Alexandra Maseda

Lately it appears women are feeling more empowered, equal and free. International Women’s day just passed and many powerful, inspiring faces and stories of mothers, daughters, speakers, teachers, health care workers and icons were spread all across the internet. It feels good to see that appreciation and it gives girls motivation to do what they want and make a difference. Despite these success stories, there is still a struggle everyday women face in society. It is inspiring to see the stories of those who have already succeeded, but there is still an uphill battle for those still fighting to be heard.

While some people argue women have got the equality they asked for, that is not entirely true. The goal is to get equality for everyone 100%, not 25% or 75% which is where we are at right now. It seems women either dominate a specific career, or they are barely there. Women make up 25% of parliament, 36% of local government, but 70% of health care workers. That is certainly not equality. When a person looks at the 25% they might think inequality is over because the percentage is higher than 0 but we need to make the standards much higher than settling.

Aside from the work place, there is still the home issue. The home issue we in the United States face, is that women are home much more than men and therefore take on multiple issues. With Covid more responsibility has been put on whoever the care taker might be, usually the mother. According to the United departments of Economics women already spend 3 times as many hours at home doing unpaid work. Now we have got the mother doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, babysitting as well as taking on the new job of being a teacher. The numbers show that the pressure continues to be on the mother to keep up with home life.

There needs to be an equal ground between men and women that allows shared opportunity to be home and be the care taker or work side by side. It still feels like certain jobs involved with engineering, the government or business are taken up primarily of men and while that 25% shows we’re one step closer to achieving equal opportunity, it appears there is still a lot of work to be done to even out opportunities men and women can take on.