making her understand that she is asking “too much”. Today’s society tries to favor women but does not have the courage to “put” men in their place. A beautiful and sad facade!
Ambivalent sexism, both hostile and benevolent, is a good illustration of this. The disproportion between hostility and benevolence is so great that the balance is impossible to achieve, at least for the moment. Unfortunately, the principle of equity remains superficial.
Bibliography
Kite, M. E., & Whitley Jr, B. E. (2016). Psychology of prejudice and discrimination. Psychology Press.
LAUFER, J., MARRY, C., & MARUANI, M. (Eds.). (2010). Le travail du genre : Les sciences sociales du travail à l’épreuve des différences de sexe. La Découverte
Ndobo, A. (2010). Les nouveaux visages de la discrimination. De Boeck
Sarlet, M., & Dardenne, B. (2012). Le sexisme bienveillant comme processus de maintien des inégalités sociales entre les genres. L’année psychologique, 112(3), 435-463.