Eth/125 Gender And Sexual Orientation Research Paper

Gender & Sexual Orientation
Katisha Lewis
Axia College at University of Phoenix

Dawn Byram
ETH/125
October 6, 2012
Gender & Sexual Orientation According to my research it states that throughout the history women have been treated as second- class citizens. Women have had fewer rights and job opportunity. The status for women in the history has been for them to be house wives and take care of the children, while the men worked doing hard labor. Women had little opportunity to get an education. Women in the workforce in the 1850’s jobs includes domestic services, clothing textiles, teaching, making shoes, wools, and hat making. The women were making as little as $2.00 per week and the more job opportunities, and an education.
In the mid 1980’s women were earning 49 percent of master degrees and about 33 percent of them were doctoral degrees. Women had labor laws where it prohibiting them from working no more than eights a day and also working at night. This kept women from getting overtime and also supervisory positions. Several federal laws were passed in the 1960’s that improved the status of women such as The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and The Civil Rights of 1964 which prohibited discrimination against women. Jeanette Ranking was elected the first woman member of the United States House of Representatives in 1917. By the 1970’s there was three women held their countries highest electives offices.

There are more women today working and furthering their education.
Even though women make up half the workforce there is still inequality between them and men. Women still only make 77 cent for every dollar than men do. African American women make only 64 cent of every dollar and Hispanic women make only 54 cent of every dollar. Since more and more women are because the breadwinner of families this is also hurting the family. Because women only get 77cent of every dollar they make it can cost women to lose tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages. In some case women are now the breadwinners of the family and it’s continues growing. According to the research women now make up 30% of small business in the United States and it generally $ 1.2 trillion a year in sales. The President signed a law Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which is to help women get pay they earned. Because many women are working the day care center fee have exceeded. Women annual income is 74.7% higher than it was 30 years ago. In 2010 there were 23.2 million working
mothers.
Masculinity and femininity is a concept that describes the characteristic of male and female.
An example of it would be that the color blue has always represented a male and pink has always been a color to represented women. It is also said that strong and tough have been masculinity words and weak and soft has been more of femininity words. The media give men more advances than a woman. Women are often looked at weak and being a dependent of their spouse. A man is looked at as being strong in control, and taking care of the household. There have been many women in the media that has helped the women status. There are many organizations that have been spokesmen for women to help increase and emphasis women rights. There has been TV shows to represent women that are working mothers. The media has shown that working women are continuously growing. The media has also shown that more and more women are going back to school and getting an education. From the history the media has harmed women because everyone was thinking women were weak and their role was to stay at home taking care of the house and children. Now as time is changing women are coming more in the workforce holding down many jobs that men would
do.
Historically the social status for the GLBT community has been viewed as sick, criminal, and sinful. 40 years ago the law enforcement harassed people of the GLBT community routinely. There was fewer people of the GLBT community that was willing to be open about their sexually orientation. Being gay was pathologies as a mental illness until 1973. In California 1978 they banned homosexual employees from working in the public schools. Today there are many people in the GLBT community that are more openly about their sexual orientation. Many people are accepting the GLBT community more and there is still violence against the GLBT community. Many students are being bully at school because of their orientation. The GLBT civil rights have process lit by little. In April 2009 the same sex marriage was legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Vermont. There are twenty states that do outlaw unlawful discrimination against the GLBT community. One of the social and political issues is that women and the GLBT community is being discriminated against and also being treated inequality. In 2010 the president signed a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Act to let the GLBT serve in the military.

Reference
Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia (1994-1995) Women's History in America Presented by Women's International Center Retrieved from www.wic.org/misc/history.htm
No Author Name (April 2012) Keep Women Moving Forward www.whitehouse.gov/.../womens_report_final_for_print.pdf No author name (No date) www.mu.ac.in/myweb_test/.../Gender%20&%20Soc..pdf No author (no date) people.hofstra.edu/alan_j_singer/.../Woman's%20History.pdf
Robert Kim (2009) A Report on the Status of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender People in Education www.nea.org/assets/docs/HE/glbtstatus09.pdf