Equality of Women in the United States

For Women in America, Equality is Still an Illusion In her article, "For Women in America, Equality is Still an Illusion", Jessica Valenti subject matter is to describe the discrepancies between what is perceived as gender equality to what is really occurring in America in hopes of ending the mistreatment and injustices of women. Valenti writes this essay in hopes of disillusioning women that believe they have the same equal rights and treatments that men have in America. She conveys a certain emotionally upset tone in her work (mainly due to her being a woman) to grab the reader 's attention. She uses selection of detail to show the hardships of women not only in America, but in other countries as well. Valenti provides many statistics of abuse against women here in the United States as well as examples of evidence for the mistreatment of women. Valenti 's appeals began before she had written a single word, mainly due to her being a woman. She appeals to the emotional side of her readers, writing that we “cry with Oprah and laugh with Tina Fey”, that we are “fooling ourselves” into believing that a “mirage of equality...is the real thing." She is trying to explain that it is a sort of ignorance-is-bliss situation: look at all these successful women on television so how could equality not exist? She also cites facts, while maintaining an emotion, by mentioning George Sodini, who specifically targeted women in his shooting “killing three women and injuring nine others." This intends to bring out the moral woe within the reader. One of the strongest of Valenti’s uses of emotional tone is when she states that the leading cause of death for women who are pregnant are murdered by their partner. It is almost unthinkable: with so much emphasis in America on the sanctity of life, whether or not to allow abortion or the morality of stem cell research; the fact that “the leading cause of death for pregnant women” is the person who caused the pregnancy is not an

Cited: Valenti, Jessica. "For Women in America, Equality is Still an Illusion." Read, Reason, Write. 10th ed. 2012. Print.