We have spent a lot of time learning about our origins, culture and history throughout

our life, and all of the founders we have known so far are men. Yes - men. This is because

back in the days, women did not have the same access to education as how men did. In fact, it

was considered improper and against the norms in the 19th century for women to write

articles and give talks in public. This inequality is continued for decades, to the extend that

some of the top universities did not accept female students until the late 1970s. The question

here is, why do men and women get treated differently?

Gender inequality that we have been facing back then until now falls under the

discussion of conflict perspectives, where society is defined by the struggle for dominance

between social groups that compete for resources. In this case, men are trying to maintain

power and privilege at the cost of women benefit. Even if functionalism believes that

gender inequalities are a natural result of each gender taking on the task that they are best

suited for. However, in this modern days, many people and even sociologist disagree with

these beliefs.

Fundamentally, if traditional gender role were reinforce in a societys economies and

politics, it will often cause more dysfunction than function. Take restricting women from

getting quality studies for example. By doing that, it just made a society worse by squashing

half of the worlds potential. For instance, this was seen to be true in 1963 when Valentina

Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Although she was not able to go to school until

she was 8 and had to leave school when she was 16, her 126 parachute jumps achievement
made NASA decided to recruit her. Ever since then, Valentina Tereshkova has been showing

great progress and later was honored the tittle Hero of the Soviet Union.

Moreover, it was in 1970 when fellow feminist scholars began to revisit Harriet

Martineus work, the first female sociologist born in 1802 in England and that was when

feminism approach began to be realized. Feminism is the support of equality among genders

but we unfortunately are currently living in Patriarchy, where male or masculine are

more highly valued. Feminism has gone through many different form, often recognized as

three waves of feminism.

The first wave started in the 19th and early 20th century where it focused on womens

suffrage or the right to vote and other legal inequalities. That is because in the early 1900s, all

property and money that a woman had legally belonged to her husband. Moreover, its a little

hard to change these things, when woman did not have the right to vote. It was these issues

that prompted the start of womens rights movement. The wave formally began at the Seneca

Falls Convention in 1848 when three hundred men and women rallied to the cause of equality for

women. Elizabeth Cady Staton and Lucretia Mott put forth a manifesto on womens right which

became known as Declaration of Sentiments. It took many years of activism, court cases, speeches,

protests and hunger strikes until women finally won the right to vote in 1920.

Coming off the heels of world war II, the second wave of feminism focused on workplace,

sexuality, family and reproductive rights. This time is often dismissed as offensive, outdated

and obsessed with middle class white womens problems. These division led to what is

known as the third wave of feminism, starting in the 1990s which has focused on broadening
the definition of feminism encompass issues of races, class, sexuality and other forms of

disadvantage.

Today and unlike the former movements, the terms feminist is received less

critically by the female population due to the varying feminist outlooks. Despite the

collective achievements by the previous waves of women, we are still working to end

violence againts women in our nation as well as others. There is still a large percentage

of the world refuses to recognise rape within marriage as a criminal offence. Meanwhile,

in the UK 89% of regular domestic violence victims are women, and based on statistics,

two women a week are killed by a male partner or former partner.

The crucial thing that need to be change in the society is the objectification of male

and female. Objectification is the act of treating a person, or sometimes an animal, as

an object or a thing. To illustrare, in our current society the media has objectify women

as those who are evaluated according to the beauty standards such as thin, fair and

slender. This often lead to pressure and body conciousness, a condition where a person

feels insecure and ashame of his or her own body.

In addidtion, parents, teachers and peers should also avoid unintentional gender bias

from occuring in their household and class. This is because, the roots of gender

inequality is actually the result of behavior that shows favoritism toward one gender over

the other.
 Overall, at this point we are still not sure how feminism will mutate. Eliminating gender

stereotypes and redefining gender in terms of equality does not simply mean liberating

women but liberating men as well as the society.