Throughout the years, we as humans have gone through several different forms of oppression, bias, and injustice.
However, women still remain the largest oppressed group to this day.
After researching the history of female oppression, I have found that gender-based inequality continues to be a major global problem.
For example, the Global Women’s Institute Blog tells us that one in every three women has faced violence or sexual assault from an intimate partner, and that one out of every five women is married before the age of 18. They also tell us that only 19 out of 193 countries have women as their heads of government (10%), and only 13 countries have gender-equal cabinets.
Similarly, Statista says that around 25.4 percent of state legislature seats in the U.S are held by women.
All of this shows that women only hold a small percentage of control in government around the world.
I have also found that a shocking number of women have been subjected to violence. The World Health Organization says that 38 percent of women murdered were killed by intimate partners.
UN Women tells us that globally, 263 million women 15 years or older have reported being subjected to sexual violence from someone other than a partner.
One might wonder how these shocking numbers and statistics came to be, and the truth is that women’s oppression has a deep history around the world.
According to one school of thought, agriculture led to the relationships between the sexes, creating a surplus and “might means right” mentality. This tells us that women did not always face oppression and had a more egalitarian status in society — until humanity was capable of creating a surplus of food.
These echoes can be seen in everyday work life. For example, women are still more likely to be discouraged from taking on physically demanding jobs and are too often still paid less than men for the same work.
All of this, from how it started to how it is now, is important history that needs to be learned in order to change the future for the better.
As a society, I hope we can strive to better ourselves.
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