Law is defined as a system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and may enforce by the imposition of penalties. It is regarded as having the binding force or effect of a formal system of rules. The law is an extremely ambiguous topic to broach. History has shown a pattern of unfair treatment towards certain types of people, in particular, women.
The law for some people means injustice. For some, the law is something that is unsafe. Justice is measured in different ways, and for a great amount of people, it is measured in a negative way.
Women are a group that have been treated unfairly by the law. Sexual violence is one thing that is wholly ignored by most of the general populous, due to the fact that they believe it doesn’t happen very often. In fact, one in four women are sexually assaulted during their lifetime. One in six women have been victims of a completed or attempted rape. 82 percent of these assaults are by people who are known by the victim. In colleges around the United States, less than five percent of sexual assaults are reported to the police. This leaves 95 percent of sexual assaults, most of which were by someone that the victim knows personally. 100 percent of completed rapes result in physical injuries. Survivors of sexual assault are three times more likely to suffer from depression, six times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, four times more likely to contemplate suicide, and 26 times more likely to abuse drugs. An average of 39 percent of rapes are reported to the police. This is due mostly to the fact that most victims are attacked by an intimate, or a relative. Only six percent of the rapists who are apprehended ever spend a day in jail. 1.2 percent of people in jail were convicted of rape, and 46 percent of them were released within three years, due to the fact that they were only charged of a misdemeanour or minor felony. What makes matters worse is that many of the men released were taken back to prison for another rape within five years of being released.
Another thing that women have to worry about is ownership of their bodies. In the recent years, there has been much debate over the issue of abortion. There are currently 445 men and 93 women in Congress. These are the people who make decisions about whether or not people are allowed to do actions. The fact that men are the ones in charge of women’s rights, especially on the subject of abortion, is injustice. There are some male members of Congress who brought in a bill that would completely outlaw all abortion clinics, forcing women to go to hospitals. One Senator stated that “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down” (Todd Akin). He was talking about how women shouldn’t have to get abortions because women have a way of shutting down their reproductive systems. Which, in itself, is completely untrue.
The wage gap is another example of the law being unjust. In 1963, the United States passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963. This act made it illegal for there to be discrimination between genders in how much employees get paid. However, 52 years later, there is still unequal pay. In 2013, overall, women were paid 78 percent of what men were paid. Women in every state experience this, but in some states, women have it worse. In Louisiana, women were paid only 66 percent of what men were paid compared to in Washington, D.C., where women were paid 91 percent. Women of color have it worse. Hispanic women’s salaries have the largest gap, at 54 percent. The pay gap also increases with age.
Around the world, there is injustice. However, that does not make the law unfair. It just makes it unequal. The law is ambiguous, and can be interpreted in many different ways by many different people.
