Sexism in social justice

Sexism refers to stereotypes against women whereby women are treated differently from men. Sexism is mainly perpetuated by the traditional beliefs and prejudices about gender roles, sexual objectification, and demeaning attitudes towards women. Such sexist views lead to gender inequality and disrupt social order. Sexism is a social justice issue that promotes gender injustices through gender stereotypes and patriarchal social systems. This paper aims at discussing sexism through a social justice lens. Women were supposed to execute domestic functions while men were in the fields to get material to meet the responsibilities of material needs. The belief systems women further strengthened the differences in gender roles were inferior beyond home confines and valuable when confined at home. In the process of socialization, men were shaped to undertake instrumental roles such as providing for their families while women were assigned expressive roles such as nurturing the family.

Eventually, gender inequality sprouted leading to sexist perspectives and gender stratification in education, incomes, employment, and politics. Sexism in the society leads to increased discrimination of women, unequal division of labor, disrupts social order, and raises negative perspectives about women. Women’s roles are still domesticated. Men’s roles in organizations are still considered more valuable while women’s roles are degraded even when they are both executing similar functions. Also, in terms of income, women are paid a fraction of men’s pay even when in the same job positions. However, there have been little changes concerning women’s education and empowerment. In a research conducted by Hurst, Gibbon, and Nurse (2016), most of the women today are educated and empowered to fight against the injustices of the female gender.

Also in qualitative methodology, the researcher can conduct a case study research on a given organization to obtain their ideas. For instance, the researcher can use an employee organization from Atlanta to collect data about women employment and related wages. Various sociological theories and perspectives explain sexism. One perspective is the functionalist perspective that focuses on the social structures and functions as a whole. The functionalist view illustrates sexism by focusing on the norms, customs, and institutions of a society. Sexism is also explained from a feminist perspective (Walby, Armstrong, and Strid, 2012). Feminist perspective holds that stratification in the society occurs when social differences cause greater standing, influence, and opportunity to the more powerful group of people over the less powerful.

Similarly, sexism occurs when gender constructs grant men greater social influence and status over women. The theory suggests that, in a patriarchal society, men’s roles are perceived to be more valuable than those of women. As a result, women’s roles become marginalized or considered invalid in society. Scholars such as Aristotle and Plato support sexism by agreeing that the male gender is superior to the female gender (Homiak, 2018). Men by nature execute leading roles while women submit to the will of the dominating powers (Staves, 2015). However, Plato believed that women and men have the same nature to possess equal powers but mean are stronger than men in enacting those powers. The sociology of gender is naturally the relationship between superiority and inferiority where men are superior to women.