Argumentative Essay
Abstract
Once upon a time, in the early 1900’s, women were seen practically as objects. They had little to no rights, and did not earn the suffrage for women until late 1920. Though now we have reached the twenty-first century, some people still believe that women do not get as much credit as they should. These people have come to call themselves “feminists”, and say that they fight for the equal rights of all human beings on Earth, especially women. However, despite what they say, they have started bringing down men in the process of raising up the social standing of women, making their “equal rights” not so equal as they think. Equal rights activists are only causing the roles to be opposite, and should instead look to make change through reforms.
As years have passed by, the role of a woman in society has changed drastically. They went from being seen as an object, used to raise the population and tend to the family at home, to becoming an active part of our life today. However, to some people, this change is not enough. They believe that women should have more rights, such as a draft in the military, and an equal pay to what men are paid. This would not be a problem if they did not go to such extreme measures. They have taken to beating down the image of men in order to raise up the standards for women. How can this be equal, if one has to fall for the other to ascend?
Simply put, it is impossible for it to be equal this way. First, we must look at the major culprit for all of these misunderstandings — stereotypes. Associate professor at ISU Zlatan Krizan with colleague Ethan Zell, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, as well as Sabrina Teeter, graduate student at Western Carolina University, conducted a study consisting of over twelve million people, asking them questions pertaining to gender differences. They found almost an eighty percent overlap for more than seventy-five percent of the psychological characteristics. If this is the case, then why do stereotypes such as men rarely showing their feelings and women being emotional wreaks exist? The answer is simple; the age of technology. Too many times have we seen a movie or television series where you have the knight in shining armor saving the damsel in distress?
If we move over to social media, we see some slight difference, though not much, especially if you look at the younger generations. The next big thing to teenagers is often who was nice to whom, who looks more attractive, or who kisses better. Teenage girls are, persay, “head over heels” for their high school sweethearts. Rarely will you see them writing a Facebook or Twitter post over how they feel underappreciated by society.
Zlatan Krizan of Iowa State University brushed on this topic of stereotypes in his article Gender Roles: Men and Women are not so Different After All. “This is important because it suggests that that when it comes to most psychological attributes, we are relatively similar to one another as men and women. This was true regardless of whether we looked at cognitive domains, such as intelligence; social personality domains, such as personality traits; or at well-being, such as satisfaction with life.” Krizan also stated that people tend to look to the extreme examples of of traits, such as how most of the prison population consists of men. “The difference on any one trait is pretty small,” Krizan said. “When there are several smaller differences, people might think there’s a big difference because the whole configuration has a different flavor. I think they make a mistake assuming that any given trait is very different from typical men to women.”