Letters to men from women. A series.
- Change Alongside Art
- Jan 25, 2021
- 2 min read
Dear men,
Have you ever been scared to go outside? Have you ever been touched, brushed on your shoulder, freaked out of your mind by someone because of what they might do to you? I’m guessing that you haven’t. You probably also didn’t know that 71% of sex trafficking victims are women and children. This is disgusting.
Dear men,
Have you ever had the experience of living paycheck to paycheck? It’s scary, isn’t it? Now imagine being a single parent. Parenting 1+ children alone is already so stressful. Now imagine doing that with one little paycheck per week. Did you know that 80.4% of custodial parents are mothers? The most flabbergasting thing is that 29.2% of custodial single mothers and their children lived in poverty.
Dear men,
Have you ever been forced to wed someone against your will? Globally, almost 750 million women and girls alive today married before their eighteenth birthday. Those who suffer from child marriage often experience early pregnancy which is a key factor in the premature end of education. As mothers and wives, girls become socially isolated and are at an increased risk for domestic violence. But according to a boy in my 6th Grade civics class, apparently, “domestic violence is the women’s fault.”
Dear men,
Have you ever seen your co-worker get a pay raise while you haven’t? That’s the case for women all over the world every day. All the time, we see men receive higher wages than us, while we are doing equal or better work. We have bills and things to pay for too, you know? The jaw-dropping thing though is that, for decades, women have earned more bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and doctorate degrees than men. Yet women in the workforce still earn less than their male counterparts. How much less? Women earn even less than 80 percent of what men are paid, on average.
Dear men,
If you are able to read this now, that means that you know how to read and are one of the more fortunate people in the world. Chances are, you have a roof over your head, food that you can eat, and family/friends that you love. That is a lot more than most people can say. Poverty is a big issue. Many people, especially women, lack education. There are approximately 774 million illiterate adults in the world and two-thirds of them are women. There are approximately 123 million illiterate youths and 61 percent of them are girls. Women’s share in the illiterate population has not budged in 20 years.
Dear men,
Have you ever had to think about prenatal care? Do you even know what that means or how to access it? As of 2017, there are 1.6 billion women of reproductive age in the developing world. Of the 127 million women who gave birth in 2017, just 63 percent received a minimum of four antenatal care visits and only 72 percent gave birth in a health facility. Among women who experienced medical complications during pregnancy or delivery, only one in three received the care they or their newborns needed. Now that is crazy.
Dear men,
If you think that gender inequality doesn’t exist, think again.
Sincerely, women.
Please share to educate men about gender inequality.
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