Cultural Critique Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Cultural Critique - Research Paper Example Given that women make up over a half of the human population and give their huge and increasing contributions to every sector of the development the trampling on their rights is not only a great shame, but an unfortunate indictment of the civilized society throughout the world. The subjugation of women’s rights begins right at home. Women are expected to take the lead in taking care of children at home. They are the ones who have to give up their career for at least a significant amount of time in order to ensure the well-being of their new-born babies. Women bear the brunt of child-bearing, an experience still fraught with significant health dangers, especially in the under-developed a countries where a large number of women lose their lives during the birth process. In the family upbringing is meant to be a shared duty for both parents, a lot of the times the woman is still expected to be the one to give up her time and career prospects in order to raise the children. In mar riages, women also bear the brunt of domestic violence; in over 90% of cases reported the women are the victims. In the UK, for instance, one in 4 women aged 16-59 have experienced domestic abuse and 50% of these have also been raped (Women's Health& Equality Consortium 3). In cases of single mothers, women end up playing the role of both mother and father despite the fact that the conception of the child is a shared process. In education too women are at a disadvantage, especially in the developing and underdeveloped world where cultural attitudes and poverty dictate that the education of the girl-child is given less of a priority than that of the boy child. The common perception is that educating the girl only ends up benefitting the family where she will end up getting married into.This means that when a family has to prioritize who gets a chance for education, the girl child is always disadvantaged. In the lower basic education levels, thus, even though the developed countries h ave managed to more or less equalize the schooling of girls and boys, this is not the case in the majority of the rest of the world. A large proportion of women in Africa, Asia, and even the Eastern European states are still greatly disadvantaged when it comes to educational opportunities. When the girls find their way to school, they are still discriminated against when it comes to certain courses of studies. In many countries there are still beliefs that women are somehow not as proficient as men in such fields as sciences, architecture, medicine, engineering, math, and other â€Å"brain taxing† studies which leads to stereotyping of the kinds of courses that women end up taking at school. At the high end of the education ladder too, women still find a glass ceiling when it comes to postgraduate and doctoral studies. In American Universities, for example, despite the fact that 53% of the students are women, 72% of the faculty are men, many of them in tenured positions while the women mostly have untenured or part time positions (Penn State University). The workplace is the one place where women are still very disadvantaged in both the developed and the underdeveloped world. Women face disadvantages and discrimination in getting senior and management jobs, they never get equal pay for equal work with