Inequality Between Men and Women

Bilge Tuzen

CMN

Introduction

Gender inequality is not a term that would look unknown, because as we all know it is not. There are so many examples of these inequalities and each of them needs attention because ignoring them causes more problems in our society. How did this gender inequality even happen? What kind of inequalities are there? What is being done for these inequalities? All of these questions need to be answered in order to understand what is really going on in the society.

Inequality Between Men and Women

Equality is the position of being equal. These equalities may be opportunities, sex differences, religion, life styles, beliefs, etc. Difference and equality are two different things. It is normal difference to exist between men and women because it is scientifically proven that there is. Brains of women and men function differently, this affects us to give different responses to the events around us, we have different point of views and have different perspectives. But does that mean there should be an inequality just because of the difference women and men has? There is a difference but it’s not bad or dangerous difference. It is just a difference without bad or good. Difference should not be confused with inequality. But inequality actually starts in the moment the baby is born. Babies are treated according to their sexes. If the baby is a boy, his parents would prefer to dress him in blue colors but not pink? Why? Because they think “pink is girl’s color”. The girl baby borns and she plays with kitchen game stuff, barbies, pinky cute dolls, the boy plays with cars, building tools, etc. There is a term called “Patriarchy” it is the system where men holds the power. Our society is more like following that system because when you are born, you automatically have your surname as same as your father’s, you marry and your surname becomes as same as your husband’s. Think of the leaders of the governments and the workers there, it is very obvious that most of them are men. If society was asked the give a name to “active, responsible, work” and “emotional, caring, children”, we all know what would they name these. First would be the men and second would be described as women. People automatically behave in a way what society think of women and men. For example if society says that women are better than men at biology then men would act in order to that. But when there is no discrimination about that, they perform equally. It it kind of hard for women to higher her status in workplace because if the has kids then she also has to take care of them, but imagine a man facing the same situation, don’t you think that he would face the same challenges that the women does? He totally would. So obviously there is also a problem in the way both sides are treated.

The inequality between men and women is a wide topic and there are so many examples for that. Inequality in workplace, education, freedom to travel, job salaries, job opportunities, etc. Stereotypes about gender inequality are everywhere. In workplace, women and men are not considered as a whole person. They are classified as woman or man. If they were accepted a whole person without any inequalities then men would also spend time with their family and friends, balance would be successfully reached. Women have responsibility to do the home caring and have a job in the same time, yet their salaries, generally, are lower than the salary of men. This way women actually have multiple jobs. There can not be an expectation of an equality while people are not considered a whole person. Since men and women have different perspectives or different skills about a same event, men still earns more and more likely to get himself to higher positions in their jobs. U.S. has the lowest wage gap when comparing to other countries. Even that in U.S. women make 77 cents to every dollar men make. It is easy to imagine the situation of the other countries, the gap is probably wider. I have made a graph about the payment statistics by regions. It’s right below:
This gap has decreased in the 90’s but very little. There is a progress but it is really slow. One of the reasons for that might be the lack of education.
Of course there is also inequality in education between men and women. They do not get the same education, some women do not even get any education at all. There are many reasons why. Cultural beliefs and differences, financial difficulties are some of them. A family who struggles with financial difficulty which makes it hard to pay for education fees, if they have two kids who are boy and girl, for boy to get education would be their priority. Some societies believe that women do not need to go to university as much as men do. There is a graph that I have made right below:

This voting was made on 2013, which is last year, we can easily see that there are still people voting for agreeing that women do not need to go to university as much as men do. Because of this stereotypes, women, not all of them, become non-educated. In Afghanistan women are taken to school when they hit puberty. I honestly think that it is kind of late. When it comes to finding a job, it is much harder for them since they were not educated. So they work at bad places which has no safety. We can all imagine what happens to women there. Violence is unavoidable. People do now respect women there since they are not educated and they think she is worthless. But think about it now, was it her choice or the society that brought her to this situation? We know the answer already. Violence against women is a big thread to equality in human rights and any other thing. When women face violence it becomes hard for them to participate in the society. I am sure that they have the feeling of being afraid when they are participating in society. There is also spouse violence. Because it is believed that men have right for their wives body all the time, even if it is by forcing. Even in some developed countries this happens. Women’s actions are questioned when they face rape, violence and etc. Men should be questioned too, not only women. Violence against women is another problem that goes to our list of the things should be done in order to eliminate the inequalities. Here is a graph that I have made about the women violence. This graph shows the relationship between the women and their abusers:

Did you know that in Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive or even just ride a bike? Plus to that, men are not allowed to drive car when there is a woman inside if she is not related to him? Imagine a school bus then, which has to be driven by a men. It seems to be able to cause a lot of problems. I have an another example of what happened in Saudi Arabia in 2002. According to my research I found that a girls’ school was on fire and religious police did not let the girls get out because their heads were not veiled properly. Police even beat them up because they were trying to get out. Can you even imagine that? Human rights are totally graved there.
In many countries it is hard for women to divorce their husband while it is very easy for men to do the same thing. Since they are both human, shouldn’t they have the same rights? Another example is that in some countries women do not have right to travel. I have read few things about this online. In Egypt and Bahrain, husbands can avoid their wife to leave the country. In Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Yemen and Libya, a woman, if she is married, has to take permission from her husband. This permission should be written down on a paper. If they do that then they can travel.
There is a protest called feminism and its founder was a French philosopher and socialist called Charles Fourier. It is a thought that supports the gender equality, women want to have the same rights as men do. The number of feminist increase everyday. Women think and also protest that men should also protest for this gender inequality as much as women do.

In some countries society care so much about the sex of their children. In China male baby is more vulnerable than girl baby. Discrimination starts even before the baby is born. If we want to eliminate this problem then, as I have mentioned before, we should start eliminating the stereotypes first. Because they have the huge effect on the outcomes. It is very important for society to understand that women and men are different but only different and that does not mean there should be inequality. If women and men have the same right and access to everything, then outcomes have more chance to be equal. Even if they are not, then there would not be big problems since women and men had the same rights in achieving results or, in other words, outcomes.

References

Bilge Tuzen
Ending Violence against Women. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women

Kay, J. (2012, March 13). [Supplemental material] Gender inequality and gender differences. Retrieved from https://libcom.org/library/gender-inequality-gender-differences

Exploring Wage Inequality in Professional Sports. (n.d.). [Supplemental material] Retrieved from http://philosophyatwestern.typepad.com/equality_matters/2012/11/exploring-wage-inequality-in-professional-sports.html

Gender Inequality and Women in the Workplace. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.summer.harvard.edu/blog-news-events/gender-inequality-women-workplace

Edmonds, M. (n.d.). 10 Examples of Gender Inequality Around the World. Retrieved from http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/examples-gender-inequality-around-world/

What Data Analytics Says About Gender Inequality in the Workplace. (2014, January 30). Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-30/gender-inequality-in-the-workplace-what-data-analytics-says

10 Extreme Examples of Gender Inequality. (2008, November 20). Retrieved from http://listverse.com/2008/11/20/10-extreme-examples-of-gender-inequality/

Men vs. Women: Why Difference Doesn’t Mean Inequality. (2013, December 11). Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20131211113947-284615-men-vs-women-why-difference-doesn-t-mean-inequality

Feminizm nedir. (2010, February 20). Retrieved from http://www.iscicephesi.net/sinif-mucadelesi/kavram-atolyesi/752-feminizm-nedir

Why Chanel’s Feminist Protest Is Great News For Gender Equality. (2010, January 1). Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/01/chanel-feminist-protest-fashion-show_n_5912578.html

Indians Support Gender Equality But Still Give Men Edge in Workplace, Higher Education. (2013, January 4). Retrieved from http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/01/04/indians-support-gender-equality-but-still-give-men-edge-in-workplace-higher-education/

InequalityBetween Men and Women

Bilge Tuzen

CMN

Introduction.
Body Paragraphs:
1) Inequality between men and women is decreasing but still there is a big inequality we see. I will include pictures and graphs about this inequality

2)What kind of inequalities are there between men and women? And what is the public opinion about it? Why do we still face this problem even though we are in 2014?
-Incomes statistics and graphs.
-Educational inequalities.
-Workplace inequalities.
-Women right to travel.
-Violence on women.

3)What kind of protests are there for this inequalities? What is being done for these inequalities?
-What is feminism?
-How did feminism become this popular?
-Other protests.

Conclusion.

CMN week 8

07.11.2014
Inequality Between Men And Women

My term project will be about the inequality between men and women in general. Because this is a problem that women faced a lot in the past and still facing it. Not all of us are facing it in the same way but in general we do. In the past this was a bigger problem that it is right now. But it is still a problem that needs to be solved. Some examples are inequality in jobs, education, incomes, treatment, etc. I chose this topic as my term project because I’m a woman too and this is bothering me. I’m sure it bothers other women too. I am going to have a deep research about these and I may include some personal experiences. There are so many statistics about this topic so my term project will include some too.

Looking back to the history we know that black people had many difficulties back then. White people were always steps ahead of them. Inequality was always there. Black people faced hatred and racism until they got their rights and freedom.

Nelson Mandela was the man who had a big influence on the black people. He changed so many things even though he suffered a lot in his journey to success. I’m going to talk about what has happened and what terms were common back then.

Inequality in South Africa (Apartheid System)

It is the racial discrimination in South Africa. It’s the system where black skinned people have less rights than those of who are white. For example black people could not use the sources of their country or they cannot get educated. What gives people rights was their skin color and nothing else.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in jail and when he was finally a free man he did not lose any more time and he made his recompense by becoming the president of the South Africa. By that he made an end to this apartheid system. Black people won their rights.

As I said inequality:

What Is Gini-coefficient?
It is the measure of inequality of a distribution. For example the value of 0 expresses a total equality and 1 expresses a total inequality.

In 1993 this number was 0.59 and it was obvious that there was not equality.
Even after the end of apartheid system, income inequality became worse. But between 1991 and 1999 black middle class grew by 78% while the white middle class grew only by 15%.

Even after the end of Apartheid, the country’s economy has not performed as much as expected. The modest growth at the average of 1.2 per cent between 1995 and 2008 was noticed. It is behind the East Asian growth rates by a lot. Also South Africa is suffering from unemployment.

Even though over the years black income has increased but there is still a differentiation between whites and blacks.

Mining Industry in South Africa:

South Africa is known for its mining and it is a big business in the country. Diamond was found in Orange River and that is how the mining started in 1867. But working conditions were really poor that many deaths were caused. Government had pushed the mining companies to fix this issue. By that deaths decreased from 500 in 1996 to a less than 200 in 2006.

Sources:
http://www.history.com/topics/apartheid
http://theconversation.com/south-africa-will-remain-a-hugely-unequal-society-for-a-long-time-25949
http://www.mininginsa.co.za/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality_in_post-apartheid_South_Africa
http://www.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2013/dec/06/how-south-africa-changed-since-nelson-mandelas-release-prison-1990
http://civitas.org.uk/newblog/2013/06/why-has-the-south-african-economy-underperformed-since-the-end-of-apartheid/

25.10.2014

Importance of References

Giving references when establishing validity or relevance of piece of scientific research is pretty important thing. Why? There are so many reasons why it is really important that even in assignments the student could get a bad grade even if the assignment is perfect but without a reference.

People want to have a proof before they believe or trust in something. This is what we can actually call the reference. For example someone tells you something new about cancer, why would you believe that person if he does not have any proof or any source that he got the information from? Having references in your research supports the information you are giving. It also lets the people who are reading your research to locate the original idea of your research. I had assignments about pointing out the mistakes in articles earlier. I have found so many missing information and non supported information. I also noticed many mistaken information. This made me realize that I should really check the references before or after reading any kind of research. Because what is the point of spending time to read a research which has no references, which I also call proofs, that I could depend on before believing what I’m about to read? I do not see any point in there.

Have you ever heard of plagiarism? It is the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own. It’s like you are giving an information which is not yours without any reference so that it looks like the information you have given belongs to you. This is totally wrong. Giving out references avoids the chance of your work to be considered as plagiarism. Protects the rights of the actual person who made the research that you are using as reference. This way no stealing anybody’s work, and no plagiarism.

How Family Meals Can Stop Eating Disorders

As I read the article I start to see some paradoxes. The topic is pretty similar to me because I have suffered from an eating disorder, I’m still recovering though. I know a lot of things about eating disorders since I have an experience about it.

Here are the few paradoxes I have found:
In the article “closing Tv and sitting down to table with family” is mentioned. I don’t agree with that, neither does the eating disorder researches. I don’t think Tv has anything to do with sitting down to table with family, it is kind of wrong used in the article. Plus, article claims that eating disorder can be stopped by patients sitting with their family, then it was mentioned that only this decreases the disorder by %35 percent. It doesn’t stop, it just decreases…

Eating disorder can be caused because of many reasons, one of the reasons is urge to be thin and perfect so that the person skips meals or overeats behind his family’s back, which is called “secretly eating”. Article mentions that eating with family makes better contact and its a way to make conversations about bad diet and eating habits, but this triggers the eating disorder more. Talking about the illness could make the person uncomfortable, and it affects him psychologically. Many people with eating disorders respond to outpatient therapy. It includes, individual, group or family therapy and medical management by their primary care provider.

This is illness so it’s not easy to recover from. Eating with family might not be helpful to stop it because some patients are not comfortable eating in front of people, this can harmful for the patient… Another example is that the patient might eat 3-5 meals with family but still continue to eat secretly, family would never know though. So it can’t really make anyone healthy that easily. Health isn’t something that people get easily. Eating is just one of the factors.

Smoking is mentioned in the article, people who smoke aren’t really losing weight, because according to my researches smoking is one of the least effective ways to lose weight, it doesn’t really work. I believe that smoking is used here to catch attention or something.

Sources:

WhyPeopleSmokefl.pdf erişimi için tıklayın

http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/treatment
http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/treating-eating-disorder
http://www.ulifeline.org/articles/400-eating-disorders-why-do-they-happen
http://www.anad.org/news/teens-who-regularly-attend-family-meals-lower-risk-of-eating-disorders/

 

            The Two Baby Family Makes a Comeback

The article that I’m just going to write a report about  was a hard one to analyse. Because

article has nonsense and unnecessary information. It also has wrong information which is something very important…

Numerical information on article is pretty important and has to be researched well. People wouldn’t want to believe in wrong information. Would you want to? I can hear the word “no”. People want true and trusted information. This article that I have just read fails to do that.

Immigration is mentioned a lot in the article. I believe that it is an effect on the population, not birthrate. So the word immigration is used unnecessarily.

There is a numerical error that I recognized, In the text it is said that quarter of the births in England and Wales last year were to mothers who were born abroad themselves, and then it says that half of the babies in London have mothers from abroad. I can see the paradox there…

Later in the article, family size, population, birthrate and so many other stuff are mentioned, I cant see the purpose of this article because of that. Too many topics are used without combining them altogether.

“Research shows that unmarried families’ children are healthier and do better at school and later in their careers’’ this sentence is from the article that Im writing a report about. There is no source about where did they get this information. If this statement is true than half of the babies will be unhealthy, unsuccessful in their lives later on. Nobody can really know what the future holds, and this statement might lower the motivation of the kids whose parents are unmarried. This is where the article does harm instead of giving information and being useful.

I had a discussion with my friends before writing this report and it was really useful, sharing ideas and all. And I have came to the conclusion that before writing an article or anything that is going to be shared with public should be double checked or even more. Not by only the writer but by some other people too. When third person sees it these mistakes could be pointed out. There are really unclear statements that it is hard to even understand what the writer is trying to point out or tell.

Sources:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/may/25/40s-women-birth-children-highest-ever

http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/impact-migration-uk-population-growth

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/may/21/birth-rate-increase

CMN SECOND PROJECT

As a group, we were already aware of the spreading and increasing disease cancer. As we started to do research about the topic of this assignment, we had a better chance to get a closer look to the causes and effects of cancer. We realized how quickly it spreads and how common it is.
When we read the article called “One in four Britons will get cancer” that was on Daily Mail, July 14, 2011, we caught many incomplete and missing informations. These mistakes are such as;
Untrue assumptions
Contradictory expressions
Numerical errors
Unmentioned sources
Undetermined research methods
Too many exaggerations and generalizations
Unclear statements

First of all, we started with the statement mentioned in the title “One in four Britons will get cancer”. 62.649.014 is the population of England in 2011. According to title 15.662.253 people will get cancer. As the article declares afterwards “ There are currently two million people in Britain with the ilness and this is expected to double within the next 20 years”. According to this statement if it continues to double every 20 years, it will reach appromixely to 15.662.253 after 60 years.

Secondly, in the article it is given that “some” %64 eventually die from the cancer but as we made a research about cancer survivors we found out that there are %50 survivors and this is still increasing. Also the word “some” is an unclear statement and cannot be used when giving a specific percentage.

Furthermore, the article announces that the reason of the cancer is “lifestyle factors such as obesity, excessive drinking and smoking”. However, according to our researches genetic tendency for the cancer has the main role in getting this disease. This article doesn’t even mention this reason once. If the genetic code has a tendency for cancer, outer factors trigger the risk of this disease.

Another unclear statement is that “ it (cancer) is also partly a result of people living longer”. It’s a fact that with getting older, every disease has more risk to be developed. This cannot support the article’s thesis. It’s an unnecessary information, exaggeration and generalization.

The other reason why we can’t rely on the article’s arguments is that it doesn’t name the research’s method. For example, the AMP method calculates the percentage of the cancer with counting all the diagnoses but it also contains the same person’s diognoses which may also be more than once. As a result, this method does not give us the number of people who suffer from cancer, it gives us the percentage of diognoses compared to population. So, since it isn’t given the research method we can’t accept it as a clear support.
In conclusion, we think that an article about something serious should have been more accurate and clear. It strains the truths about the sickness, its causes and the percentages.
As a group, we chose to communicate from Whatsapp and formed a gruop called “Project CMN”. We scheculed appointment in ÇSM three times. First, we read and discussed about the article. Then, we did a research from Internet about the population, percentages and causes of cancer. Finally, we wrote our report by gathering the information that we found. The avantages of working face to face are:
Better communication
Time saving
Better discussion environment
Better information sharing

For me, this assigment pointed out a very important subject; misinformation published in newspapers. It is a common problem that we all suffer from it. In every country, media anounces their articles with exagerations to control and to manipulate the people. As concious individuals, we all must be aware of what we read cannot be true. We should think before we believe everything we read. I had a great time with my group members as we studied together. 
 – Selen Demircioğlu

Qualified information is a really important issue that everyone should be aware. As we read the article, we found so much mistakes, uncompleted, untrue or unclear statements. We realized that we shouldn’t trust everything we read. We researched about the informations that the article gave; it was clear that the informations were distorted to attract more attention. Doing this research with a group helped us find the mistakes easily by doing brainstorming. Also, we really enjoyed this work.

-Deniz Ersoy

This assignment was really hard to deal with because it was very complicated and so many mistakes were made in the article. It took long time to point out them and research and find the proves. I realised one more that we should not trust everything we read or hear. Plus we shouldn’t believe an article just because it’s on a popular news or websites. An article should have prove so that people can trust and believe in the information that is given. Above all, I really enjoyed doing this assignment with my group members.
-Bilge Tuzen

Sources:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2009/oct/21/uk-population-data-ons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Age_structure http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Causesriskfactors/Healthandlifestyle.aspx http://www.theworkfoundation.com/blog/600/Managing-Cancer-in-the-Workplace http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/incidence/uk-cancer-incidence-statistics http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/survival/ http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/incidence/risk/

In my CMN class we had this discussion about lshango and Lebombo bone. I totally had no idea what were they about. It was my first time to ever hear about these. I had a group partner who also never heard about topic. The instructor told us to google it and find out what were they. Our next step was talking about what we learned. Ishango bone is a tool that is dated to the Upper Paleolithic era. It’s the first evidence of a calculator.  The other bone called the Lobombo bone is the oldest mathematical instrument and it has tally marks on it. My partner and I was convinced that now we know what those bones were used for. I was surprised though. Because people are actually smart to ever think of using a bone for measuring something. They used a bone! Numbers are everywhere in our daily lives. I guess that is probably why those humans needed to make their lives easier by using something to catch track of the numbers.