Struggles for Women in America

“Pretty took the will to be so and the money to do it and the time to see to it and the sleep to maintain it, and Ella didn’t have any of those things.” Women in America have to face multiple struggles that the average man wouldn’t have to encounter in their life in any case. Women in America have always seemed to get the short end of the stick with a tremendous number of things such as equal pay, occupational sex segregation, pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, sexual violence, access to free birth control and many more issues. The issues that I stated are only a few problems that women in America still face today and have to learn how to overcome these obstacles the best way they know how.

The main issue in America with women today is Equal Pay. In 1963 the Equal Pay Act which would be 55 years ago today was designed to ban sex-based wage discrimination. Even with this Act being released 55 years ago women still get paid an average of 77 cents every dollar that a man makes. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity and certain laws were made in order to keep structure, but we as 'Americans' can never continuously stay on the right path. I personally think Equal pay is a major issue because you do have women who may be single mothers or the main provider for there household and they have to provide for their family or whatever the case may be. The gap for women and men dealing with pay is very harsh even if the woman may have the same amount of experience of education as the man working the same job. 'The wage gap typically translates into more than $10,000 per year in lost earnings for women. The good news is that there’s a clear path ahead to fair pay for women.” (Workplace, NWLC). On the other hand, women of color have it worse when it comes to wages and the gap is even larger than normal. I have personally experienced some of these things being an African American female and also being so young.

Women also have to face problems dealing with receiving free birth control and are currently struggling with having the choice of what they want to do with their body when and if they get pregnant. This is a topic that I feel very strongly about because I feel women should have the right to choose what they want to do with their body while dealing with pregnancy, especially if the pregnancy was caused by rape. This a huge problem in America because some women aren't able to get the proper healthcare that they need in order to prevent pregnancy if they don't want to have kids at that time. This ties into what I was talking about earlier with equal pay. It is simply a domino effect; If women don’t get paid enough healthcare won’t be in range for them to receive proper help. Healthcare in the United States is already pricey for most Americans that aren't covered, so imagine how it affects a single mother or female that doesn't get the proper wages that they deserve. If these main two issues were fixed women in America would be thriving at a higher rate than normal. Sadly, they aren’t fixed, and America needs to work with the women of this great nation, so we can all be truly “equal.”

“The U.S. is one of just two countries from a recent 185-country study where new mothers aren’t guaranteed paid leave (Papua New Guinea is the other holdout). Without a national maternity leave mandate, most American women get little in the way of paid time off after the birth of a child, which has some pretty significant consequences both for individuals and the economy as a whole.' (The Cheatsheet, 2018) Pregnancy discrimination in the workplace is another issue that we are currently facing in the United States. A lot of people don’t think women should get time after they have a child or paid when they do leave to have their kid(s). I don’t agree with this because women have to carry a whole life in their body for nine months and still work if they do have a career or job, in order to still provide for their family. When people don’t take that into consideration it really angers me because it’s usually people who can’t even wrap their mind around what women actually have to go through when they are pregnant or just in general. Not even 20% of women that get pregnant that work gets 'leave with pay.' This is really upsetting because they can't support their family or newborns if they are at work which causes bigger issues in the household.

Since the beginning men have always been classified as the more “dominant” sex and there needs to be a stop to this idea. Women constantly have to deal with sexism with a comparison to a man and they also have to deal with constantly working harder in order to get the credit where is already due. When I say 'work harder' I mean that if a woman has the same job as a man woman seem to have to go out of their way to get noticed even when they are doing their job correctly and efferently.

I chose this topic because in “The Last Ballad” the main character in the book faced one of these issues. This issue had to do with work conditions, being a single mother and all the other obstacles that Ella May have to endure. All these issues are important to me and I'm sure many women in America can agree with me on that.

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