[High School Humanities] Feminsim via /r/HomeworkHelp

our class is to write an argumentative essay on feminsm, I need helo with any further arguments and especially the conclusion.

Feminism

Gender Equality. The everlasting argument. It is a highly discussed topic with arguments going back and forth. This essay will discuss the following statement; Men should absolutely, just from self interest, be feminist because current masculinity (macho) norms in our society are very negative and destructive, both for the individual and for society.”.

Background: First of all we have to clarify and find out what Feminism actually is. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, feminism is (1)“the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities”(1). One can also believe that Gender equality is a mere synonym for Feminism, as according to the UN, Gender equality (2) “refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys” (2) (3)Now that we have clarified what Feminism is, we can take a brief look at its history. Modern feminism is often divided into 3 “waves”, with the first wave starting at around about the 19th century, the second wave starting at around 1960 and the third one starting at around 1990. These time periods or “waves” are split up based on the aims of that spec. Period, for example the second wave focused on cultural inequalities and gender norms, whereas the first wave focused on legal inequalities such as the “women's suffrage”.(3)
Although these waves give us a rough overview of modern Feminist history, we can never say for sure when gender equality actually started, because we have already stated that feminism and gender equality are similar. It is the belief that women and men should have equal rights. There is no need for any concrete historical proof for any sort of action to be classified as feminism, for example it could have started in the primitive society. All it really takes, is to raise your voice. An important term in the paragraph above is “Women's suffrage”. Not the same thing as Universal suffrage, which is the struggle for the extension of voting rights for all citizens of a country, regardless of gender, race, religion social status etc. Women's suffrage focuses only on Women's right to vote. Womens suffrage comes under Universal suffrage. Together, Universal suffrage and women's suffrage work together and collectively build the foundations for a well functioning democratic society. When talking about feminism, one issue which is often taken up, is the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap is the difference or “gap” in wages between men and women. Obviously there is a difference between a “specific” level and a lifetime level. The specific level is when you have 2 human beings with exact same age, experience quality of work but different genders, and the male gets better pay, the lifetime level is when you take in account all hours worked in a lifetime between the two genders, this level really just shows what choices we take in life for example, who chooses to stay at home with kids more, or who takes more time for the groceries etc. And the difference will just be the outcome from the choices. One way to fix this could be to get women and Men to stay home for an exact same amount. And to totally close the gender gap we have to tackle both of these levels, just by tackling one of these we will just be shortening it. This is a great issue in modern society, that urgently needs to be solved, it is absurd how this issue isn’t taken as seriously as say, racism. We humans have learnt to not judge people based on race, age, religion, but it seems we still haven’t learned to actually apply the same mentality when it comes to gender. Obviously there are legal constitutions in place against this behaviour, but still occurs. Why? A small partial answer to this is because a lot of women choose to work the lower paying jobs, such as part time jobs or low paying public sector jobs. But Even after numerous actions such as the Equal pay act in america we still find this issue alive globally, so what can be done about it? I believe that to answer this question, one has to go back to the previous question, Why does it happen? Well I believe that this kind of behaviour is subconscious, and to tackle your subconscious, you need conscious effort. (4)A lot of the times, when we talk about feminism, the term “Masculinity norm” or “Macho norms” pops up, but what is a masculinity norm? Well basically, it’s the role that the male is expected to play in society, things such as attitude, behaviour and how you present yourself are all differently attributed to each sex. If an indicidual doesn’t follow these, she/he might be shunned and find consequences. The one for males is called “Masculine norms”. These norms give you a set of instructions on how to do each of the things above, for example, it is expected of men to act tough, hard and not sentimental. These norms also include instructions on how to clothe yourself, for example not to wear skirts, men are more inclined to wearing suits than women. It is worth noting that there aren’t always the same norms that apply everywhere, for example here in sweden it has become a “Masculine norm” for boys to have long hair, whereas this norm wouldn’t apply in England. Why is this? I believe this is even more narrower than just culture difference because norms are place-specific. For example, the way we are expected to act in court differs from how we are expected to act in a party. This is also why you will get different answers to the statement (of this essay) from different cultures. 4)After this we can ask ourselves what does macho actually mean, does it simply mean “Manly”? According to the Merriam Dictionary Macho means “: having or showing qualities (such as very noticeable strength and aggression) that agree with traditional ideas about what men are like : manly or masculine in a very noticeable or exaggerated way” I think that this definition impeccably sums up what macho means. If I were to give further concrete examples of what Men do that women don’t, I would probably list, 1. being physically much stronger. 2.Fight wars 3.Stand up for the opposite sex in the case of physical encounter 4. Being sporty/choosing physical tasks rather than intellectual This is a problem that is deep rooted far back in history, because ever since the primitive age women are the ones that are expected to be childbearers and not more, and men have believed that they need to be protected so they have automatically taken on the role of being the hunter, gatherer, worker etc. not only to be able to provide for the woman but also to protect her from possible dangers, and obviously these “jobs” have needed a physically strong body. So i think it is a matter of all men seeing it throughout their generations, for example, if my father was a strong man, he would want me to be one too, and then I’d like my son to be strong as well. This in the end doesn’t just affect the individual, but instead becomes an issue for society as my friend might look at me and think that they also have a “duty” to become stronger and then eventually they pass it on through to their future generations. Of course this issue isn’t helped by media creating an image of the “handsome” man being a muscular man. This is also because of the biological fact that men are built differently from women.

On topic of schools, there are a lot of things that girls can learn from boys, such as the argument above, which is to be able to stand against conformity. Whereas boys also have a lot to learn from girls, because it is a fact that girls do academically better than boys in school. This may be down to the fact that girls tend to evaluate their performances more critically than boys, this might lead one to think that girls are more self confident, and boys are less confident, but in reality it is the opposite, that boys tend to have impractically high expectations of their own abilities whilst girls tend to be overly critical of their own work which leads to stress and worsening mental health, which will be my next topic. A lot of the feminine norms are also very destructive, for example, conforming to the “Nice school girl” norm can be very tough and often takes its toll as teenage boys have a better mental health, generally, than girls. And often it is because of the stress from norms such as these 

Similarly, an argument against the statement would be that some masculine norms are actually beneficial (unlike some of the feminine norms) for society and help both themselves and their surroundings such as., leadership and certainty in making decisons, A man is expected to be a leader and take the big decisions, not only in a family (all though this norm is slowly fading), but also in groups of mixed genders. So when you have men who are not able to take responsibility and action in a matter where both them and their family/surroundings are being affected, we have a problem as we will never see progression in society. But on the other side we have to understand there must be a reason as to why girls do better in school than boys. This reason is often believed to be that girls tend to be more critical of their own work, which leads to improvement and a better understanding (of whatever they are doing). So there are a lot of things that boys should learn from girls as well. Another trait to adapt for boys could be to adopt the behaviour in classrooms. Girls often tend to be more calm and quiet, which may be a contributing factor towards their academic achievements, whereas boys who tend to do perform worse often have a tendency to be loud and rowdy. This may also be due to a “destructive” norm for boys in school, which is to be “too cool for school”. The arguments above are backed by a study the OECD that researched boys vs girls in school, the study showed that boys are (5)“50 % more likely to fall short of basic standards” (5) CONCLUSION If we look at this statement from a economical perspective, we find that it would on one side be heavily beneficial not only for the individuals but also for society. For example if we look at maternity leave, we often see that the parent that earns the least is the one who stays at home, and due to the gender wage gap this parent is almost always a woman, but the mistake a lot of parents make is that they don’t realize that it would be better to have the higher earning parent stay at home, which is most probably a dad. The best way a child carer can get more compensation* is by having the higher earning parent stay at home, this would lead to higher compensation*. This is a prime example as to why “Men should , out of self interest, become feminists…” And this is also due to “Some destructive masculine norms” which in this case, is that the man should work and the woman should stay at home and be the childcarer. On a different note, a study by Birmingham University and Utah Uni showed “that stronger the realtionship between father and child, the happier the family.” On the flipside we have the problem that if women do go out to be the breadwinners of the family, it could have severe impacts on the family and especially children, because it is a proven fact that men can never recreate the relationship between mother and child. Again, because of the wage gap, Women don’t earn as much as men, which might leads to difficulties in being the sole breadwinner and providing for a whole house, which in turn leads to men being forced to take jobs. Due to this, a lot of parents place their children care homes. This in my eyes is a problem because leaving a child in day-care for 40-50 hours a week causes irreversible harm to the child. Leaving your child in an inadequate poorly equipped day care will give you a unattached, sympathy less child with lesser of a regard to its parent because of them “not being there” since day 1. This is what i believe leads to rebellious, angry disturbed children, these small problems often lead to bigger things such as school problems which mights lead to problems in future such as having problems in getting jobs, which obviously have a negative impact on society, or otherwise it might lead to crimes etc. which also have a negative impact on society. One point the reader will notice is that all of the arguments that are presented above are from a MEDCs point of perspective. What i haven’t covered yet are the arguments from a LEDCs perspective. On one hand we have the fact that it would be highly detrimental for them and society. This might be due to the fact that the women men in societies such as those in Congo, Afghanistan etc. are not prepared or equipped to take over some of the roles that they are denied, such as jobs, and often this is due to lack of girls education. So if men were to become feminist and grant women their rights, for the short term, it would be bad since society wouldn’t be balanced and it would be in chaos. Because we would have half of the socieity which is run by uneducated women and the other half of Men. On the other side it would be very beneficial for these LEDC in the long term, and if we increase the girls education this is a possibilty.