Gender inequality

Are todays women equal? The question that no one can answer, some say that

women are already equal but some still say that even in nowadays women are still not equal.

Since in the past, it is obviously noticed that women are lower than men but when the time

has passed the difference between the right of men and women become lesser. Nevertheless,

there is still the gap between those two genders such as the government system in many

countries they do not allow women to be the government or to control their countries and the

military system almost 90 percent of militaries are men because they think that men are

stronger than women and should be the people who protect that country. Also, same as in the

novel named Brave New World. Brave New World has been written by Aldous Huxley in

1932, which was also marked as his career turning point, about the fundamentally sarcastic,

however, the novel also soundly expresses the distrust of the author in the twentieth-century

about the trends of both politic and technology. The novel introduces a nightmarish vision of

a future worlds society in the form of psychological condition to create a caste system which

finally turned to an elimination of individual and gives all of the power to the world state. In

addition, there are lots feminism ideas in the novel such as women are used as sex objects,

women are not given the right to educate and women are either sterilized or made to take a

contraceptive pill in order to remove their egg for maintain their social stability. Therefore, in

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley tries to represent that even in the future world women are

still lower than men by using the education, job opportunity and sexism.

Huxley illustrates the gender inequality by education. In the novel, the higher jobs are

ruled by men and one of the main reason is because of the education. From the past, women

do not have the chance to get educated and usually those educated people are men, so men

are more likely to have knowledge than women. in the poorest quartile of countries in 1990,
only 5% of adult women had any secondary education, one-half of the level for men. In the

richest quartile, 51% of adult women had at least some secondary education, 88% of the level

for men.(Cuberes, 2012). From the research, in 1990, in the poorest country the educated

women are just only half of men and even in the richest country more women are educated

but still only eighty-eight percent of men. Thus, the education problem from the past has

influenced the job opportunity of women nowadays.

However, nowadays more women are educated than men, according to the guardian

has written that Its analysis shows that across the UK 27.3% of all young men are expected

to go to university this year, compared with 37.1% of young women. That means 18-year-old

women are 36% more likely to start degree courses this autumn than their male peers.(the

guardian, 2017). But the higher job positions are still controlled by men, due to the research

The data also shows that women are typically employed in a reduced number of industrial

sectors: more than two-thirds of the global labor force in garment production is females and

1/5th of the total female labor force is in manufacturing. (Cuberes, 2012) and from the

statistic shows that there is still the gap of salary between those two genders. Progress

towards wage equality has stalled in the wake of the global financial crisis. This means that

although an additional quarter of a billion women have entered the workforce, women are

only now earning the amount men did in 2006.( World Economic Forum, 2017). Thus, even

nowadays, there are more women who are entered the workforce than men but men still

outnumber women in skilled jobs and according to the World Economic Forum, the average

of earning for women in 2017 is only about ten thousand which was the same rate as the

average salary of men in 2006, in contrast, todays men average salary has risen up to twenty-

one thousand already.

 In addition, Sexism is one of the inequalities in gender that Huxley tries to illustrate.

As in the Huxleys future world, there is no loyalty between relationship because men and

women are easier and more freedom to have sex. Thus, one thing that they do not want to

happen is to get pregnant. Hence, in the future world in the novel, women are sterilized or

women have to use the pill in order to have sex because of the birth control. Probably the

more irritating thing about this is that the women are the ones expected to be in charge of

preventing pregnancy. Its easier for man to have a condom in his pocket than it is for a

woman to take a birth control pill every day. If Huxleys entire society is participating

equally in this hyper sexualized world, shouldnt they all be equally responsible for

preventing pregnancy? Everybody belongs to everyone else, therefore, everyone should be

accountable for making sure no one ends up pregnant(Ashe,n.d.). According to the quote, it

has said that it is much easier and also safer for men to use a condom instead of women take a

pill or being sterilized. Condoms are proven to be very effective against STDs and

pregnancy when used perfectly, with as high as 98% effectiveness(condom vs pill,2015). So,

the evidence has shown that condom is the most effective way. Therefore, Huxley has

demonstrated the inequality in those genders by using the sexism.

In conclusion, Aldous Huxley has used his Brave New World novel to represent his

idea about the nightmarish of the future world and one of the main topics is the inequality in

gender. Huxley has used education, job opportunity and sexism to show that even in the

future world men and women are still not equal. The education statistic has shown that, from

the past men are more educated than women and it has affected the job opportunity of men to

have more chance to get higher job positions than women. Lastly, the sexism shows that

women have to be the people who protect themselves, on the other hand, it is safer for men to

use a condom.
Reference

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