Societal Prejudices and Discrimination: the Review of "Hills Like White Elephants"

The year is 2019. Men and women are starting to share jobs, everyone is looked at equally, and no one discriminates against one sex, only none of this is true. Women have been looked down upon forever. Men believe they can tell a woman what to do and when to do it and think it is no problem. We live in a world where women can take over a male role in a company, run for president, and get an education that we deserve but are still looked at as we can do none of these as good as men. People still believe that women can't make decisions for themselves and that men can get/do whatever they want. Men manipulate, lie, deceive, and push a woman into doing something she does not want to do. Ernest Hemingway wrote, 'Hills Like White Elephants' which could be an example of this. In this short story, an American man is talking to his girlfriend about getting an operation. Though Hemingway never goes into detail about what the operation is, it is believed to be an abortion. The man tells his girlfriend that if she gets this done, they can go back to how they were before when they were much happier. He changed from 'operation' to 'procedure' saying that is simple and downplaying the seriousness that is involved and continuous to tell his girlfriend that everything will be fine after and they will be much happier. She tells her boyfriend she will get the operation done if he promises to love her after it is over, and he agrees he will. Ernest Hemingway's short story may have taken place around the 1930s but societal prejudices have never changed.

Social standards back in the '30s were that women had babies, cooked meals, and cleaned the house. Women were not allowed to have jobs as the states made it illegal for some women to hold jobs. As sex discrimination of the workplace is illegal today, it is still going on very heavily. Examples of sex discrimination in the workplace include not being hired with all the experience you need because the company is more comfortable with men. Maybe you want to take a job looked at for men, such as a firefighter or a police officer, and all candidates should be able to do 50 pushups. 50 pushups may not be a requirement for the job, but maybe it keeps females from applying. Maybe men get paid more than you, get better benefits than you, and get promotions faster than you do because you are a woman, this is sex discrimination in the workplace. Around four in ten (42%) of women say they have experienced discrimination where they work.

According to an article from Daily History and History of Abortions, abortions were legalized in 1973 after the Roe v Wade case. Some people felt they have won, many people thought that the supreme court failed them. Fast forward to 2019, abortions have become more normal and happening more frequently. Women get abortions for different reasons. These reasons may be because they were raped, they aren't financially stable enough, they are too young, or they are going to school and a baby would interfere. But one reason for particular is becoming more and more popular, they don't want to be a single mother. Being a single mother is a lot of women's nightmare. A study taken by the Guttmacher Institute says that 48% of women that have abortions say the reason is that they are having problems with their relationship and don't want to end up as single mothers. 14% of women say they didn't want to get an abortion done, but their husbands asked them to do it. Look at it this way, 638,169 abortions were reported in 2014. Approximately 89,344 women had abortions because their husbands asked them to. That is a very significant number. I decided to do a study of my own at the College of Central Florida. I asked 15 women, of all different ages, ethnicity, and political beliefs if they would get an abortion. 14 of the 15 women said yes. I asked the 14 women that said yes why they would get this procedure done. 4/14 said they need to finish college. 9/14 said they aren't financially stable and 1/14 said they just don't want to have kids and would not be a good mother. I then asked all of the 15 women if their husbands/boyfriends asked them to and they all said yes, even the woman that said she would not get an abortion. All these women don't want to end up single mothers, having to be financially stable for themselves and to take care of another life. My own personal study along with the Guttmacher institutes proves that men have a huge influence on how we decide our lives. Along with Ernest Hemingway's 'Hills Like White Elephants', the American man has an impact on what the women decide to do, just as in everyday life, men have an impact of what women do.

Societal prejudices and discrimination have been around since the Great Depression around the 1930s. Although women aren't looked at as homemakers, men and women will never be looked at as equal as men will always be superior. For Examples, are the gender pay gap, sexual harassment, and women not being held to the same standard when working in a male-dominated company. Men have made choices for women forever, but having a man tell you what to do with your child and body is worst of all. Many women agree to abortions because if they say no to their husband/boyfriend when being asked to get this done, they are afraid their husband/boyfriend will leave them and end up single mothers. As the statistic shows in the last paragraph, over 89,000 women have had abortions because of this. Women should not have to be a part of social prejudices. It is 2019. Women are running for president, taking over presidencies, and CEO placements at male-dominated companies such as Duke Energy and General Motors. Women are becoming assets to the United States and its time to put prejudices and discrimination behind us.