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  • Essay / Gender Hierarchies, Stereotypes, and the Struggle for Equality

    While women have made major strides in fighting traditional social norms, gender hierarchies continue to repress women socially and economically to this day. Gender relations are hierarchical in that men and women are not neutrally distinguished from one another, but rather evaluated differently according to a standard of social norms and accepted behaviors. Society as a whole is fundamentally hierarchical. It is imperative that people recognize the inequalities that exist within our society and how little has changed to develop social norms beyond the traditional stereotypes that have existed for centuries. Some may believe that women and men are treated equally, but this is not true because ___. Gender hierarchies are obviously present in our societies because women continue to fight against wage gaps and traditional social stereotypes. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay For decades, a significant wage gap has existed between the salaries of women and men. According to a study by the Institute of Women's Policy Research, “they [women] receive more college and graduate degrees than men. Yet, on average, women continue to earn considerably less than men” (Childers). Women working full time earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 18 percent, and women will not achieve equal pay until 2058 (Hayes). Some deny the existence of the gender pay gap, but they are wrong. Even after accounting for variables that may have an effect, such as experience, age and education, the gender pay gap remains a stark reality. It exists at all levels and in all sectors of the world. While women earn approximately 56% of all bachelor's degrees in the United States, as increasing numbers of women seek higher education, women continue to earn less than men at the same level. of education. One explanation for this phenomenon is that jobs held by women are less valued than those of men. As women enter a field, salaries decline. For example, when large numbers of women moved into the fashion industry, their salaries fell by 34%, and when they moved into the field of biology, salaries fell by 18%. (Levanon, England, Allison). These trends clearly illustrate how society trivializes the importance of women and their contribution to the workforce compared to men, and this may be linked to the gender hierarchy and how women are seen as less important than men in society. If women were valued with the same importance as men, the influx of women entering a sector would not have created a drastic effect on the salaries of people working in that sector. Women have been trying for decades to escape the constraints of traditional gender stereotypes. . Gender stereotypes create expectations about how we are supposed to act, speak, dress, and conduct ourselves based on our sex, and they have the ability to suppress the potential of individuals who wish to break away from societal norms. . According to the article "Depressing Study Finds Gender Stereotypes Haven't Changed Since the 1980s", a study "...found that the students they studied in 2014"