Social, Gender And Race Inequality In The 21st Century

The statement that’s been made above is agreeable, especially since the 21st century is currently changing and evolving everyday. Inequality is a big issue all over the world, especially inequality between different classes in the world and inequality between different genders. Even now, in the 21st century, inequality is seen through different social classes, different races and different genders.

Gender inequality has become a big thing in politics. Women weren’t allowed to vote in the early days, but now they are. In the 2008 election in the USA, Hillary Clinton ran against former President Barack Obama and even though she was one of twenty-five women to run for president, she was the first woman to have a chance of winning. In South Africa it’s been more than 61 years since women were given the right to vote but this still hasn’t changed the inequality in the country. Even though there are more women than men in the country, they still aren’t represented in political and authority positions. And even though South Africa has overcome many issues, gender representivity is below 50% for positions. Supreme court of Appeal Judges compromises of 32% of women, 31% of advocates, 30% of ambassadors and 24% of heads of state-owned enterprises. South Africa is a developing country so there are a lot of unemployed people in the country with the unemployment rate at 26, 7%. There are many reasons for this and one of them being that the government doesn’t give the poor a good education system. Because the children don’t start getting their education at a young age, this affects their future and the unemployment rate in the country.

Social media is a big platform that anyone can use to express their opinion and it has been used by many to express their opinion on gender inequality. Research shows that more women than men use social media, and usually when women say their opinions on social media, it’s the norm to see them get backlash because of their gender. A research was done to prove this point by a male, he posed as a women on Twitter and received many negative and abusive comments compared to his regular Twitter. It’s been more than 24 years since South Africa came out of apartheid but there is still racism in the country. The biggest issue of racism is the quota system which is a system which refers to the number of racial groups that get into the universities in South Africa which has been around for a while. An example is that to study medicine in UCT, White and Indian students need to get an average of 78% on their NSC and African people only need to get 59% on their NSC. Aside from the quota system, there is still racism around the country and the rest of the world, with different race groups calling other race groups certain offensive words.

Since South Africa is a developing country, there isn’t much employment and with the unemployment rate being as low as it is, 26,7%, this weakens the economy. Without employees, the country can’t make any money. This also links to the issue of education in the country. The government only pays attention to the people that are making the money in the country instead of teaching the unemployed people in the country skills for jobs that don’t require much knowledge but skills, this is why the wealthy people in South Africa keep getting more and more money whilst the people that have nothing get nothing. When applying for jobs, sometimes gender can play a role in this. For example, a man and a woman both apply for the same job and the woman is more skilled than the man but the man gets the job. This is because some managers don’t want to deal with people taking leave because they got pregnant, this is usually the case.

These are just a few of the many reason inequality still exists in the world. Inequality between different race groups, cultures, genders and classes still exist today in the 21st century after there has been many changes and adaptations to every country in the world.

Bibliography

1. Lumen Introduction To Society – “Gender Inequality in Politics” https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-sociology-os/chapter/gender-inequality-in-politics/
2. STATS SA – “Women in power: what do the people say?” http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=10325
3. Asian News International – “Here’s how gender inequality finds voice on social media” https://m.hindustantimes.com/sex-and-relationships/here-s-how-gender-inequality-finds-voice-on-social-media/story-yM0G8iZsSX2ymr3rYQruJP_amp.html
4. Sites At Penn – “Matters Of The (Social) Media” https://sites.psu.edu/civicissueslipson/2018/03/12/matters-of-the-social-media/
5. Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser – “Economic inequality by gender” https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality-by-gender
6. ScienceDaily – “Social inequality” https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/social_inequality.htm
7. Wikipedia – “Quotaism” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotaism
8. STATS SA – “Category Archives: Poverty and Inequality” http://www.statssa.gov.za/?cat=22