The term minority group refers to a category of people whose members have significantly less control, less power than the social many (dominant group) and are subordinated. It could be an ethnically, culturally or racially distinct groups. Being a numerical minority is not a characteristic of being a minority group, as sometimes a larger group can be considered as a minority group due to their lack of power. Following Charles Wagley, Marvin Harris “A minority group is distinguished by five characteristics; unequal treatments and less power, physical and cultural traits like skin color and language, high rate of in group marriage, awareness of subordination, and involuntary membership in the group.” (pg.6) Examples of minority groups might include LGBT community, people with disabilities, religious practitioners and women.
Women are not statistically a minority, as in most societies they are roughly equal to men. But they do qualify as a minority group because they tend to have less power and privileges than men. Unequal treatment of women is considered sexism and discrimination of sex. In Women as a Minority by Boundless “discrimination against women is found in many different spheres in society, such as in political, legal and economic.” Considering women as a minority we can see it through social indicators such as education, employment and income.
Women are not allowed to work in certain jobs, industries because it is “a men’s job” such as construction, coach of men’s sports team, chief justice, CEO of US bank, vice president or broadcasting. Jacci Duncan and Lynn Page Whittaker are the authors of ‘The Women’s History Guide to Washington.” Jacci Duncan wrote that “Nearly every woman, at some point in her life, has been told ‘Don’t make waves’. Don’t try to do something you’ve never done before; don’t try to change things; above all, don’t call attention to yourself, just go along to get along.” She also acknowledged how fortunate we are that some women (and by extension people of color) did not heed that advice and as a result, went on to change the face of radio and television, and influence the impact broadcasting has had on our society and the world. Susan Carter (1996, 2004) also presented a framework for conceptualizing women’s access to radio.
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Women in athletic training face barriers when working with male sports team. The reasons are multifactorial, including traditional sex stereotyping and the social networking of male leaders. The challenge female athletes have to face is being paid half or less of what is given to their male counterparts. This is the case even with the prize money. The prize money for the winners of FIFA World Cup, male would be roughly between $35-50 million. While the prize money for the winners of Women’s FIFA World Cup, was roughly about $2 million. This is because gender equalities in sports is worse than in politics, business and medicine. Female athletes are objectified on the field, much as they are on the streets. From coaches to commentators, to the audience, women are looked at as commodities showcasing themselves for men’s pleasure. A perfect example for this is Jwla Gutta, an international badminton player. In the article, “The Spirit of Sportsmanship” Jwla states that her professional success has often been based on the ‘way she looks’ on and off the field. Gender inequalities can be seen in sports as well.
There is the glass ceiling, the longstanding metaphor for the intangible, systematic barriers that prevent women from obtaining senior leadership positions. As of 2014, women hold only 31% of the full professor positions at degree-granting institutions. The higher the rank from service or research, the fewer women one finds. Women of color often outnumber men of color in lower ranking faculty positions, but more men of color hold more full professor positions than women of color. Even though women have higher educational attainment levels than men, there are fewer women at senior ranks in both faculty and administration. In other words, women have more degrees than men, but still men are hired more contrarily to women. In 2014, male faculty members held a higher percentage of tenured positions at every institution, even though they did not hold the highest number of faculty positions at every rank. Regardless of academic rank, men are paid more than women. The pay gap has widened. According to IDC Infobrief, “Men out earn women by $13,616 at public institutions and by $17,843 at private institutions.” That means men make more than women at every rank, in every discipline and in every institution.
Before the 1920s and the passage of the 19th Amendment women had almost no rights. They did not have the right to vote even though the Constitution never prohibited women from voting in the past. Most females were married at an early age. The average bride was 21 years old, half of the American women were mothers as well at that young age, as the contraception pills were not approved until later on. Women were taken away their human rights such as rights to live free from violence, slavery and discrimination, the right to be educated to own property and to earn fair and equal wage. This is still a concern now days.
According to Sociohistorical Perspective, Women as a Minority Group, “In the New World, women were valuable ‘commodities’, both for their skills and labor in the battle of survival and as sexual property in a region with a shortage of women.” Although later on female independence in land ownership, inheritance and voting rights did come, but for the most part women remained subordinate to men with few legal rights.
Women got the right to vote with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Yet other feminist reforms did not follow. Women did not use their newly gained political power much. Following passage of the 19th Amendment, labor force participation by women increased by twenty five percent and job discrimination continued. Women could not really make any decision on positions and were the first ones to get fired during the Great Depression. The approved female role remained as the good wife and mother, with the primary responsibility taking care of the house. That temporarily changed with World War II. The percentage of working women increased because of the need for women in all working areas to contribute for the war, while men went overseas to fight.
Ever since women began to join the work field, even though women are the ones that earn more college and graduate degrees than men do, yet on average they tend to earn less. The Census Bureau measured the standard annual wage gap and stated, “Females that are full time workers, earn 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man.” The payment factors is affected by all, age, race, and education level. According to Pay Equality & Discrimination “women earn less in any kind of occupation for which there is a sufficient earning data for both men and women to calculate and earnings ratio.” Women may be at the same position and do the same job as good as men, but they would still get paid less around twenty percent, because of their gender. Status of Women in the States state that “Hispanic women and women of color will have to wait at least until 2124 for equal pay,” their pay gap is even worse than any other women and are considered way lower than any other female.
Inequality and poor treatment is not only found at the way payment is done at work, but also the way women are being treated because of their gender. For example, job positions or promotions may be offered to a less qualified man just because he is a male instead to a female
that fits the position better because of her skills. Women are also to be judged by their looks or the way they dress rather than men. They can be discriminated both ways, either because they are too pretty or because they are not pretty enough, or too old for a position. Women that are competent are seen as unfeminine as well as aggressive and tend to be unlikable because the more accomplished a woman becomes the more she has to struggle and suffer. On the other hand men that are competent are seen as forceful and worthy of promotion and most likely to succeed.
The Telegraphy News states that every one in five women have been victims of sexual harassment in the workplace. Nineteen percent of those women are age 18-34 and seven percent are age fifty five and over. There are many more behaviors which are frowned on in today’s workplace, such as referring to women as ‘gals’ or ‘girls’ or making personal comments to pregnant/nursing employees. Many women want their workplaces to feel safe and welcoming but most women said that they have not reported they have been sexual harassed because they were scared of losing their jobs. No action was taken for the women who did report this. Many women work in environments in which they are disrespected and mistreated.
Minority women have also been disproportionately impacted by mental health, physical health and social consequences of criminal justice involvement. Most of the African American women involved with the criminal justice system have high rates of health problems such as high rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections because of the few resources to address their needs. As such, the lack of available resources for minority women may perpetuate feelings of powerlessness. Programs that support women’s adjustment during and after criminal justice involvement often incorporate both empowerment and social support. Research has consistently found positive relationships or social supports to promote women’s mental health, physical health and overall functioning. Minority women’s experience of social support may also influence their personal sense of empowerment.
Thanks to many powerful, fearless and motivating activists who fought for women’s rights on the long road towards equality, women have earned basic rights until now. One of them was Alice Paul, that she stated, “it is incredible to me that any woman should consider the right for full equality won. It has just begun.” She was convinced that women needed equal rights amendment, so she organized her National Woman’s Party to focus on getting one passed. Another strong woman activist was Margaret Sanger. She believed that no woman can call herself free when she has no control over her body, and took a risk to give access to women to her birth control pill. In 1923 she finally opened her own Birth Control Clinic. Additionally Eleanor Roosevelt and her friend Rose Schneiderman, were both part of the Women’s Trade Union League which supported the needs of females to work and later on when Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential position, Eleanor, his wife tried to take advantage of her position in the White House to support women’s interests.
As the existence of gender and racial pay gaps is nothing new, recent data on both the persistence and the causes of such gaps sheds new light on the issue with two modern implications. First of all, current legal approaches to closing the pay gap are not enough. Gender and racial pay gaps have been stubbornly persistent for now more than fifty years.
According to Tanzina Vega, “In 2015, the hourly pay gap between blacks and whites widened to 26.7%, with whites making an average of $25.22 an hour compared to $18.49 for blacks, the EPI found. Almost 40 years ago, in 1979, the wage gap between blacks and whites was 18.1%, with whites earning an inflation-adjusted average of $19.62 an hour and blacks earning $16.07 an hour.” There has been no measurable improvement in the racial pay gap today as compared to the same gap in 1979, nearly forty years ago. Second, income inequality in the United States cannot be addressed without also addressing the gender and racial pay gaps. As women continue to receive less pay, the difference in the economic status between high and low-wage earners compound exponentially. The time has come to revisit equal pay protections so as to effectively correct for the operation of unlawful bias in pay setting and to restart the long-stalled progress toward closing the pay gaps. Measuring the pay gaps, the rate of women’s workforce participation has grown dramatically over the past half century. In 1948, 32.7% of all women participated in the U.S workforce; by 2016, that number rose to 56.8%, with a high of 60% in 1999. The proportion of the U.S labor force composed of women rose from 28.6% to 46.8% by 2016. Yet despite women’s near equal participation in the paid workforce today, a persistent gender pay gap remains.
Now, even after decades, women still face the difficulties of harassment, inequality, mistreatment in many areas and struggle to prove that they deserve as much as men do. Women will remain a minority group until society gives them more chances and opportunities to prove that they deserve equality as everyone else and can handle any kind of position the same way a man would. A way to improve women’s position in our world would be by having more activists campaigns and motivational females speakers embrace women’s inner power.
Women, who make a majority of the population, still need allies in the fight for gender equality. The need of women minorities is much greater. Outsiders need the help of insiders and there are always insiders ready to help. In truth, many activists are insiders- well educated and economically comfortable. We act out of moral and political conviction, but the people we hope to organize often have different convictions. We are mostly secularists, many of them are religious. We are internationalists; they are mostly patriotic Americans. The first coalition that left politics requires is the coalition of leftists with anyone else. That means, we should fight in Democratic Party primaries for strong left candidates, but if those candidates lose, we must associate with the winners, because there will be issues on which we and they can work together.
The year, 2017 might have been the year of the women. Women stepped up, together and made their voices heard in a variety of ways, from the Women’s marches to the Me-Too movement to Times up. A spotlight on the challenges that women face in the workplace and in life in general, drove attention to issues that could no longer be ignored and many powerful men, and I suspect many more less powerful men whose names didn’t make the evening news, paid a price for every bad behavior toward women. If you’re like most people thinking “Is the Equal Rights Amendment still a thing? The answer is yes and it will be until it is passed. So here we are in 2018, and we still don’t have equal rights enshrined in our Constitution. So a group of us have come together to get the ball rolling, it’s about the time that every protection which men enjoy in the Constitution is applied to women.
