Over the weekend, I watched one of my favorite movies, She’s the Man. This movie is about a girl who loves the game of soccer. One day her and her teammates show up to a practice, just to find out that the girls soccer team had been cut. The boys’ coach had no sympathy for the girls and refused to let them try out for the boys team. In despite of her situation, her brother was supposed to attend a new school, but instead of going he travels to London and his sister takes his place at the school. There, she dresses up as her brother simply so she can try out for the boys soccer team. After several days of hard training, she makes the team and gets put in the game against the rivalry school, which happens to be her old school. Finally, they figure out that she was pretending to be her brother the entire time. The opposing school said that she couldn’t play because she was a girl, but the school she was playing for had a coach that said, “Here at Illyria, we don’t discriminate based on gender!” After hearing this part, my mind thought about the several ways in which woman have dealt with this kind of injustice throughout the years.
One of the first examples of injustice I typically think of is women’s suffrage. From there, I think there was great progression, but the idea of gender inequality is something that I think is still relevant as the gender pay gap is still present, as “In 2020, women make only $0.81 for every dollar a man makes” (Gender Pay Gap Statistics for 2020). I think that this is a topic that is not something that people think about often, but after time would add up to be quite a big difference. I think that the idea that women are still looked down upon in some manners seems to be an underlying issue because it is not something that is often talked about in the workplace. There are parts of a woman’s life that are not only crucial to them, but for every human that is living on earth today.
Women are often mothers to the people that live in our world today. Without mothers’ care, love, and time, people would not be where they are today. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “… pregnancy discrimination has long been illegal, [but] workers who are pregnant or breastfeeding are often fired or pushed out of the workplace,” (ACLU). Women are the reason that babies are nourished to grow to be the people that make these businesses operate, yet they are the ones being punished for doing so. The idea that women could potentially lose their job for being the ones to take care of children, is an unfair stigma that should no longer hold a place in society.
Similar to concepts that we have covered in class such as the “Master-Slave Dialect,” or the “One” and the “Other,” are shown to still exist in today’s world because there is still someone who thinks they are of greater authority of another, therefore taking advantage of their position at work. In this case, women are seen as the “slave” and the “Other,” because they are treated of lesser value, and are being punished for giving life to the people that will someday be the reason businesses are still running.
Citations:
“Gender Pay Gap Statistics As We Near the End of 2019.” Birmingham-Reyes, C., & Blogger, C. (2019, November 18). Retrieved October 23, 2020, from https://whenwomeninspire.com/2019/11/18/gender-pay-gap-statistics/
“Gender Pay Gap Statistics for 2020.” PayScale, www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap.
“Woman Fired after Revealing Pregnancy” – video dailymotion. Glf, C. (2016, July 20). Retrieved October 23, 2020, from https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4kzh6t
She’s the Man. Fickman, Andy. 2006
“Women’s Rights in the Workplace.” American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from
https://www.aclu.org/issues/womens-rights/womens-rights-workplace