Issues Women Still Face Today

"Really? You women are still going on about this?"

Unfortunately, yes we are. You would think, that in 2017 we would not have to still be talking about women's issues. But obviously, as America put a man who freely talked about sexually assaulting a woman into office, nothing has seemed to change when it comes to actually seeing women as equals to men.

1. Reproductive Rights (...or the lack of)

Ah yes. The ever controversial "Should women have rights over their own bodies or not?" It is pretty sad that our society has to fight over what a woman can and cannot do with her own body. Women's reproductive rights are: the right to birth control; the right to safe abortion; freedom from coerced sterilization and contraception; and lastly, the right to education and access to information to make reproductive based choices. Obviously, we are primarily talking about abortion when this topic arises. A vast amount of those who argue that women should not be allowed to abort a fetus, are ironically men, who do not have uterus' or have to go through pregnancy nor childbirth. Recently, Donald Trump (a man) and (primarily male) members of his administration stood around Trump's desk to sign an executive order that banned U.S. funding to nonprofit organizations that provided information about abortion. Not only does this prevent women from attaining information about safe abortions, it will drive many to perform unsafe abortions that can lead to infections and sometimes death, and it also interferes with our right to have access to information relating to abortion.

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2. Gender Wage Gap

Women today are still earning less than their male counterparts in the workforce--about 78 percent of what their male counterparts earn.

3. Violence Against Women

Nationwide, an astounding amount of about 270,000 women and girls are victims to rape of sexual assault annually. On average, one out of every five women will be victims to some form of sexual assault. Domestic violence against women is also a huge factor to violence against women. Although women can and are perpetrators of domestic violence, domestic violence is mostly perpetrated by men towards women. One in three female homicide victims is killed by their partner and 24 percent of adult women were physically assaulted by their partner.

4. Unpaid Maternity Leave

The United States is the only developed nation worldwide that does not mandate paid maternity leave. Only 11 percent of private-sector American employees have access to paid leave.

5. Right to Education

Many people around the world do not have the privilege of attending school and a lot of that is because of poverty, but a lot of that also has to do with gender discrimination. There are about 31 million young girls who are not in school as of 2013, and 4 million fewer boys are out of school. About two-thirds of the 774 illiterate individuals around the world are female.