PHIL 101. Week13. Second Essay Prompt. What is Sexism?

Sexism
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Introduction
Sexism is a form of discrimination that is based on gender or sex. It involves the belief that men are superior to women and that white people are superior to black people and thus discrimination may be justified. Sometimes such a belief may be conscious or unconscious. Just like in racism, in sexism, the differences between two individuals or groups of people are viewed as indications and signals that one group is inferior or superior to the other. The concept of sexism was first instituted to raise consciousness regarding the oppression of girls and women. However, by early twenty-first century, it had begun expanding to include other factors such as oppression and discrimination based on color and gender including transgender and intersexual people. This discussion will examine what sexism is, why it is bad and will also evaluate the reasons why people hold their sexist beliefs in the face of countervailing evidence.
Ordinarily, sexism involves unfair treatment of individuals because of their gender orientation. This kind of discrimination is meant to maintain domination and power over some individuals and it can either be economic, political or social (Napikoski, 2018). The ideologies of sexism include ideas and theories that portray certain groups of individuals usually men as deservedly superior to other people usually female and also offer the justification of oppressing these individuals on the basis of their sex.
There are some differences that exist between the traditional and modern form of sexism. The traditional sexism usually focused on what a woman’s role in society should be, which usually involves the woman acting as a mother, housewife and a caretaker who is entrusted to take care of the family issues and not to undertake other roles which are traditionally assigned to men such as leadership positions and certain careers choices such as engineering (Molino, 2017). In contrast, the modern form of sexism incorporates some of the traditional ideas about the roles of women in the dynamics of the modern society. Rather than believing that women cannot have specific careers, modern sexism dictates that women excel in particular career fields such as teaching and nursing and belief that they cannot perform better in other fields such as management and computer science.
The concepts of minority groups and marginalization are also common in sexism, certain groups of individuals are seen as less powerful and less valuable than the other. Individuals who discriminate are the dominant group and they are the most powerful, they receive the greatest privileges and the highest social status. It is, however, important to note that dominant group does not necessarily mean that it is the majority group in term of numbers since a small dominant group can still hold more power over the majority of the discriminated individuals. On the other hand minority groups are the people who are singled out for unequal treatment and who see themselves as objects of collective discrimination. Usually, these people are often diminished and are restricted to insignificant or infective positions within society. Marginalized individuals are socially underprivileged and are generally at the fringe of society.
Sexism is also present in organizations and other workplaces. It is obvious that there are salary differences among across different gender and race groups. Wage discrimination may occur when the employer decides to pay the women employees less than their counterparts. Ordinarily, wage inequalities occur prominently along gender and race lines (Khan Academy, 2018). Male workers earn more than female on average and the Whites are paid more than Blacks and Hispanics regardless of gender. However, it is important to note that over the years, gender and ethnic wage gaps have gradually reduced because in most organization policies have been enacted to facilitate fairness and also education has also played a role in dealing with this problem.
Sexism is bad for society in dif...