Sociology Essay: Gender Discrimination and Its Societal Impact

This essay delves into the pervasive issue of gender discrimination, focusing on its manifestations and consequences within society, with specific reference to Egypt. It examines the inequalities faced by women in various spheres, including education, political participation, and employment, citing statistics to highlight the disparity in literacy rates, unemployment, and workforce participation. The essay further explores the disturbing prevalence of gender-based violence, including sexual harassment, domestic violence, and sexual violence, and discusses the underreporting of such incidents. The essay also addresses the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Egypt. The conclusion emphasizes the need to address gender discrimination actively, starting at the school level, to foster a more equitable society and prevent the adverse impacts on women's mental health and overall well-being. The essay references several studies and reports to support its arguments.

Gender discrimination
Gender discrimination

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Transcript
Gender discrimination is a concept that throws light on the fact that men and women are not
equal. This inequality expands to the arenas of their roles, responsibilities, abilities, rights and
duties etc. Traditional gender roles are explicitly defined and extremely prevalent in our society
today. These discriminations have been existing in our culture since a long time and have been
continuing to have an adverse impact on our society since time immemorial.
In our existing societal set up, it has been noticed that women are expected to fulfill roles
specializing in the domestic sphere whereas men’s roles are tied strictly to public sphere. This
has led to drastically different lifestyles of women and men in the society and often women find
themselves at a grave disadvantage in the society. According to UNDP’s gender inequality index
Egypt ranked 111th out of 148 countries in all (United Nations development program, 2016). The
overall calculated score of Egypt’s inequality index is 0.59 while the perfect score would be 1.0.
This is evidence enough to determine the high level of inequality faced by the women of the
country.
Gender inequality can be seen in different spheres of life specifically education, political
participation, work opportunities and even their reproductive health. It has been noticed that
most women fail to complete their secondary education. In fact, the literacy rates alone show a
discrepancy among young adults with 93.2% male being perfectly literate in comparison to
86.5% women. The scenario is much worse for elders of the house and only 15% of household
heads were literate as per the Human development report in 2006 (Ali, 2014).
In terms of unemployment, working women are not just unappreciated but rather they are looked
down upon. As of 2012, only 24.2% of the total workforce in the country were women. The
change is becoming slowly evident especially in the upper middle class but they still have a long
way to go. Only 13.4% women between the ages of 15 and 29 are either working or actively
seeking jobs.
One of the most disturbing elements of gender discrimination is gender based violence. Sexual
harassment, domestic violence and sexual violence is increasing day by day. This causes both
physical as well as mental trauma in the victim and has been a major cause behind lack of

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confidence and fear among women. Most incidents are not even reported. Despite that a recent
UN survey shows that 99.3% of the women have face sexual harassment of some sort in their
lives. These facts are deeply disturbing and the impact that such incidences have on a women are
highly underrated. A lot of women have been able to recall their sexual harassment incidents
even years after their occurrence. This only goes to show how deeply it impacts women.
Sexual violence cases are barely reported because of the immense social stigma attached to the
issue. Most rape victims are not even bothered to bring to the authorities while some are
immediately prosecuted before they can even complain or recover from the incidence. More
often than not women rape is followed by honor killing and it prevents women from seeking help
on the matter. Despite increasing awareness of the issue, it has been reported that over 20000
women are raped annually and this number is catastrophic.
Domestic violence is another such issue which is barely ever brought to notice. The number of
reported and unreported cases of wives being beaten by their husbands and violence practiced on
women by their current or previous husbands has been increasing by the day. The men practice
this violence under the shadow of their misinformed Islamic culture. The worst that the women
go through is female genital mutilation or female circumcision (Gallagher, 2016). This includes
the procedure of removing female genitalia. This practice of FGM is surprisingly common in
Egypt with an estimated 90-97% of women having gone through a similar procedure in their
lifespans.
To conclude, I wish to state that gender discrimination is growing at an unnerving rate. This
hampers the growth of the society in which we live. More than that, it has been increasing cases
of depression and suicide among women (Kira, 2015). In this era of globalization, increasing
technology and awareness, the beginning has to be made with treating our women well and
giving them the respect that they deserve. Gender discrimination must be addressed actively and
the basis of which should be formed at school level. The younger generation must gain
awareness and take active responsibility to tackle the issue from its roots.

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References
United Nations, 2016, ‘Human development reports’, http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII,
retrieved on 3 November, 2017.
Kira, Ibrahim A., et al. "Are the Negative Mental Health Effects of Gender Discrimination (GD)
Salient across Cultures? Does Self-Esteem Mediate These Effects: GD as a Continuous
Traumatic Stress and the Pathways to Its Negative Dynamics?" Psychology 6.01 (2015): 93.
Ali, Jala, et al. "Gender gap in basic education in Egypt." (2014).
Gallagher, Carolyn A., and Raymond Arthur Smith. "Issue Brief: Discrimination and
Women/Gender Issues." (2016).