acsaylor

[acsaylor]

A stereotypical housewife is a married woman who cooks, does housework, and takes care of the kids and husband. A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and/or make choices about their lives.

[acsaylor]

Every year, March is designated Women’s History Month by presidential proclamation. The month is set aside to honor women’s contributions in American history. The National Women’s History Alliance selects and publishes the yearly theme. The theme for Women's History Month in 2021 captures the spirit of these challenging times. Since many of the women's suffrage centennial celebrations originally scheduled for 2020 were curtailed, the National Women's History Alliance is extending the annual theme for 2021 to "Valiant Women of the Vote: Refusing to Be Silenced. The 2022 theme is "Women Providing Healing, Promoting Hope." This theme is "both a tribute to the ceaseless work of caregivers and frontline workers during this ongoing pandemic and also a recognition of the thousands of ways that women of all cultures have provided both healing and hope throughout history."

[acsaylor]

Women’s rights are human rights! We are all entitled to human rights. These include the right to live free from violence and discrimination, to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, to be educated, to own property, to vote, and to earn an equal wage. But across the globe many women and girls still face discrimination on the basis of sex and gender. Gender inequality underpins many problems which disproportionately affect women and girls, such as domestic and sexual violence, lower pay, lack of access to education, and inadequate healthcare.

[acsaylor]

Globally 1 in 3 women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, mostly by an intimate partner.  It causes devastating, harm to women’s lives and that of their children. It also hurts the economic and social health of their families, communities, and countries. Children who grow up in families where there is violence may suffer a range of behavioral and emotional disturbances. These can lead to mental and development problems and also be associated with perpetrating or experiencing violence later in life.

[acsaylor]

Equal pay has been a problem for a long time. It wasn't until the passage of the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963 (effective June 11, 1964) that it became illegal to pay women lower rates for the same job strictly on the basis of their sex. The gender pay gap continues to impact women's long-term economic security and well-being. Since 1985, the gap has only closed by about 18 percentage points. At this rate, it will take more than 40 years to close the pay gap. For Black and Latino women, it will take more than a century.