Is it harder to grow up Male or Female in America?

America is the land of opportunity, the land of the free, the home of the brave. But does America provide equal opportunities for all individuals? Under every business, under every school, and even under every church, there lies segregation. There will always be segregation as long as people exist. In America, women are not expected to reach a high plateau in their lives but rather stand behind a man who does. It is more difficult to grow up as a woman in America because of professional segregation, social expectations, and the pressure on males to be superior.

America is a nation led predominantly by males, and America has been involved in over ten major wars. The economy is in shambles and not looking any better. Every industry is dominated by a male figure. In the film industry, sixty-five percent of lead roles consist of men, despite the fact that they only comprise forty-nine percent of the nation’s population. And in the news, women reported less than twenty percent of the major stories according to a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs in 1997. Even some of the activities we assume women to excel at we exclude them from in a professional setting. A few good examples are Iron Chef, or any cooking show for that matter (There’s typically a male chef), and all the cleaning infomercials like Oxiclean with Billy Mays. Women are expected to cook and clean in the household, but not in a professional setting; however Paula Dean and Martha Stewart are just as informative as Bobby Flay.

From my own personal experience, the store managers of all the Wal-Mart’s in my town are males, and even their superiors are males. And after talking with my peers, we have concluded that a woman has to work much harder to achieve the same success as a man in an equivalent position, which is why there are very few female CEO’s, presidents, or ambassadors,etc. The median earnings of males are higher than females in every single state. The median earnings of women only come close in the District of Columbia.

On the other hand, one must consider the ages of the men who occupy all these high level positions. They are mostly older men who are a part of a generation that does not accept women like the rest of us “young people” do. Maybe in the future there will be hope for aspiring women to take charge and redirect a nation that desperately needs new direction.

Another constant concern for women growing up in America is the murderous weapon that is the media. The media determines what a woman can and cannot be. The media also likes to tease women with magazines showcasing actresses and models that are wealthy because they are pretty. The media infiltrates our public schools and guides our children outside the reach of their parents. Children are taught to not talk to the “ugly” kids. They are taught to form cliques that agree with everything the media says. So, if men can use their brains or their experience to be successful, where does that leave an honest woman? She is left with the idea that if she makes herself pretty, she will be successful. Unfortunately, since an actual position of authority and leadership is so difficult to attain in the life of an American woman, this foolish idea instilled by the media seems to be her only option.

The media will continue to rule our minds and make us all blind, because our parents expose us to it and teach their sons to be the same way that the world would have them be: headstrong, unemotional, assertive, and domineering. If the media has become the bible of our generation, then the parents of our generation have become its preachers. The corporate officials of America all lack a sense of humor and are spiteful towards any woman who has ambition. They feel that they have to be superior to women, because they have been raised by their television sets and the pressures of the world that they were exposed to by their parents. No one can truly be an individual anymore, and the same is true but much worse for women, because there are ignorant men in the world holding them down.

How can we remedy this? A baby is like any other baby, and yet we all become so different when we are adults. If America is to have any hope of remaining a mostly capitalistic country, the children of America need to learn better values in life. There are many intelligent and outgoing women in the world, but with the current sociological mindset implanted in us from birth, those women may never be given the time of day, and our nation may slowly fall apart.

Women are held back in almost every possible way. Segregation is the largest setback in human history. Despite this, America has an African-American president now, a concept unimaginable fifty years ago. Maybe in another fifty years, a woman will be able to take up the torch and lead us all out of the cave of socialism we are falling into.