In this article, you will get detail regarding Fearmongering diverts attention from real threats of gender oppression
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Naomi Ishisaka is the Seattle Times’ assistant managing editor for diversity, inclusion and staff development.
Over the past few months, the level of manufactured outrage over children at drag shows and gender teaching in schools seems to have reached a fever pitch.
Orders are being pushed across the country to limit performances in front of children and limit school discussions about gender and sexual orientation, all under the guise of protecting our next generation.
Fear mongering was good for conservative media and politicians. But it was terrifying for trans and gender-diverse people, and it kept the eye out of the very real ways in which real gender oppression exists.
March 8 was International Women’s Day, an opportunity to celebrate women’s achievements and think about what we should really focus our attention on.
If people are really concerned about the future of our children, they should be concerned that half of our children can expect to earn less based on their gender. The gender pay gap is real and, according to Pew, has remained virtually static for decades. In 2022, women overall earned 82 percent of what men earned, a slight improvement from 80 percent in 2002.
For Black, Native American, and Latina women, the picture is even darker.
According to employment platform Idealist, black women earn 58 cents on the dollar compared to white, non-Hispanic men. Latin American men earn 4 cents less than that, and native women 51 cents. That means it won’t be until November. 30, 2023, that Native Americans will earn what a white man earned the previous year, a measure known as Equal Pay Day. And according to the Human Rights Campaign, overall, trans men earn just 70 cents on the dollar and trans women 60 cents, compared to the average worker.
If we really cared about protecting our children, we would ensure their ability to control their own reproductive future. Access to abortion is an economic issue as well as a human rights issue. A study to be published this year in the Indiana Law Journal found that women of childbearing age took a 5 percent pay cut when abortions were restricted in their states because they quit working or took lower-paying jobs, according to Axios.
It’s easy to feel that the wave of abortion bans in states like Texas isn’t affecting us in Seattle, where abortion rights are protected and measures to protect abortion providers from out-of-state investigations are moving through the state legislature. But as my colleague Nina Shapiro wrote last month, an increasing number of patients seeking abortion care are coming to Washington, many from Texas, where performing an abortion is now a felony punishable by life in prison.
And when you zoom out, the picture is even more troubling. Recently, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that gender equality around the world is now 300 years away and is “disappearing before our eyes”.
He said women and girls have been “erased from public life” in Afghanistan following the resurgence of the Taliban, as well as the abolition of sexual and reproductive rights around the world.
Women are fighting all over the world, but at a terrible cost. In Iran, protesters are fighting against theocracy and restrictions on their human rights. In November, the Iranian government admitted that more than 300 people had been killed in the protests. Activist groups say the number is much higher and that thousands have been detained. In the Seattle area, Iranian-Americans have been protesting for “Woman, Life, Freedom” in solidarity for months, almost every week.
To shorten that terrifying 300-year prediction, we must keep our eyes on the ball and — complex and challenging as it is — continue to fight for a world that does not erect arbitrary barriers based on gender or identity.
If a child is read a story by a loved one, it will not affect that child’s ability to fulfill their potential. We should strongly reject that implication.
We can make progress on the many things that hold women, girls, and gender diverse people back in the U.S. and around the world, but only if we stop focusing on false threats and start focusing on real issues.
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