While surfing the Internet recently, I came across an interesting blog post on the wildly popular website, tumblr, that tried explaining the reasons why women have a higher chance of getting employed. The picture that was portrayed on the blog depicted a drawing that said the more cleavage exposed during the job interview, the higher the chance of being employed. This clearly shows that gender inequality is still prevalent in today’s society. It seems irrelevant that even with women being astronauts, presidents and fighter pilots who are in such powerful positions like the honorable Aung San Suu Kyi, women are still regarded as ‘toys’ in today’s modern technological age. Though the advent of feminism and advocacy for women’s rights is stronger, we are still facing gender inequality problems. The empowerment of women has yet to see its full potential.

The world still conforms to the conventional notion that men should be the sole breadwinners. This would mean that women should be left to deal with the family and household chores while their husbands go out and conquer the world. The phenomenon of women bringing back a higher wage compared to their other half is considered bizarre. In Asia especially, it is rarely seen that women earn a higher income compared to men. The example of Singapore’s income tax return form strengthens the point that women’s wage being supplementary to that of a man’s is highly likely. A successful woman, in our current generation, is one who is able to juggle both menial work and household chores at the same time. This demeans the definition of being a woman thus concluding that gender inequality is still relevant in today’s society.

With the current economic recession and inflation on the rise, the rising cost of living is beginning to take a toll on families. Stress is placed on the sole breadwinner of the family, that being the head male of the house, to earn a better income to provide for his growing family. Again, a woman has to be able to hold the family together to make sure that the family doesn’t fall apart. This means that no time is given for women to excel in their jobs, which then adds on to the fact that women cannot be the sole breadwinners. As mentioned earlier, women are constantly being lauded for being able to cook well and at the same time, keep the house spic and span. Adding on to that, the widespread fact that women belong at home, especially in the kitchen, is being constantly portrayed in popular movies, websites and books, available for everyone to see.

However, in an egalitarian’s defense, gender inequality has greatly shown signs of improvement. For example, gender quotas have been placed in some top parliaments with great female representations. These quotas ensure that some seats in the parliament should be reserved for females. In India, for example, females must occupy 33.1% of the seats in the parliament while the remaining 66.9% are reserved for males. Some governments are also extremely supportive of the idea of gender equality to such an extent that at least a female must occupy 1 in 3 top parliamentary positions.

Overall, we can see that even though gender inequality is slowly improving, it has not reached the extent that it has become totally non-existent, as it is still evidently relevant in today’s society. It is still prevailing amongst the majority of the world. Though gender inequality still exists in today’s society, we can see that it is taking a turn for the better. With Forbes Magazine dubbing Oprah Winfrey the most powerful and influential woman, Aung San Suu Kyi winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and both Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin running for President of the United States of America in 2008, we can clearly see that the common stereotype that women are not as strong as physically and mentally as strong as men is slowly fading. Hopefully in the near future, we will be able to see both genders treated more equally.