The Gender And Racial Inequalities In 1970-2000
In the last 200 years the world has changed quite much. But still we some problems that have stuck with our generation, such as inequalities based on race, class, and gender. This issue assignment will be focusing on gender and race inequalities throughout 1970-2000nds and how it affected people and how they changed it.
The aspect of inequality by class and gender discrimination has been around a long time. When to think back to The black death, Cholera and STD outbreak in the past, lower classes were accused to spread the viruses and diseases. Since poorer areas did not have the ability to improve their personal hygiene and make the area cleaner, often because of that the diseases spread faster. For example, the Cholera outbreak, main reason why it spread so quickly was that the lower class had no access to clean water they used the community pumps which were connected to polluted nearby rivers. Rivers were polluted because of no existing sewage systems and offer wealthier classes just directed their waste to rivers. They did not care about what happens to the people who were down the stream, it was not their problem now. The Black Death was linked to poverty also, since poorer urban areas were the centres for Plague. Urban areas again lacked personal hygiene and the city was very filthy. After the outbreak of Cholera and Plague people started to think how to stop the epidemics. The personal hygiene importance arises. The states started to improve their public health and designed new systems to make sure the epidemics stopped. Many cities made new sewage systems to get rid of the filth and clean the city.
Gender and race discrimination are reflected during STD and tuberculosis outbreak. Many women and people of colour in the lower classes were accused of spreading the STD and tuberculosis. Most of the time many rich and powerful white men blamed women after the intercourse for infecting them with STD, even if the men were the one who had the disease first. Males also refused to wear protection during intercourse which accelerated the spreading of STD. Women had no say in anything. Everything was decided for them, they were like objects to men. Many women had forced pregnancies and no chance to do abortion because it was illegalized because men thought it is wrong to kill the embryo. Even today some places have illegalized abortion, often these decisions are made by men in politics. They still control women’s bodies. In the 1960s The Women Health Movement started to emerge, and they tried to make changes in the big system, so women’s health would be taken seriously and improve. One of the most impressing examples is the legalization of abortion in 1973 by the supreme court. It took 13 years to get the result because, “During 1960s abortion was illegal in all states except to save the life of the woman . All those acts started to encourage women to demand equal rights and control over their own body.
Gender discrimination has improved in medical field and in public health. Year after year women are trying to get closer to equality. There still is the problem of unequal pay in medical world between females and males. Furthermore, there is a wage gap between different races. Highest salary in medical field goes to white male doctor. Recent study discovered “that the average pay gap between male and female physicians was $19,878 a year.”
Racism is a big problem now days and it was even worse in the past. The people of colour were accused of spreading many diseases. They were controlled by white race and had no civil rights. They were accused because colonies were the hot spots where the diseases started to spread quickly. All because of the personal hygiene and overall cleanliness. People of colour lives were horrible. When the STD and tuberculosis outbreak broke out, a group was formed called Eugenics. They had very different and distorted outlook of the world and how things should be. The group Eugenics had the idea of the pure race or also called white race who were superior compared to other races. Eugenics tried to ban birth control and marriage for the people of colour. In addition, they though that black race should never reproduce, in Eugenics eye they were unfit for the parenting role. But the superior white race was encouraged to reproduce and give birth more and more.
Other problem for people of colour was getting treatments they needed. Often when black people walked into the hospitals and needed treatment, the nurses and doctors refused to treat them. They had hard time getting any kind of medical appointments. In addition, to that people of colour had hard time getting into medicals schools or getting jobs at medical field. The ones who had the opportunity to work in medical field the pay cap between white male doctors was huge, and it still is today. In medical field there was also a language barrier. Many times people who used their mother tongue like many African American, Native Americans and Latinos used their mother tongue and they were not so proficient in English. Small example form an article “If you speak English well, then an American doctor, they will treat you better. If you speak Chinese and your English is not that good, they would also kind of look down on you.”
