Has Female Equality Been Exploited?
Has Female Equality Been Exploited?
Now I know that there is going to be a range of reactions to the initial title. Men might feel defensive saying, "I entirely disagree, I never exploited any woman's rights or equality, this is going to be propaganda." Strong far left, Third Page Feminists will be likely instantly become supportive. Saying "YES OUR RIGHTS ARE STILL EXPLOITED TO THIS DAY RID MEN!". Then there's the spectrum between. Let me first start by saying, men are not entirely responsible for this, and no women's rights are not entirely exploited today, especially not in the way you might think. I am going to review the history of what has occurred with women's liberation and how it has affected women and men alike when it comes to family homes. I am a strong supporter of capitalism as capitalism allows us to take from numerous of different governing systems and allows us to swing between different ones as we need. Although, with a lack of competition among the people, and couples strained from exploitation of the women's new liberations, this has created monopolies and inflations that were entirely unnecessary for society and has created the corporate abusive monopolies that we have today.
Let me also express that I fear in today's world it has become painfully obvious that we have begun to fail at seeing the world and life as the mutable, not within the lines realm it is. We have begun to allow ourselves to slip into what is called categorical thinking. This is where groups of people begin to divide instead of uniting. This something also taught in elite schools like Yale, Harvard, or Bucknell to their elitest students to not fall into this. It is natural human nature for people feel the need to separate into their categories and this creates a set of competitive thinking that blocks us from seeing the fine details creating the real issues while we compete with each other to be the category that is best. We must first release ourselves of this categorical thinking before moving forward to fully, truly understand the message that I am trying to provide. I hope that women especially those of third page feminism are willing to let go of the categorical thinking that all white men, or that men in general seek to exploit and suppress you, as not all of them are this way, and not all of the people doing this to you are men, let alone all white men. I ask for men that may feel defensive to relax. Understand that this is for a uniting of genders and seeing the true enemy of the problem instead of blaming everything on you. So please, if you'll allow me, I will provide my argument as to how I believe corporations, and even including elitest women, have exploited the liberations of women in American society.
Let me first start with reviewing the arguments that we commonly hear. We all know about the wage gap. Lord knows many women make it clearer than ever, but how many women understand that their pushes have been more self-sabotaging than good. You can read some on how feminism fighting against men can actually be damaging to masculinity, the success of married men, and the equality of women in 'Femineity Lost and Regained' by Robert A. Johnson, a renowned Psychologist. Women today make an average of about 81 cents to the dollar that a man makes. This is a 3 cent drop from the 84 cents to a dollar that women made a few years ago. Now this is also for women in general who work full time, not including dividing by minority groups, or part-time workers. When we do this actually stoops as low as 60 cents to the dollar of a man.
When all workers are included, the gap widens across states.
The states with the largest wage gaps are:
- Utah (earning 60.2 cents for every dollar men earned)
- Idaho (64.3 cents)
- Louisiana (65.0 cents)
The states with the smallest wage gaps are:
- Vermont (earning 86.8 cents for every dollar men earned)
- The District of Columbia (D.C.) (85.1 cents)
- Delaware (80.7 cents)
Despite how liberal many may find the west coast to be, they have actually been more unfair to women's equality on the western side of the country than on the eastern side. Many more states on the west coast pay women unfairly than on the east coast. It almost seems as though New England is the best place for a woman to work.
When you break it down by minority things get a little more hectic. We commonly hear of the black community feeling they receive less, and commonly they do less than the white population. Although...... who is counting the others? Many often don't realize that there are other communities of ethnicities struggling even worse, that are commonly even more severely deprived. This isn't to pull away from the struggles the black community may come across, but to bring more clarity that there are other groups struggling that are being forgotten in the background that need to be heard too.
Broken down by demographics of race:
White women - 80 Cents to the dollar
Black women - 63 Cents to the dollar
Latina women - 54 Cents to the dollar
Asian/Pacific Islander women - 83 Cents to the dollar
Indigenous women - 53 Cents to the dollar
As you can see, Asian and white women tend to struggle against the men, but black women struggle a little more, and Latina and Indigenous women are very far left behind and forgotten. We need to take this into consideration for ourselves not only for the men, but for us women as well. I say this as a white woman, I have strong Swedish descent with Irish and Italian and English, all European white blood. Those of us who are white, and asian need to remember those who are further behind us, even black women, you need to remember that if you are doing alright, go back for the others, help not only other struggling black women, help the Indigenous and the Latina women get to even where we are at. We cannot ignore that there are whole races of women left behind even further than ourselves. We need to not take our reward and move forward abandoning those still in the struggle.
Now moving forward from the pay gap to the next contributing factor, family life. This is probably one of the LARGEST drivers in the actual true exploitation of women's liberations.
Back in the day when women struggled to hold their right to vote, their right to have jobs, their right to just about most things really, women focused on the home. Women were actually much stronger back in these days whether many of us realize or not. Women of these days were concocting together chemistry experiments out of different home remedies for taking care of the housework, maybe mixing the lead paint to paint their front porch themselves, lugging around cast irons for dinner, iron kettles to cook together different mixes for their husbands' construction work. These women did major house chores beyond what most of us do today while taking care of a number of kids that would have many of us hiding under a table calling for back up! How did we as women grow to be so free yet so fragile? What happened?
One thing was when women's liberation came around, women wanted to work! They wanted the freedom to get out of the house and be an earner and not have it held over their head that their husband made the money, so he made the financial decisions. This felt enslaving for women. Today what's ironic, is many women would die to be a housewife just doing DIY house repairs and home chores while being paid their weekly salary by their husbands. Many women who have this life are higher class women. It's like watching lobster go from the poor man's food to now being the expensive gourmet dish. This is where the true exploitation of women and our liberation began.
Let's take a walk down a timeline quick.
The Co-Evolution of Women's Liberation and American Costs
Although very quickly we can see as how others begin to take advantage of this. The mentality of you have more so you should have to give more kicks in, and this is exactly why socialism fails, every, time. These families are forced to give more and immediately this causes a massive inflation in the economy, housing prices went up, cost of college sky -rocketed, prices of cars went up significantly. This was an exploitation that quickly began to run across all categories of the economy. Now what once brought freedom, liberation, and better life to everyday people, was quickly taken advantage of by greedy fellow citizens, and greedy corporations, and the corporate abuse begins.
Now women no longer can enjoy that liberation to work and have more out of life. The goal to bring more in to have some independence and a better life for the family has now become a partnered enslavement of both man and woman to the monopolies of the elite. The elite keep collecting, while the citizens of both men and women must slave away for incomes that today don't even cut close to paying the bills or covering a decent humane livable life! Today even a home with a woman working overtime struggles to afford basic health care for their families.
Women today are paid less with the excuse that they must be able to take time away to take care of the children and this bring lesser value to the business. As a business woman I do understand this. Business must carry on and you cannot have constant hiccups and jolts of people coming and going on a constant basis and keep the business moving. I'm sorry ladies but it's a true fact that we must be willing to acknowledge if we are going to be objective and give fair argument. Where we need to argue is not that we need businesses to bow into giving us more leeway and bend over backwards to cater to 20 different women's families schedules, while women try to balance house wife and working wife lives, but fight for the availability for a family to afford for a woman to step away from work and be able to take time to mother her children until they go off to school. Then also have a structural set up that allows a woman to be able to freely return to work without questions to why she deserves to return to work after 4 years of motherhood. This would also help with working dads that get paid less for the same reasons! We need to not say that the women that are presently there and putting in their work deserve less pay as though men who are fathers do not require the same thing. Overall many women also don't know that men who have kids tend to get less promotions and lower pay than men who don't have kids. This is more than an attack on women; it's an attack on families!
Through both parents needing to work and spend excessive hours on work to assure bills are paid, daycares have become a popularity, especially with the inflating cost causing people to have to work beyond the original retirement age of 55. Which is another underpaid demographic group. Grandparents used to be the ones to take children and watch them when the mother went to work, and families didn't need to worry about added daycare costs that are as high as paying a personal nanny. With the inflation, even grandma and grandpa have to work for another 10-15 years extra to afford to retire before they are too old to work. This brings in daycares who have exploited families for their incomes while creating a whole entire sociological impact on younger generations that is so massive it's for a whole other discussion, but it is the cause for a lot of the ill behavior of younger generations!
Many, especially women, want to point the finger at straight white men. Its always straight white men. But what many fail to know is that there are plenty of elite women making these decisions while having their white man husband take the face for it. Many of women's trends and expectations came from elitest women finding ways to keep themselves above other everyday women. They have created impossible tasks and expectations for everyday women to meet to keep them exhausted and below them. Think of Vogue, or L'Oreal! These are female owned and ran companies that have created expectations for everyday women. This is not only men, and it's not only whites. There are also plenty of elitest of black decent who are involved in this agenda as well. Think about all of the celebrities that flaunt and sell themselves and their image and aesthetic as something you should have to adopt while they mutilate themselves with their money construction their bodies then tell you it's natural and what you must be to compete or matter. Think of Beyonce, Nikki Minaj, Cardi B, Kim Kardashian and other celebrity women who tend to set the trends.
I understand many may feel defensive and ready to argue this, but unfortunately, it's true. There are women and people of color out there willing to put their own demographic under just to be the one at the top. In order to properly address the issue, again, we must fight the urge for categorical thinking that we have been trained to think in and be able to see what our minds have been trained out of seeing. We must do this so that we can see the fine details that go unnoticed, holding us back from truly addressing the issue.
So do women, and even families truly have more freedom today than what we did 100 years ago? When women are forced to work instead of get to choose if they work for their money. A time when women are forced to leave their child at a day care of 40 kids watched by 2 people not receiving the same care, nurturement, love, and play that they would get to have watched by family at home. When both man and woman both work to bring in an income and have to pull a tight budget just to have a steak night for the family one evening. When owning a home becomes an unaffordable idea for anyone under the age of 40. Did we really receive liberation? Or have we and our desire to contribute and be allowed to have dreams been exploited and confiscated from us forcing us into even worse lives than what we had before?
How do we go about fixing this? How do you feel we address this issue to bring back the freedom that women's liberation was supposed to bring us? Are you ready to choke all of this down and look at the ways that our women's liberation has been exploited and abused to the extent that our families entirely as a whole have suffered this exploitation. It is time us women stand up and say no more. You will not take away my liberation to bring comfort to my home with my freedoms. You will not enslave me and the man of my home and take our children from being raised by our family. You will not force us into old age work. We are going to start demanding that inflation come down, that greed of income not be taken from the everyday people to support a fascist group of elites.
I sincerely do hope that I have been able to bring a new perspective to you. I hope that you can see that I am a strong supporter of family and women's rights. I believe that a man should be able to protect and provide for his family and be able to feel pride in that. For a woman to freely live her dreams, go to college, have a career, and be a mother without financial consequence. I believe that every race should be treated the same and fairly and paid equally. I believe that even if we are a little behind, we should be helping those that are further behind us. We are only as strong as our weakest point. We need to unite and uplift ourselves and demand that price of living come down to a rational level and that corporate abuse from the financial greed and exploitation of families through exploitation of women's liberation comes to its immediate halt and a humane loving, benefitting life be restored to the everyday American people. Just as women's liberation was truly meant to do for us, as a gender, as families, and as the people.
References:
Kansas University - The Gender Wage Gap by State
Written by Lucie Prewitt
March 26, 2026
National Parnership for Women and Families 55