To support my stand, we will look at the four aspects of the social construct.
Firstly, politics. To look at matters globally, we can see that 10 years ago, the world average for women representation in legislation was 11.3%. Only in 5 countries did women constitute over 30% of the legislature. Their presence in parliament was, more often than not, tokenistic. However, contrast that to today, when women represent 15.7% of all legislators across both houses of parliament. 12 more countries now have over 30% of women in parliament. This is a clear depiction of women gaining power in the political scene, which is very important as it will be a fairer representation on half of the population which consists of females. They were previously given virtually no say at all in the country’s decision making, and the few women who were in the legislature were merely figureheads. By having more females, and more female influence, in the political scene, women’s voices can be heard, and changes can be made. This is an important step for equality of women in the society, especially in terms of rights. Hence, it can be seen that despite of the biological difference in males and females, vast improvements are still being made in obtaining gender equality.
Secondly, economics. Women's participation in managerial and administrative posts has been on the steady rise, with 33% in the developed world, l5% in Africa, and 13% in Asia and the Pacific. There are 5 women chief executives in the Fortune 500 corporations, the most valuable publicly owned companies in the United States. These include the CEOs of Xerox and Hewlett-Packard. These women serve as role models for members of their sex as they are living proofs that women are steadily closing up the distance between females and males, and that it is possible to break free of social stereotypes, which are comparatively not as defined as it was in the past due to presence of such examples of women empowerment. Therefore, even with the biological difference in males and females, improvements are still being made in achieving gender equality by weakening the previous mindset of males being the stronger gender.
However, it is still undeniable that women in politics and high-paying posts in companies have to be masculine in order to succeed in this still extremely male-dominated field. They will have to lose their more feminine characteristics, like being soft emotionally, and be tough, and this extends to even their appearances, which is the reason for the existence of power suits, as can be seen donned on leading female figures in these two areas, like Hilary Clinton (the first woman to run for US presidency) and Angela Merkel (Germany’s first woman Chancellor) in the political arena and Caterina Fake (Flickr co-founder) and Anne Mulchay (CEO of Xerox) in the economical arena. It seems that in order to succeed in these fields, masculinity must be seen regardless of the sex of the person, and at the end of the day, the more masculine person usually wins. Gender equality does not seem to be achieved in this case.
But, it is unfathomable for the public, or the board of directors, to choose a leader who is emotionally soft, indecisive and naive, all of which are feminine characteristics. As such, it is only natural for women to adapt to these circumstances in order to succeed, and the masculine qualities they adopt are simply qualities needed to be seen in a leader of a company or a nation, like being sharp and decisive, and the feminine qualities they lose are qualities of a bad leader. After all, masculinity is a social stereotype, and the common mindset for the society is that men are leaders of companies and nations, and women stay at home and tend to menial tasks. Hence, it is unfair to say that the more masculine person wins and so there are no improvements in gender equality, for it simply refers to the fact that these women are competent leaders and are able to compete with men vying for the same leadership posts. This is a definite advancement in gender equality.
Thirdly, sports. Sports, a highly male-dominated field as it is highly dependent on the physique and athletic ability of the sportsman, or sportswoman, and the average woman would naturally lose when competing with the average man. A strong proof of females being physically weaker than males due to their biological makeup will be in the NAPFA testing that takes places in Singapore schools annually to measure the fitness of students. The standard for males is pitched at a higher standard than females, like the requirement to do the full pull up whereas females only need to do the inclined pull up.
However, despite the differences in biological makeup, women are gaining more equality in the sports arena by creating different categories for men and women (i.e. they do not compete together), like in track and field events for example. As Man’s biological makeup cannot be changed unless artificial means are used, by working around this biological difference, equality can still be achieved in the sense that both men and women are given equal opportunity to participate in sports, and are also given equal limelight in the sporting arena (women are not overshadowed by men’s achievements as they compete in separate categories). One such example will be in the prestigious Olympics. When it first started out in 776 BC, all events were designed for men, and women were even banned from watching. In 1896, they were not allowed to participate as it was considered unfeminine. However, in the second Olympics in Paris in 1900, societal views had modernised, allowing women to compete. However, there were only 11 females out of the 1319 competitors. In the more recent 2004 Athens Olympics, the ratio was close to 1:1. This is a great leap forward for equality of the genders, and it shows that it has greatly progressed over the years through the acceptance of the public, and women themselves, for women to enter this male-dominated field. Other factors such as pay equity are also slowly being leveled out, like in the tennis French, Australian and US Open offering both men and women competitors equal prize money. This shows that there are indeed improvements seen even in areas where biological differences do play a part in, by giving equal chances to both men and women despite differences in their biological makeup.
Fourthly, education. More and more females are given the opportunity to receive education, which is the stepping stone for more chances to participate in the other three fields that constitute the social construct, politics, economics and sports (in order to gain recognition for more vigorous training for the sport of expertise, some form of institution is needed for recommendation) and will then allow for improvements in the current state of gender inequality. Take China, which is infamous for its bigotry against girls going for education. In the past, the rural Chinese only sent their sons to school, seldom their daughters as they are unable to carry the family name or have a well-paying job, making it more economical to send only the sons to school and leaving the daughters behind to help out in the house. However, today, gender is no longer a reason for refusing admission to females. Education has been made compulsory, and apart from debilitating illnesses or other special circumstances approved by the government, all females must be educated for a minimum number of years. Parents and guardians will otherwise be fined. Amendments have also been made to the law: relevant provisions have been made to protect enrollment, degrees and scholarships. There is greater meritocracy, and relevant rewards are given out based on capability, not gender. This will create many chances for women to step up in the society and education will also level out the playing field substantially, making the world closer to achieving gender equality.
To evaluate, I feel that equal opportunities in education is the most important step to allowing women to stand on the same grounds as men as through it, women are able to equal out the playing field and gain ground in the other areas of the social construct, in politics, economics (as knowledge is power in these two fields) and sports (as talent is as good as nil if there is no recognition of sort, which can be provided by an institution).
Thus, to conclude, our biological aspect is not an appropriate yardstick to gauge gender equality, as it cannot be changed, and with strong and solid evidence as given above, we can see that there is a trend of having great improvements in gender equality despite biological differences. Furthermore, gender equality is not dependent on biology alone as it is socially agreed upon (and as can be seen, the only social aspect that concerns the biological makeup is sports, and even in that can improvements in gender equality be seen), and can be achieved through changes in the social construct (as proven in politics, economics, sports and education).
Hence, I disagree to the hypothesis.
